Wednesday, March 31, 2010

School-Homed

So funny, you have to read this!!  This is satire, in case you didn't notice lol:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/increasing-number-of-parents-opting-to-have-childr,17159/

Monday, March 29, 2010

Q&A with Susan Wise Bauer!!

So excited to find this today, had to share!!

Part 1




Part 2


Rain Gauge - Day 1 Results

K was so excited this morning to go outside and check the rain gauge to see if her prediction was close.  She had guessed 1 inch of rain would fall.  She was close but it only rained 1/2 inch since yesterday and she charted it on her lab sheet.


Sunday, March 28, 2010

Science Lab - Rain Gauge

We are implementing a science lab into our science program and I chose to try out Real Science Odyssey.  You can try before you buy and so we printed a bunch of labs to try and see if it fits K's learning style and my teaching style.  So far she is loving it and this week we are doing a rain gauge.  We made one from a 2-liter bottle and then K is charting each day how much it rains.  She predicts how much she thinks it will rain each day and then she will find out how much it actually did rain when she goes outside and checks it every morning.  She is so excited and has been looking out the window to check it for a while now lol.  She guessed 1 inch of rain by tomorrow morning - so we will see!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Grammar Recitation: "Hearts Are Like Doors"

Here is K's 3rd poem recitation from memory.  We had recorded it once and she was too quiet so I told her to speak up and she practically yelled into the microphone LOL.  But she wanted to keep this one, so without further adieu, Miss K.........


Monday, March 15, 2010

Keepers at Home and Little Keepers at Home


Look what arrived in the mail today!  I had decided to purchase these before the sale ended and I got both the "Little Keepers at Home" and "Keepers at Home" and I looked over them and took some pics (forgive the blurriness of them - my hands were shaky lol) and they look so great and I plan on combining them with the Pearables Home Economics course we are using.

Little Keepers at Home (ages 4-6)


 Keepers at Home (ages 7-16)

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading Video

Here is a sample lesson from our reading/phonics program:


Saxon Math 1 - The Meeting Video

Here is a video of what our "Math Meeting" is like and extras:


First Language Lessons Level 1 Video

Here is a sample lesson from FLL 1:


K's 1st Sudoku Puzzle

I didn't think she could do it but after much pleading, I finally gave in and let her do a puzzle from my beloved Sudoko puzzle book.  She did it!  I'm totally amazed and proud of her - she really loves puzzles of all kinds.

Bible - Christian Studies 1 Video

Here is another sample video of our homeschooling, this time in Christians Studies 1.


Writing with Ease Level 1 - Video

We did a lot of videos this week of our homeschooling to hopefully help others see how easy it is and how the curriculum we use works.  Here is a sample lesson from "Writing with Ease Level 1"   

I made an error in the video title - It should have said Week 5, Day 4 not Week 6


All About Spelling Level 1 Video

I promised that I would update on how All About Spelling is going and we are absolutely loving it!  It is K's favorite to do right now and its so easy to teach!  I decided to just go ahead and record one of the steps this week that we did so you can see what a typical step is like.  You don't have to do the whole step in one day like we did - you can spend on a week on it if you need to.


Astronomy - Mercury Project





Thursday, March 11, 2010

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

March's Continuing Collapse

A must read each month! Their goal is to

"help families and churches return to a Biblical understanding of education so that Christians will rescue their children from the dark and decaying government school system. This, in turn, will bring reformation to our families, churches, communities, culture, and country and repentance to the government school tares in our midst.

Remember, a child's soul is a terrible thing to waste..."

Here is this month's edition:
http://www.voddiebaucham.org/vbm/Blog/Entries/2010/3/9_The_Continuing_Collapse__March_2010.html

Cursive is on Hold

I had read what Susan Wise Bauer (SWB) suggests as far as not starting cursive early and waiting till the middle of 2nd grade or 3rd grade but I gave in to K's pleadings.  She really desired to start, so we ordered the cursive program and I had read good things about children starting early and thought maybe, just maybe, SWB didn't know what she was talking about.  Well - she did!

K never had a problem with letter reversal in manuscript and now she does!  Her reading also went backwards and she was struggling and it wasn't until I read again what SWB said about this that I realized that the cursive had been too early.  Reading is in print - so when a young child who is still learning to read, starts cursive, it can delay reading or make it difficult.  In the words of SWB "many children need to print because they need the visual likeness between what they’re doing and what’s in the books they read".  I witnessed this first hand, as well as the past few days K trying to write manuscript and I couldn't believe how it looked and how she was getting her a's backwards, etc.  She even forgot the proper strokes of some letters in manuscript.

So we put the cursive away till 2nd or 3rd grade - till she is fluently reading and writing!  There really is no need to introduce it early and the only reason to do it really is "to appear" more advanced.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

A MUST READ for Every Parent!

Deu 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

Deu 6:5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.


Deu 6:6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:


Deu 6:7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.


Deu 6:8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.


Deu 6:9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.


Deu 6:10 And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,


Deu 6:11 And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full;


Deu 6:12 Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.


Deu 6:13 Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.

Deu 6:14 Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;
 

Deu 6:15 (For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

Deu 6:16 Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in Massah.

Deu 6:17 Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee.

Deu 6:18 And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers...



God gave parents the job of teaching their children. Some may not obey their training, but it is still the parents job to train them. We dont homeschool our children just because it gets good results or it works, but because we believe the Bible teaches parents to do it, and because it is best for the children. We are responsible to disciple them, which is much different than just teaching them facts.

Discipleship is a way of life not just a 30 minute family bible hour - nor can you pass on a way of life on the weekends - its not something the Sunday-school teacher can do. The way to pass on a way of life is to share a way of life - when you sit in your house; when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. It takes time to pass on a way of life - and time is so hard to come by; but if you won't take the time, there are people who will.

Allow me to introduce you to John Dewey.

John Dewey is known as the father of Progressive Education. He wrote that teachers needed to counteract the influence of the home and the church on children, which he said produced children who were too individualistic and not socialistic enough. He put farm families under particular suspicion because their children were often rugged individuals that the state had a hard time re-educating to be socialists. He is one of the original signers of the Humanist Manifesto, which denies God, creation, the soul, the sacred, and life after death, among other things. It requires religions be "reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows" to suit the Humanist agenda. It also requires that all human associations must be controlled to conform to the humanist manifesto.

He went to the Soviet Union and wrote back glowing reports of what he saw. He admired their efforts to dismantle the traditional family and use schools to indoctrinate children to think of themselves as belonging to the state -- bragging that schools were "the ideological arm of the revolution."

He attained international influence over China, India, Russia and the United States, insisting that schools become the tools of a new socialist agenda. The National Education Association - which works out his legacy today, made John Dewey their honorary president. Education as we know it today, remains the legacy of this man who hated the traditional family and hated the church, and who passionately fought for the right to make children the property of a new socialist state which was his idea of heaven on earth.

He wrote :

"I believe that ...the teacher always is the prophet of the true god and the usherer in of the true kingdom of god. "

One of his ilk wrote,

The Bible is not merely another book, an outmoded and archaic book, or even an extremely influential book; it has and remains an incredibly dangerous book. It and the various Christian churches which are parasitic upon it have been directly responsible for most of the wars, persecutions, and outrages which humankind has perpetrated upon itself over the past two thousand years. I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith…These teachers must embody the same dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach…The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, " John Dunphy (The Humanist magazine, Jan/Feb 1983)


There is a reason that we have lived through a century of war in the schools.

There is a reason that the National Education Association advocates things that have nothing to do with reading writing or arithmetic.

There is a reason that the NEA demands children be trained to accept homosexuality and homosexual marriage. There is a reason that the NEA demands that children be indoctrinated to accept condoms, promiscuity and abortion rights as part of life.

There is a reason that the NEA demands funding to take children from the home at earlier and earlier ages -- now even from infancy, all the way through age 18, for eight hours or more every day. They are making disciples for a way of life; for their own atheistic Kingdom of God. It is a way of life for which their founding fathers passionately fought.

Why is it that the church is losing so many young people?

Because the one who makes the disciples gets to keep the disciples.

And the one making disciples is the one who has the children all day long, from infancy to adulthood. So who is really serious about making disciples?

Let's do the math:: two hours a week on Sunday, plus family bible hour every night - and you're up to nine hours a week of discipleship for Jesus.

Compare that to forty hours a week by the NEA.

Close to 20,000 hours of indoctrination by the time children are 18.

Parents say, "He left home and just fell away from his faith."

Could it be possible that he left home and realized what he was really being trained to believe all along?

Perhaps he left home and his real training - his real discipleship kicked in.

I know time is hard to come by. Perhaps you say, "I would love to spend more time with my children, but how can I do it?" I don't have the answer for that. All I have is certain knowledge that if you fail to take the time with your children, if you fail to pass on your way of life to your children, there are others who will use your children to pass on their way of life.

The one who makes the disciples gets to keep them.

A man cannot serve two masters, the Lord warned.

Living by what John Dewey taught makes Children disciples of a New World Order.

Now I know that you all know nice teachers who are trying to do their best - I do too.

But I'm talking about the larger war.

You may know a nice school teacher;  but the larger effort to dismantle the traditional family is not so nice.

The staff trainings on homosexuality are not so nice.

The court orders banning prayer at football games are not so nice.

The iron curtain that has descended over public schools is not so nice.

The lawsuits, the intimidation, the accusations - the war to get access to our children - is not nice at all.

I ask you today - to make disciples of your own children by sharing a way of life with them, the way Jesus shared His way of Life with His disciples.

The National Education Association will not pass on the faith to your children.  They adamantly affirm and pledge not to.

I urge you, if you are serious about passing on the faith of Christ to your children, to bring up your children yourself.  You're really bringing up generations to come.

Hillary Clinton wrote a book entitled

"It takes a Village to Raise a Child."

One homeschooling mother wrote,

"I have seen the village and I don't want it raising my child."

God wisely has the best plan for children, taylor made. Each child has a parent that he can bond with and be discipled by. Who will disciple your children?


Notice: The above is a part of a collection of information compiled to show the dangers of public school. Please print this information, reproduce it, spread it around, post it on your blogs, link to it and help save our nation from the anti-God indoctrination that is targeted at our children. Homeschooling is not expensive, and can be done without spending a cent. In fact, there are a lot of free homeschool material sites on the web. And, even if you cant have all the materials, just having your children at home with you makes them smarter and healthier and more bonded to you. The most important thing is to make your children loyal to their training, and honoring to their parents. This will be erroded in the public schools.Children dont need peers: they need parents.

Taken originally from: homeliving.blogspot.com

Grammar Recitation: "Work"

You may remember K's first poem recitation, "The Caterpillar".  To this day she can still recite that poem from memory!  We added grammar back in a few weeks ago and she was ready today to record her next poem.  So here she is reciting it from memory: