Friday, November 6, 2009

Stupid in America

This is a long video but worth watching!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Why We Homeschool

We were very prayerful over what to do with our daughter as far as education. We had the choice of sending her to a public school where she would be stuck in a classroom of 20-25 other kids and learn with the classroom's pace. We could let someone else have her mind to form for more hours a day than we had. Then we had the choice of sending her to a private school, were the situation was the same, but could be more based on Christianity but also digging into our pockets every month for tuition.

We did get an answer from God and that was for our daughter to be homeschooled. She gets one on one learning and we go at her pace. I have the whole day to form her mind and instill morals and train her up in the way she should go. I also don't have to have anyone telling me what I can't and can teach her. She learns all subjects with a Christ-centered mindset. We don't leave God out in our science learning and you know what? God loves that! He joins us every day in our learning and shares his presence when we count him as the Creator in science.

So the number one reason we homeschool is because God guided us to do so. The second reason is obvious, because the public school system is highly lacking in a good education and their test scores show that. Homeschoolers beat out public and private school education in tests every year. So, opting for a good education - you can clearly see that today's "free"-education, a.k.a public school system is not quality. Not only do we not want our daughter to be stupid, but we don't want her to be indoctrinated in this Godless social system either.

Thirdly, we homeschool because of the schedule. We have late nights, whether from church functions or in the future from Seminary classes and we didn't want our daughter missing out on sleep. Up until children are 12 years old, they need at least 10 hours of sleep a night and she wouldn't get that if she attended school. The reports have showed that children who do not get these 10 hours of sleep a night, have academic and behavioral problems and I've seen both of these in some children who do not get the proper amount of sleep each night. Kids need their sleep and so do parents lol. Also, the schedule flexibility allows us to take a week off when we want too. We do year round schooling, so we can take a month if need be and recently I had to because of health reasons and I was so glad I had that flexibility.

I could go on all day on the benefits of homeschooling but I will leave off with just one more. Homeschooling allows for outings in which schools could not do much of. We have gone on several field trips, joined a local homeschool group for gym class and more. We can just up and go when we want and it gives more hands-on learning - which is great for kids comprehension of the lessons!

So to sum it all up, our reasons for homeschooling are:
  1. God's guidance
  2. Quality one-on-one education
  3. Schedule Flexibility
  4. Hands-on Learning

Home Grown Love for Learning

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Keepers at Home Curriculum

I came across this curriculum recently and I must say I fell in love with it!  I have been using Pearable's Home Economics course and that is going well but I wanted something more like a home keeping manual for my daughter and I found it!

The "Keepers at Home" manual is 380 pages and for girls ages 7-16.  The contents include everything from becoming prayer warriors to hygiene, crafts, etc.  You can see the table of contents here.  They also have a sample skill page to view here. For smaller girls, they also have the "Little Keepers at Home" which is geared to girls ages 4-6.

Once we have ordered a copy and tried it out, I will do a review but I normally have a good eye for these sort of things and I think this one is a winner!  Be sure to check out the rest of the website, they offer some good character materials as well.


Photo credit Keepers of the Faith

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Cave Painting

A project for Story of the World Volume 1, chapter 2 "The Earliest People" was to do a cave painting.  We took a paper grocery bag and crumbled it up and then laid it flat and I had my daughter paint on it as if it was the side of a cave like the nomads did.  She loved it and we had to show off her cave painting!


14 Days of Homeschool