I’m excited that fall is here. I’ve been knitting and crocheting up a storm this year, and finally we get to wear some of it! I’m eager to taste pumpkin and apple flavored everything, and take a walk without passing out from heatstroke. And fall brings lots of opportunities for field trips! Though it technically [...]
After a woman took her children to elementary school late multiple times, she was arrested, taken to an adult detention center, and released on a $3,000 bond. Come on, school. Seriously? Okay, I understand the importance of having all students in a school on time. If a class gets started, it is a disruption to [...]
Wow, I haven’t posted here in a long time. Rest assured I’m still here, and I’m still homeschooling. I recently did another read-through of The Well-Trained Mind and decided to get back on track with some things we’d deviated from. We’re currently reading through Charlotte’s Web and using a highly modified version of these lesson [...]
I think they drew the completely wrong conclusion from these studies. Here is what I think was the key; “I just found this toy! Huh! Did you see that? Let me try to do that!” “Wow, look at this toy. I wonder how it works? Let’s try this,” It does not seem to me at [...]
http://thwesley.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/paying-for-public-goods/ caused me to type this long comment… I don’t think we should spend more money on public education. There are already enough people in the world that are willing to donate time (by compiling and spreading information) that a good education can be free. There is enough technology and enough people willing to donate [...]
Here is an article from The Wall Street Journal with some interesting statistics. According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some [...]
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I just discovered that there is a “Young Writers Program.” There’s free lesson plans, workbooks, etc. for all grade levels! This is an awesome way to teach kids about writing and novels, and get them into NaNoWriMo. I wish I had known about this earlier in the [...]
Last week we took our first official “field trip” to the Benton County Wind Farm! As an advocate of renewable green energy, I was surprised to find there are wind farms only about 60 miles away from me that I had no idea existed. We learned a lot about wind power, got to see and [...]
CK-12 now has Kindle Versions of some of their books!
A Washington lobby-group called Handwriting Standards has popped up, and they are proposing national handwriting standards for public, private, and home schools. This group was created and is fully funded and operated by Handwriting Without Tears. So to put things in laymen terms, the Handwriting Without Tears company wants to make anything other than their [...]
