Random thoughts

So, what's going on with our family? I've not been good about keeping up with blogging have I? I even wonder if anyone reads it.....

There's actually been a lot happening around here the last couple of months. I have taken pictures and hope to put them up soon. I do love looking back and seeing what has happened.

Our weeks have been busy since school started back. My three younger children have been involved in home school activities such as volley ball, String Orchestra and my 16 yr. old has been taking a weekly class on making his own violin since July.

I will try to put photos up sometime this week and write a little tid-bit about each.
Here's hoping anyway~stay tuned!

Tally Marks~Are they working???

So, we have been schooling a two weeks and I just want to give an update on how the tally marks are working. Out of the three kids, one really likes the marks each day, one says it doesn't matter one way or the other about the marks~this particular child knows what they have to do and just does it~and the last child, well, they just don't see the need to even have them.

My hubby thoughts are, what's the deal with the marks?! I think they serve a purpose. I like to see that we are getting things accomplished. I also like to see where our focus is on some subjects as apposed to others. For instance, are we spending too much time on math or history and not enough on geography only to figure out later in the year that we would need to play catch-up so that we finished all the subjects in a given year.

The question is: Will we continue with the tally marks? I know that I will with the child that really likes them at the end of each day. As for the other two kids, time will tell. I'm going to try it for the next two weeks to see.

Organization

So what are you doing to get organized this year? Or maybe you are organized already and I'm the only one left to figure all this out.
I've never been truly organized, well maybe years ago but that was YEARS ago..ha,ha.

This year I'm doing something different with the kids. Since my 16 and 14 year old are more independent in their schooling and they really do better with a list, where they know what is expected of them. I've made a list of each of their subjects that they will do for the year and put it into a bi-monthly graph for them to make tally marks beside each item that they get accomplished. They know how many tally marks they should have at the end of every two weeks. Some things I will check daily,e.g. math & grammar, others I will check at the end of each week.

Doing this will allow me to have more time with my youngest. I feel like he only has two more years before things really have to pick up for him schooling wise and I would like to spend more time doing the fun things with him before our time runs out.
Yes, schooling should be fun, but when they hit those all important high school years things change.

Anyway, here's to having a more organized year!

It has begun

This week we started back to school albeit we only did semi-school for the week. Next week, we will begin our full school days. We were busy tying up loose ends this week, getting back into the groove of things and also my hubby ordered each of the kids a new computer which they didn't arrive until yesterday. So hubby spent several hours after the computers were delivered getting them set up in the school house and ready to go~~So, Monday, we will start our official new school year.

Looking forward to a GREAT year with my three youngest children!

What will we see?~~What will we learn?~~What will we enjoy?~~What will be our magic memory moments that we will have forever?

Stay tuned :0)

Christmas too early??

So I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday because they were having a sale on lawn and garden decor. I ended up spending between $700.00 & $800.00, if you word it just right to the hubby I saved between $700.00 & $800.00, items were on sale for 1/2 price. I ended up getting 5 bakers racks, some odds and ends and 3 of the tall metal round bird cages. Two of the bird cages are Christmas presents for friends that I'm sticking back until December.

Anyhow, while shopping around Hobby Lobby on a hot~98 degree day, they already have Christmas decorations out. This just blows my mind at how early department stores are advertising Christmas sooooo early. Are you asking yourself, would I'd picked up the bird cages for presents without seeing all the Holiday decorations? Yes, I would have~I know a bargain when I see it and both my friends will enjoy their items, whether it be a brisk day in February or a smoldering hot day in July. I think it is just sad how stores are commercializing the Holiday season so much. No wonder all of us feel like we are always running behind or feeling like~oh my, Christmas is already about here~Maybe these are my own thoughts on the subject but it is time to slow down and enjoy each day as it comes. :0)

Quotes

Here are a few quotes that I came across that I hope will help us stay the course in our studies and in life.

"Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan".~Tom Landry

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there".~Will Rogers

Summer break almost over~Planning ahead

Well, only a few more weeks left before the summer break is over and I've been busy making plans for the new school year. I received my order from Rainbow Resource this week and have made plenty of trips to the bookstore purchasing material that my children will use for school. I think we moms get more excited planning it all out than the kids do. Why is that? :0)

I am really feeling like the pressure is on~I have one son that will start 11th grade this year, so it seems like we have a lot to cover in just two short years. Those two years will pass before I know it as I've already had two graduate before him. Also my youngest daughter would like to graduate at the same time. I understand why she wishes to, she is working on the same subjects/grade level as her older brother. Really though, I ask her what is the rush~It would be an odd feeling for me if she were to finish her high school years at the age of sixteen. I know she is very capable of the work. The plus side as she points out is that she would be able to devote time to receiving college credits ahead of schedule. That is a major plus~it is something that I will monitor throughout the year to make sure she stays the course without having burnout. I want learning to be enjoyable not a race or drudgery.

Anyway, back to the planning! This year I plan to incorporate more hands-on learning for my 11 year old son. He has a fascination with weather and experiments. So I purchased a couple of books on both subjects. I'm really looking forward to spending some time with him on two of the books that I got~Biology for Every Kid and Food & Nutrition For Every Kid by Janice VanCleave. I think we will have a lot of fun with those. Also, I'm excited about our Human Anatomy & Physiology subject. We will be using the note booking with this study from Apologia's Exploring Creation series. Do you every just get giddy over waiting for a book that you've ordered to arrive? That is the feeling I had waiting for this book. :0)

More later on what we will be doing this year. Back to planning!!

High School Electives

Do you ever wonder what your child should do for electives in their high school years. Home schooling in Texas has some great advantages. We are a private school and as such we can pick what curriculum that we chose. Of course we must teach reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics and a study in good citizenship to be legal. Although we have also always taught English, Math, Science and History in the all our years but in high school we get to pick some different subjects, the ones for elective classes.

Each child is different in what their interest are so our electives are based on that. My oldest daughter was very interested in herbs. She loved reading and studying about them. She planted an herb garden. One year she started with plants that we purchased but the next year she wanted to see what she could grow from seeds. She did her research on what herbs grew in our area, which ones that we would probably use in cooking and home remedies then started planting the seeds in the greenhouse. She spent many hours on this project so we decided that it would be one of her electives in high school. It is listed on her transcript as Horticulture/Herbology. She used a lot of her herbs in cooking, for facial scrubs, soothing baths and also one particular concoction for the use of bringing down fever (which I let her try on me). Anyway, she loved this project and learned a great deal from it and I believe her love of growing herbs will last for years to come.
Another elective was Medical Terminology. One of my children really enjoyed their study of Apologia Advanced Biology (Anatomy & Physiology) that she decided that she would like to go another step into learning so we purchased books on Medical Terminology. She filled an entire notebook full of research, took quiz after quiz, she just really enjoyed the subject. When I seen how much time she was putting into studying I decided that it would also be an elective.

If you happen to be in 4-H, there are many subjects that you can do to satisfy electives. Two of the subjects that are listed as electives on my middle son and youngest daughter's transcripts are Forestry and Wildlife. On each of those electives, well over 300 hours were put in each on studying and preparing for contests. They both did very well and learned a wealth of information. From the proper use of woodlands, to develop an awareness and understanding of the value of properly managed woodlands, learning a variety of trees, plants and shrubs. Learning about many different wildlife animals-what they need to survive and how to stock an area with forage for their survival. How to measure the height and circumference of trees so that they would know how many board feet there were, compass and pacing. The list just goes on and on.
My son and daughter made it up to the State level for Wildlife and in Forestry, my son made it to the State level while my daughter made it to Quad-State level. They were competing with students all the way to senior age students in high school, so yes, I am listing these as electives for each of them. They truly learned a lot from these subjects and will remember what they learned for years to come.

When picking electives for my children, I wanted to pick subjects that truly interested them, things that they really get excited about, things that I feel like they will remember and when they are grown and look back at their schooling that they won't just remember that they did the normal subjects that you find in the tradition school setting. I want them look back at their schooling years at home with a smile on their faces and a glimmer in their eyes and think~we learned some really interesting and cool stuff!

Some other subjects that we've done for electives are:
Photography
Food & Nutrition
Computer Science
Keyboarding

List of some that we will probably do in the future:
Woodworking
Ceramics
Botany
Sewing

One full year of credits

Today my son earned his 30th college credit. That's the equivalent of 1 year of college. He started taking test and online classes in October of 2009. So, in less than 5 months with some hard work on his part, he has acquired the same amount of credits as a Freshman in College would have done. I am very proud of him for his accomplishments that he has made so far!

For anyone thinking about doing college the non-traditional way with Cleps, Dantes and online classes, I encourage you to read Accelerated Distance Learning by Brad Voeller. It is a great book to help you make decisions on which path to take and how to go about it.

The traditional college (where your rear in sitting in a seat) don't really want you to know about College-level Examination Program~Clep testing~. The test save you money and time. Each college is different on how many Clep and Dantes credits they will allow you to transfer in to their college so always check with the college you plan to attend to see how many and what test are accepted beforehand.

Here is the Collegeboard site which explains Clep testing. http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html

Learning to read & write ~ Importance of

Below is a true story. It's a tragic, moving and memorable story of the reminder of the importance to learn to read and write. I read this story a couple of years ago. It has pulled on my heart every since. I can truly imagine this happening to people today. In a time where so many children are more interested in computer games, watching T.V., Ipods ~all the electronic gadgets that get their attention more than reading a book for knowledge or just for pleasure. A study conducted in 1996 reported that 8 million U.S. students in grades 4th -12th struggled to read, write and comprehend adequately.

For some reason I felt the need to share this with others, others that may not have read this story before.

My Father's Hands

by Calvin R. Worthington
Readers' Digest, 1976 May

His hands were rough and exceedingly strong. He could gently prune a fruit tree or firmly wrestle an ornery mule into harness. He could draw and saw a square with quick accuracy. He had been known to peel his knuckles upside a tough jaw. But what I remember most is the special warmth from those hands soaking through my shirt as he would take me by the shoulder and, hunkering down beside my ear, point out the glittering swoop of a blue hawk, or a rabbit asleep in its lair. They were good hands that served him well and failed him in only one thing: they never learned to write.

My father was illiterate. The number of illiterates in our country has steadily declined, but if there were only one I would be saddened, remembering my father and the pain he endured because his hands never learned to write.

He started in the first grade, where the remedy for a wrong answer was ten ruler strokes across a stretched palm. For some reason, shapes, figures, and recitations just didn't fall into the right pattern inside his six-year-old towhead. Maybe he suffered from some type of learning handicap such as dyslexia. His father took him out of school after several months and set him to a man's job on the farm.

Years later, his wife, with her fourth-grade education, would try to teach him to read. And still later I would grasp his big fist between my small hands and awkwardly help him trace the letters of his name. He submitted to the ordeal, but soon grew restless. Flexing his fingers and kneading his palms, he would declare that he had had enough and depart for a long, solitary walk.

Finally, one night when he thought no one saw, he slipped away with his son's second grade reader and labored over the words, until they became too difficult. He pressed his forehead into the pages and wept. "Jesus-Jesus-not even a child's book?" Thereafter, no amount of persuading could bring him to sit with pen and paper.

From the farm to road building and later factory work, his hands served him well. His mind was keen, his will to work unsurpassed. During World War II, he was a pipe fitter in a shipyard and installed the complicated guts of mighty fighting ships. His enthusiasm and efficiency brought an offer to become line boss-until he was handed the qualification test. His fingers could trace a path across the blueprints while his mind imagined the pipes lacing through the heart of the ship, He could recall every twist and turn of the pipes. But he couldn't read or write.

After the shipyard closed, he went into the cotton mill, where he labored at night, and stole from his sleeping hours the time required to run the farm. When the mill shut down, he went out each morning looking for work-only to return night after night and say to Mother as she fixed dinner, "They just don't want anybody who can't take their tests."

It had always been hard for him to take a stand before a man and make an X mark for his name, but the hardest moment of all was when he placed "his mark" by the name someone else had written for him, and saw another man walk away with the deed to his beloved farm. When it was over, he stood before the window and slowly turned the pen he still held in his hands-gazing, unseeing, down the mountainside. I went down to the spring house that afternoon and wept for a long while.

Eventually, he found another cotton-mill job, and we moved into a mill house village with a hundred look-alike houses. He never quite adjusted to town life. The blue of his eyes faded; the skin across his cheekbones became a little slack. But his hands kept their strength, and their warmth still soaked through when he would sit me on his lap and ask that I read to him from the Bible. He took great pride in my reading and would listen for hours as I struggled through the awkward phrases.

Once he had heard "a radio preacher" relate that the Bible said, "The man that doesn't provide for his family is worse than a thief and an infidel and will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Often he would ask me to read that part but I was never able to find it. Other times, he would sit at the kitchen table leafing through the pages as though by a miracle he might be able to read the passage should he turn to the right page. Then he would sit staring at the Bible, and I knew he was wondering if God was going to refuse him entry into heaven because his hands couldn't write.

When Mother left once for a weekend to visit her sister, Dad went to the store and returned with food for dinner while I was busy building my latest homemade wagon. After the meal he said he had a surprise for dessert, and went out to the kitchen, where I could hear him opening a can. Then everything went quiet. I went to the doorway, and saw him standing before the sink with an open can in his hand. "The picture looked just like pears," he mumbled. He walked out and sat on the back steps, and I knew he had been embarrassed before his son. The can read "Whole White Potatoes," but the picture on the label did look a great deal like pears.

I went and sat beside him, and asked if he would point out the stars. He knew where the Big Dipper and all the other stars were located, and we talked about how they got there in the first place. He kept that can on a shelf in the woodshed for a long while, and a few times I saw him turning it in his hands as if the touch of the words would teach his hands to write.

Years later, when Mom died, I tried to get him to come live with my family, but he insisted on staying in his small frame house on the edge of town with a few farm animals and a garden plot. His health was failing, and he was in and out of the hospital with several mild heart attacks. Old Doc Green saw him weekly and gave him medication, including nitroglycerin tablets to put under his tongue should he feel an attack coming on.

My last fond memory of Dad was watching as he walked across the brow of a hillside meadow, with those big, warm hands - now gnarled with age - resting on the shoulders of my two children. He stopped to point out, confidentially, a pond where he and I had swum and fished years before. That night, my family and I flew to a new job and a new home, overseas. Three weeks later, he was dead of a heart attack.

I returned alone for the funeral. Doc Green told me how sorry he was. In fact, he was bothered a bit, because he had just written Dad a new nitroglycerin prescription, and the druggist had filled it. Yet the bottle of pills had not been found on Dad's person. Doc Green felt that a pill might have kept him alive long enough to summon help.

An hour before the chapel service, I found myself standing near the edge of Dad's garden, where a neighbor had found him. In grief, I stopped to trace my fingers in the earth where a great man had reached the end of life. My hand came to rest on a half-buried brick, which I aimlessly lifted and tossed aside, before noticing underneath it the twisted and battered, yet unbroken, soft plastic bottle that had been beaten into the soft earth.

As I held the bottle of nitroglycerin pills, the scene of Dad struggling to remove the cap and in desperation trying to break the bottle with the brick flashed painfully before my eyes. With deep anguish I knew why those big, warm hands had lost in their struggle with death. For there, imprinted on the bottle cap, were the words, "Child Proof Cap - Push Down and Twist to Unlock." The druggist later confirmed that he had just started using the new safety bottle.

I knew it was not a purely rational act, but I went right downtown and bought a leather-bound pocket dictionary and a gold pen set. I bade Dad good-bye by placing them in those big old hands, once so warm, which had lived so well, but had never learned to write.

Let it Snow

What an image for mid February in Texas. Snow on freshly budding out Red Maple trees. Yesterday we awoke to about 3" of snow on the ground. My daughter said "It looked like a blanket of Heaven over our yard". It was a beautiful site to see although very unusual for this part of Texas. As beautiful as it is, I am so looking forward to the Springtime. Until then, I will just enjoy the view from inside the windowpanes.

Meet Wilson! This is the snowman that the kids built. He is just too cute!

College Trigonometry

My 17 yr old son started College Trigonometry this week. I am so glad that he enjoys math so much. It has always been one of his favorite subjects which is great since as of now his plans are to go into an engineering field, so the more math that he has is all the better. When he finishes Trig he will have 3 more college credits, 12 that will be math credits.

Here is a great Trigonometry site for anyone interested. http://www.clarku.edu/~djoyce/trig/

A little tid-bit of info to help in Trig. Remember SOH CAH TOA.

Sine sin =opposite/hypotenuse (SOH)
Cosine cos=adjacent/hypotenuse (CAH)
Tangent tan=opposite/adjacent (TOA)
Just remembering that will help so much :0)

I am enjoying the fact that he is able to complete subjects for college at home. It is saving time because he can finish a subject in less time and is also a huge money saver. Which is a big plus!

Happy New Year & Reflections on the past year

Happy New Year--2010

As the year has come to a close, I thought it would be nice to reflect on some of 2009 high-lights.
Some of the majors things that happened in the past year were:

My oldest graduating from home school high school.
My three youngest children, ages 10,12,14, making State Competition in Forestry in 4-H.
Two of my children making State Competition in Wildlife, the 12 & 14 yr. old. Traveling to Sinton, Tx.
My 12 year old daughter making Quad-State Competition in Forestry. Traveling to Beavers Bend State Park, OK. for competition.
My 17 yr. old acquiring 22 college credits while still in high school.
My oldest joining the service, she left on December 29th to travel out of state for basic training.

We have had a wonderful year and were blessed many times over. I look forward to what 2010 has in store for us. Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!!