Archive for January, 2007

Homeschooled on a sailboat, Keriann Backus ’07 wins a Rhodes.

BevK January 24th, 2007

When Keriann backus was seven, her parents packed her and her brother onto a thirty-nine-foot sailboat and set off for a trip around the world. The journey lasted seven years and featured stops in Turkey, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. “My parents wanted to take us away from pop culture and traditional elementary and middle school,” she says.

The approach—which featured lots of homeschooling, hours reading at sea, and very little interaction with other kids—seems to have worked. In November, Backus was named a Rhodes Scholar, making her the fourth Brown student to receive the prestigious award in the last five years. After she graduates, Backus will spend the next three years at Oxford studying chemical biology, a cutting-edge field that combines the best of both disciplines to create new treatments for diseases.

Homeschooled on a sailboat, Keriann Backus ’07 wins a Rhodes.

Mom avoids jail on truancy charges

BevK January 24th, 2007

Mom avoids jail on truancy charges

A Silver Spring Township mother won’t get jail time for truancy charges after all.

A Cumberland County judge agreed to to drop a jail sentence against Maggie Winters and reinstitute her earlier sentence of $3,989.50 in fines.

Winters pleaded guilty in November before District Judge Thomas Placey to the truancy charges for not sending her son to school, although she said she was educating 14-year-old Kyle at home and hadn’t been able to pay the fines because she lost her job.

Homeschoolers say socialization biggest problem?

BevK January 24th, 2007

The Zanesville Times Recorder has published a number of recent articles on homeschooling. In one the following statement is made:

Most commonly, when parents who homeschool are asked what the biggest disadvantage to homeschooling is, they’ll respond with “socialization.”

Well, that’s not what the homeschooler she quotes really said.

“I don’t think there are any disadvantages, the only argument you ever get is socialization. To me, in my memory of school, the only socialization was lunch and recess and those were with no adults around. Children left to their own devices isn’t proper socialization,” Jamie Jenson of Coshocton said.

And the second parent quoted says,

“Social interaction was the biggest thing we felt we needed to worry about when we took them out of public school,” Valerie said.

But again, it wasn’t lack of socialization that was the big fear as is clear by Valerie’s next statement.

“Now they’re with kids we want them to be around,” Valerie said.

Apparently reporter Leeann Moore can’t let go of her belief that there’s a problem with socialization for homeschoolers. I don’t know many homeschoolers who would say that socialization is their biggest homeschooling problem.

The Articles:

Reasons vary, but families happy with decision to teach at home

Staying involved is key to success for homeschooling, say parents, students

From public to homeschool: Some prefer freedom and hands-on experience

Library offers program to benefit homeschoolers

When school is too scary

BevK January 19th, 2007

This will make your toenails curl. Mom finally brought an end to it, but it shows the level of indoctrination into “school think” that she had that it took so long.

As a teacher, Charlotte Morbey had always been sceptical about school phobia until her son threatened to jump from the window sill

Six months ago I de-registered my 13-year-old son from school. As a former teacher and head of year, home education had seemed a foolhardy thing to undertake. But as a parent, I had reached the end of the road with mainstream schooling.

I thought I knew about school phobia. In common with colleagues, I used the terms “school phobia” and “school refusal” interchangeably. I was sympathetic but sceptical. I felt it was probably exaggerated and pandered to by parents who colluded with difficult children for a quiet life.

Working from Home with Kids

BevK January 19th, 2007

Mike Gunderloy offers his take on how to deal with kids and working from home in How to manage kids in the Home Office.

One comment he makes is “If there’s a part of your day that requires the utmost concentration, schedule that part during their nap time, or after their bedtime, or while they’re off at school (assuming that you’re not trying to juggle homeschooling into the mix as well).”

I’d like to focus on juggling homeschooling into the mix. I’ve found that it’s not much more difficult than juggling a toddler into the mix. I didn’t actively start working from home when my youngest was still inclined to spend the first half hour of her day curled up in my lap. I did a heavy load of volunteer work including a stint at AOL as a chat host, file librarian, and rainman tech. Once I started the Eclectic Homeschool which morphed into the Eclectic Homeschool Online, I never worked less than a 40 hour workweek. I continue to run EHO and have my own web design business. I’ve also started a publishing business, EEG Publishing.

How do I do it and keep up with my kids? Easy, we all work in the same office…study…room full of desks and computers. Maybe it’s because I’m an old hand at homeschooling, but after 14 years and three homeschool graduates, I don’t find the homeschooling thing particularly difficult. Maybe it’s that I’m down to two kids at home, and that seems really easy to me, too. Maybe if you threw a toddler at me right now, I’d lose it. But I don’t think so. I think the key is just to do it. Find your niche and fill it. And yes, I still find time to watch NBA basketball, watch 24, and read books for pleasure. I don’t make tons of income, but what I do make comes in handy. It paid for the last big chunk of our daughter’s wedding. It paid for the food on our move from West to East coasts. Hubby would like it to pay for a new TV, but I have other plans for my next big check. Business plans.

When I’m finally an empty nester, I won’t have to go looking for things to fill my time. And of course, I’ll have grandchildren, which requires just as much flexibility in job situation as being a stay-at-home, work-at-home mom.

Intelligence and Education

BevK January 18th, 2007

In a series of three articles at OpinionJournal.com, Charles Murray explores the following:

  1. Half of all children are below average, and teachers can do only so much for them.
  2. Too many Americans are going to college.
  3. Our future depends crucially on how we educate the next generation of people gifted with unusually high intelligence.

Intelligence in the Classroom

Education is becoming the preferred method for diagnosing and attacking a wide range problems in American life. The No Child Left Behind Act is one prominent example. Another is the recent volley of articles that blame rising income inequality on the increasing economic premium for advanced education. Crime, drugs, extramarital births, unemployment–you name the problem, and I will show you a stack of claims that education is to blame, or at least implicated.

One word is missing from these discussions: intelligence. Hardly anyone will admit it, but education’s role in causing or solving any problem cannot be evaluated without considering the underlying intellectual ability of the people being educated. Today and over the next two days, I will put the case for three simple truths about the mediating role of intelligence that should bear on the way we think about education and the nation’s future.

Today’s simple truth: Half of all children are below average in intelligence. We do not live in Lake Wobegon.

What’s Wrong With Vocational School?

In engineering and most of the natural sciences, the demarcation between high-school material and college-level material is brutally obvious. If you cannot handle the math, you cannot pass the courses. In the humanities and social sciences, the demarcation is fuzzier. It is possible for someone with an IQ of 100 to sit in the lectures of Economics 1, read the textbook, and write answers in an examination book. But students who cannot follow complex arguments accurately are not really learning economics. They are taking away a mishmash of half-understood information and outright misunderstandings that probably leave them under the illusion that they know something they do not. (A depressing research literature documents one’s inability to recognize one’s own incompetence.) Traditionally and properly understood, a four-year college education teaches advanced analytic skills and information at a level that exceeds the intellectual capacity of most people.

Aztecs vs. Greeks

If “intellectually gifted” is defined to mean people who can become theoretical physicists, then we’re talking about no more than a few people per thousand and perhaps many fewer. They are cognitive curiosities, too rare to have that much impact on the functioning of society from day to day. But if “intellectually gifted” is defined to mean people who can stand out in almost any profession short of theoretical physics, then research about IQ and job performance indicates that an IQ of at least 120 is usually needed. That number demarcates the top 10% of the IQ distribution, or about 15 million people in today’s labor force–a lot of people.

In professions screened for IQ by educational requirements–medicine, engineering, law, the sciences and academia–the great majority of people must, by the nature of the selection process, have IQs over 120. Evidence about who enters occupations where the screening is not directly linked to IQ indicates that people with IQs of 120 or higher also occupy large proportions of positions in the upper reaches of corporate America and the senior ranks of government. People in the top 10% of intelligence produce most of the books and newspaper articles we read and the television programs and movies we watch. They are the people in the laboratories and at workstations who invent our new pharmaceuticals, computer chips, software and every other form of advanced technology.

Combine these groups, and the top 10% of the intelligence distribution has a huge influence on whether our economy is vital or stagnant, our culture healthy or sick, our institutions secure or endangered.

Casual sex is a con: women just aren’t like men

BevK January 16th, 2007

Former groupie Dawn Eden explains how she realised morality made more sense for women than free love

This is really good reading for a look at why waiting for marriage is important from someone who rode the wave of sexual freedom and found it was not a good thing.

The misguided, hedonistic philosophy which urges young women into this kind of behaviour harms both men and women; but it is particularly damaging to women, as it pressures them to subvert their deepest emotional desires. The champions of the sexual revolution are cynical. They know in their tin hearts that casual sex doesn’t make women happy. That’s why they feel the need continually to promote it.

These days I live a very different kind of life. I still touch base with old musician pals now and again, but I’m more likely to hang out with members of church choirs. I am chaste. My decision to resist casual sex was, once again, influenced by my mother — though not in the way she initially hoped.

Hat Tip: The Anchoress

Eclectic Homeschool Online Newsletter, January 15, 2007

BevK January 15th, 2007

It looks like the New Year became an icy blast of cold weather for much of the United States. Pictures of fountains frozen in Sacramento and ice glistening off the arch in St. Louis, all spell freezing temperatures for many homeschool families. I can remember when our family suffered through a long power outage due to an ice storm. We got by with a long-term slumber party and charades by candlelight in the living room using a propane heater borrowed from a friend and all the candles in the house. Since ice and snow seem to be the theme for the weather, let me point those of you who can access them to our snow resources. The Mini Units unit study article includes as an example snow mini unit study. It includes indoor and outdoor activities as well as other online resources for learning more about snow. You’ll also want to check out the January crafts for instructions for building snow forts and snow sculptures.
Snow Mini Unit
January Crafts

Feature Articles

Our focus is on helping newbies as the new year often brings many people into the homeschool fold at semester break. Tammy Cardwell has written an article for all homeschoolers new and old to read about how to give solid help to a homeschool newbie. Our second feature article deals with fear and how it can be an overwhelming power in your life, but it can be overcome.

Helping the Newbie
The following is a brief list of things I’ve learned from over a decade of helping new homeschoolers and homeschool wannabes. They are things you should bear in mind as people come to you for help in beginning their homeschool journey. And if you’ve only just begun yourself? Well, get ready, because as far as others are concerned you are now a homeschooling expert; the questions will come.

Overcoming Fear in Your Life
Most homeschoolers are familiar with the fears that homeschooling brings. This article addresses a much more profound level of fear. If fear has caused you to change how you would otherwise live, then it’s time to overcome that fear, not by your own power but by the power of Holy Spirit.

Focus: Help for Newbies

A newbie in homeschool parlance is someone new to homeschooling. Just mention you’re a newbie at a homeschool convention and you’ll be inundated with all kinds of advice. There’s so much to figure out and so many suggestions. We’d like to help anyone who is taking the plunge and pulling their kids from school between semesters.

Avoiding Homeschool Cabin Fever
Reaching out and finding support from other homeschoolers is important for beginners and veterans.

Encouragement for Homeschoolers
Tamara Eaton answers common questions. How much time do your kids spend on homeschooling? How are you measuring their progress and do you worry that they won’t be as capable as “schooled” kids? Is this normal for parents who have taken their kids out of public school to worry and why am I just now having those feelings after having homeschooled for 1-2 yrs. now?

The First Week of Homeschool
When we started homeschooling, I had spent three months preparing for that first day. I had curriculum. I had the day all planned out. I had school supplies etc. I also had a huge lump of worry in my chest.

Too Much Encouragement?
Is it possible to get too much encouragement from your homeschool friends? Beverly Krueger tells us how too much of the wrong kind of encouragement can actually cause frustration and a desire to give up.

Transition
Transitions – from school to home, season to season, or day to day – homeschooling is full of transitions.

More Beginning Homeschooling Articles

EHO Lite
A whole site devoted to answering the most common questions from new homeschoolers.

How to Homeschool Reviews

How to Homeschool Resources


Science Department

Science Spot
Many homeschooler use eBay to find resources for homeschooling. Although, since they now refuse to allow the sale of teacher texts, that may be changing. This however, is good news for regular eBay users.

PayPal to offer password key fobs to users
eBay is getting ready to offer its PayPal users a password-generating key fob that promises to increase the security of the online payment service.

Craft Department

A Year in Crafts: January
New: Relief Map, Sparkling Ice Sculpture, How to Build a Snow Fort for Snowball Fights, Snow Sculptures
More: Valentine Paper Cutting Crafts, Celluclay Instant Papier Mache Mission, SpongeBob Sandy Sea Scene, Antique Cross, Egyptian Sarcophagus, Arctic Seal & Igloo

Eclectic Kids Learning and Play Space

Martin Luther King, Jr. Play Space
We’ve scoured the web to find Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Treasures for you to enjoy.

February is Black History month. Black History resources at EHO

New Reviews

In keeping with our helping newbies focus, we have reviews of several books that will help both new and longtime homeschoolers.
* Timeless Teaching Tips: How to Think Like a Teacher
* Tips and Tricks for Homeschooling Survival
* Help! I’m Married to a Homeschool Mom

We also have some great curriculum and educational resource reviews.
* Animal Flash Cards - pre-reading
* Biblical Mysteries #2: Sodom and Gomorrah (DVD)
* Danny and Life on Bluff Point - children’s fiction series
* Exploratopia: More than 400 kid-friendly experiments and explorations for curious minds
* Jack’s Knife - middle school fiction
* Little 1 - math picture book: addition
* Rapunzel/Rapunzel (Bilingual Fairy Tales)
* Romeo and Juliet (audio book)
* Three Little Pigs, The/Los Tres Cerditos (Bilingual Fairy Tales)
* TruthQuest History: Renaissance, Reformation and Age of Exploration
* Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (audio book)
* What Really Happened During the Middle Ages?

EHO Resource Center

My daughter has been voraciously reading a series of books called the Warrior Cats. She saw them at the bookstore and began clamoring for them. She got the volumes 1-3 boxed set for Christmas and polished them off before we got home from our Christmas vacation. She’s now clamoring for the next three that are available. I’ve added a new section to Children’s Series for the Warrior Cats.

I’ve also added a section for the Magic Tree House books, although at this point only the boxed set for the first four books has been added to it. I’ll add more as I find time, but that link will take you to Amazon and many more Magic Tree House books. Since these books are topical, you may find the perfect book to toss into a unit study as a just for fun read for your younger readers. The first boxed set covers dinosaurs, knights, mummies, and pirates. A great buy for your young adventure loving little boy or girl.

Our January Featured Resources
Tips and Tricks for Homeschooling Survival
$10.95
Helping Children Explore the Wonders of God’s Creation
If you’ve been looking for a nature magazine for your children that gives God the glory for the wonders and beauty of creation, then Nature Friend is the magazine for you. Nature Friend is a full color glossy magazine offering similar features and spectacular photos just like secular nature magazines for children. There are stories, a hidden picture page, nature crafts and activities, in depth articles, and a “You Can Draw” section that teaches nature illustration. Top quality production is married to well written Christian oriented content.

More New Resources
The Big Giant Decision…Homeschool!: Detailed Notes! Why We Did It! How You Can Do It!
by Penni Renee Pierce
$24.00
The Big GIANT Decision addresses parents’ greatest concern about homeschooling their children- their own ability to do it! The book also has a Resource Guide with over 400 listings-Books, Curricula, Internet Sites! This edition includes information on State Laws for homeschooling, homeschooling through high school and transitioning into college.

Easy Homeschooling Techniques (Secular Edition): The Real How-To Guide
by Lorraine Curry
$12.91 - 32% Off

Homeschooling Odyssey: Second Edition
by Matthew, James
$10.95
It was the fall of 1980 when six-year-old Jenny entered first grade in a small town in Washington. Like most parents, Matt and Barbara had high hopes that their daughter would thrive in the classroom. At their first parent-teacher conference, they learned that Jenny was a weak reader who cried over the stories in her books. On further investigation, they concluded that the school, not their daughter, had failed to measure up. Thus began their riotous homeschooling adventure.
Matt reviews the years with affection and humor, examining modern education and childrearing practices along the way.

The Little Book of Big Reasons to Homeschool
by David D’escoto, Kim D’escoto
$7.99
In a friendly conversational tone The Little Book of BIG Reasons to Homeschool addresses the benefits of home education to mind, body, and soul while answering the tough questions about homeschooling– academics, socialization, spiritual training, and more.

So You’re Thinking about Homeschooling: Second Edition: Fifteen Families Show How You Can Do It
by Lisa Whelchel
$14.99
Discover the Diversity of Homeschooling Confused and intimidated by the complexities of homeschooling, many parents assume it could never work for them. Now an updated edition of So You’re Thinking About Home Schooling by Lisa Whelchel - herself a homeschooling mother of three - introduces to readers fifteen composite portraits of homeschooling families who show how every family can successfully face the unique challenges of its situation. The story-based approach deals with common questions of time management, teaching weaknesses, and outside responsibilities, as well as children’s age variations, social and sports involvement, learning disabilities, and boredom. Seeing a wide variety of homeschooling families in action gives parents the information and confidence they need to make their own decisions about home-based education. Includes a new chapter from Lisa and an all-new resource guide with recommendations from real-life homeschooling families!

Flash Animation for Teens
by Eric D. Grebler
$20.64 - 41% Off
Welcome to your no-experience-required, introductory guide to creating animations with Macromedia Flash! Flash Animation for Teens will help you develop the fundamental Flash skills that you need to confidently create your own animations. Covering the basics of Flash animation, this book uses Flash 8 to teach you the techniques you need to create a variety of animation styles, including games, web sites, stand-alone applications, and cartoons. Ideal for readers with little to no Flash experience, this project-based guide will help you conquer the basics and begin creating your own animations.

Thank you for using the Eclectic Homeschool Resource Center for purchasing your homeschool resources and using our store as your entry point into the Amazon.com system. By following a link or search box from our site, you provide EHO with a small percentage of the total sale and help us stay online. We, and the thousands of homeschoolers we help free of charge each month, thank you.

Eclectic Homeschool Resource Directory

We’ve added 15 new listings to the resource directory. You’ll find the new listings in the right hand column of our main page or visit the directory to browse the 86 categories to find the resources you need from over 500 homeschool resource providers.

If you’d like to learn more about taking care of your computer, we invite you to visit HelpMyComputer.info. This site has information about things you can do right now that will keep your system up and running. A little preventive maintenance can save you time and money. HelpMyComputer.info makes it easy enough for even a beginning computer user.

Stop by TammyCardwell.net for the latest offerings from CJ Press and access to all Tammy’s articles about homeschooling and Christian living. Currently, CJ Press is offering God Doesn’t Want Volunteers as a free eBook and has just published Some Successful Americans, a collection of biographies of self-made, successful Americans, as an eBook. You can find both books at http://tammycardwell.net

Stay warm!

The Lord bless and keep you,
Beverly Krueger
Eclectic Homeschool Online

If you have a friend that would like to start receiving this newsletter, they can subscribe at
eclectichomeschool-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Shall I be mother?

BevK January 15th, 2007

A very touching story of how a homeschooling mom has chosen to take care of her abusive mother.

After years of violence and abuse, Tina Kotulski attempted suicide – aged just 13. Now she’s not only forgiven her schizophrenic mother for the past, but moved her in too. She tells Helena de Bertodano about their heart-rending role reversal

Shall I be mother?

Home is where the smart is

BevK January 15th, 2007

College admissions for homeschoolers. One homeschool graduates says it all for homeschoolers looking at potential colleges, “They’re so open to home-schoolers here,” she said. “No one looks down on me, or treats me different. It’s very accepting.”http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/01/15/news/life/127118.txt

After years of skepticism, even mistrust, many college officials now realize it’s in their best interest to seek out home-schoolers, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

“There was a tendency to kind of dismiss home schooling as inherently less rigorous,” he said. “The attitude of the admissions profession could have at best been described as skeptical.”

Home-schooled students - whose numbers in this country range from an estimated 1.1 million to as high as 2 million - often come to college equipped with the skills necessary to succeed in higher education, said Regina Morin, admissions director of Columbia College.

Such assets include intellectual curiosity, independent study habits and critical thinking skills, she said.

“It’s one of the fastest-growing college pools in the nation,” she said. “And they tend to be some of the best prepared.”

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