Then I tuned in to the Dave Ramsey show and heard him say the following:

“To say that all public schools are evil would be ridiculous . . . our kids went for a couple of years to a private Christian school because we were all concerned about the devil running the public school, but then we found out that the devil was there, too—turns out he is everywhere. We thought we had a protective cocoon for our kids, but if you are looking for a protective cocoon for your kids, it does not exist. You still have to parent, you still have to teach your kids. Parents have more to do with the way kids turn out than the schools do.” –Dave Ramsey

Screech helped wash the berries:

Then Buttercup mashed them (which wasn’t necessary, as I blend them in a blender. But hey–we were short on jobs, lol!)

While the jam was being made, Dizzy was grinding wheat flour to make us some loaves of bread from scratch:

All in all, a fun and educational day, but a little too good to be healthy because homemade jam+freshbaked bread=better than cake!

A Story to Help You Memorize the U.S. Presidents

(It works best if you picture every scene in your mind like a picture!)

Once upon a time, an alien came to earth from another planet. This alien was short and green and his name was Waj (1. George Washington, 2. John Adams, 3. Thomas Jefferson). Waj quickly began acting like an earthling by eating his favorite candy—M&M’s (4. James Madison, 5. James Monroe) and by putting on a very human-like baseball hat with an enormous “A” on the front (6. John Quincy Adams). While walking around looking for earth people, Waj met MICHAEL JACKSON (7. Andrew Jackson) who pulled up in a big VAN (8. Martin VanBuren) with his HAIRY SON in the front seat (9. William Henry Harrison).

The van that they were driving was like a monster truck because it had really big TIRES (10. John Tyler), but one of the tires was POKED (11. James K. Polk) by a sharp object, so they hurried and called a TAILOR (12. Zachary Taylor) to sew it up and to FILL MORE (13. Millard Filmore) air into it. This tailor used a special thread that made the tire so tough that it could never be PIERCED again (14. Franklin Pierce).

Soon everyone was celebrating the fact that the tire had been fixed, with a huge celebration that included fireworks the firing of some very big CANONS (15. James Buchanan). At this celebration, there was also a huge parade led by Abraham LINCOLN (16. Abraham Lincoln). After President Lincoln, Andrew JOHNSON (17.) went marching by, because both of the presidents named  “Johnson” came after presidents who were shot and killed.

After marching in the parade, Lincoln went downtown to apply for a GRANT (18. Ulysses S. Grant) because he wanted to buy some HAY (19. Rutheford B. Hayes) from the farmers. So, with the help of GARFIELD the cat (20. James Garfield), Lincoln went to King ARTHUR’s round table (21. Chester Arthur), and ordered tons of hay to be shipped to CLEVELAND, Ohio (22. Grover Cleveland). Lincoln also sent his HAIRY SON (23. Benjamin Harrison) to go to CLEVELAND (24. Grover Cleveland) and help him get the hay.

Unfortunately, they all messed up the hay order, and Lincoln was so angry with them that he banished them far away to Alaska, to the snowy Mount MCKINLEY (25. William McKinley). While walking up the mountain, the banished hikers saw lots of beautiful TEDDYbear roses (26. Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt). At the top of the mountain, they were struck by such an icy DRAFT (27, William Howard Taft) that they all got a shaky case of the WILLIES (28. Woodrow Wilson) and they all started turning to ice and HARDENING (29. Warren Harding) because they were so COOL (30. Calvin Coolidge). To get rid of all the ice, they used a HOOVER vacuum cleaner (31. Herbert Hoover) to blow away all the snow.

Then they all went down the mountain, passing by some more ROSE bushes (32. Franklin D. Roosevelt) but not the teddybear kind. Once they returned to the town from which they had come, they all rejoined the parade, where they saw a figure marching in line that was so tall and stately that they could tell he was a TRUE MAN (33. Harry S. Truman) and this man was easily recognized because he had enormous EYES (34. Dwight D. Eisenhower). Next to this tall man was a tiny man, about the size of a KEN doll (35. John F. Kennedy). After the ken doll came JOHNSON (36. Lyndon Johnson), because both Johnson presidents followed a president who was killed. But this Johnson was different because he had NICKS all over his face (37. Richard Nixon). All of the parade marchers boarded a large FORD truck (38. Gerald Ford) that was pulling a CART (39. James Carter) full of RAGgedy Ann and RAGgedy Andy dolls (40. Ronald Reagan). All of the dolls had been stacked up into the tall shape of a BUSH (41. George H. W. Bush) so tall that nobody could CLIp the limbs (42. William Clinton). But when their truck turned the corner too quickly, the gigantic BUSH (43. George W. Bush) collapsed, and the sound it made was an enormous BAM!! (44. Barack Obama)

Real reviews about real homeschool products by homeschool moms who know what they are talking about (and who know how to blog) and who know the sorts of questions we all want to ask about the books and programs we’ve never tried before.

This site is a must-read for homeschool moms!

My daughters have been attending a fabulous dance school that teaches dancing in a way that taps into the body’s natural ability to move with beauty and grace, rather than forcing it to fit some acrobatically challenging or dangerously joint-crunching moves (as is the case with ballet, gymnastic dance, and some other forms of dance that teach children how to manipulate the body’s natural capabilities in order to win points or earn money).

This healthy, more organic form of dancing is called the Isadora Duncan method. Here is an example:

I wish my own camera had been good enough to capture the amazing movements of my girls as they moved across the dance floor at their recital, but alas, someone else’s YouTube video will have to suffice. Here are some great stills of the girls, though:

Note the modest costumes? The lack of sparkles, spangles, and stage makeup? Yeah–it is another aspect of Isadora Duncan’s dance methods that I LOVE. It is Au Naturel in EVERY sense of the word!

And the boys?

Well, they were bored silly through the entire recital. They made poor Dad miss out on most of it, as he toted fussy toddlers around in the foyer to try to keep them quiet. Oh well–we can’t all be lovers of the arts!

Check out our most recent “Science Class” observation post–right outside our back door, in the awnings of the porch:

My oldest daughter, Prima, took these pictures, in addition to making lots of notes and diagrams in her science notebook, about the nest-building and child-rearing habits of backyard birds!

And this doesn’t even include our adventures in butterfly watching, firefly stalking, and birdhouse-observing!

For those of you who have never heard of the Onion, I should probably explain that the incredible, hilarious article about homeschool that I’m about to post here is a comic piece–meant to be funny–but one that hits so close to home that you have to laugh. And oh, how I laughed!!

The Onion’s aim is to help us laugh about current events, and while I don’t endorse them often (because their videos and articles sometimes have expletives and other un-family friendly content), I wholeheartedly endorse this article, giving it a homeschooling mom’s five star rating!

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

For other great book ideas, you can also check out Cellista’s weekly homeschool reports, which chronicle the weekly books read, assignments completed, and activities undertaken in her home school (though I’m biased in recommending this site–Cellista uses the same curriculum that I do!). Here’s a recent report from her blog:

http://cellista.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/weekly-report-21-2/

I started with just a few homeschooling families that were willing to let my children play with their children. After some playdates, outings, and homeschool activities together, we are really enjoying each other’s company, and I feel good knowing that I’m supporting an endeavor that welcomes homeschool families of ALL religions and races.

Here is a look at our recent Science Club activities:

It has been so much fun having other families to come with us to the Science museum, singing classes, library story time, and so on. The children have been much happier now that they have made some friends, and I enjoy the relaxed tone of this casual homeschool group–no committee meetings, dues, or red tape whatsoever!

By PAULA WASLEY,  The Chronicle of Higher Education

For Katelin E. Dutill, high school began as soon as she woke up each day. During her senior year she would tackle her hardest courses first, while her 20-month-old sister was still asleep. That often meant taking a math or chemistry test and then turning to the teacher’s manual to grade it, or logging on to her Advanced Placement macroeconomics course. Later she might read for her literature class while keeping one eye on her sister, or conduct Internet research for her paper on the historical accuracy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels.

This fall Ms. Dutill, who has been home-schooled since kindergarten, is experiencing a classroom for the first time, as a freshman at Cornell University. She is one of thousands of home-schoolers entering colleges and universities around the country. The home-school movement, once considered the domain of religious fundamentalists and hemp-wearing hippies, is all grown up and going off to college.

While exact numbers are hard to come by, recent estimates by the U.S. Department of Education place the home-schooled population at more than one million, or about 2 percent of the school-age population. As recently as 20 years ago, home schooling was illegal in many states. Today its students are edging toward the mainstream — and are eyed by some colleges as a promising niche market.

Meet Us Halfway

As an admissions officer at Stanford University in the 1980s, Jon Reider began fielding inquiries from home-schooled students who, he says, seemed to have the “intellectual spark” the university was looking for, but who came without the transcripts and teachers’ recommendations that admissions offices rely on. He advised those students to take steps to reassure admissions officers: Take lots of standardized tests. Get a letter of recommendation from someone not related to you. Try taking a class at a local community college.

“College admissions people are a little like insurance adjusters,” says Mr. Reider, who is now a college counselor at a San Francisco high school. “We don’t want to sell insurance to people who smoke four packs a day.”

The suggestions soon became codified as Stanford’s written policy for home-schooled applicants, earning the university the reputation as one of the first to welcome them. The policy, he says, sent a message to home-schooled students: “We take you seriously. Now meet us halfway.”

Years later, just about every college takes home-schoolers seriously, and admissions offices everywhere report increasing numbers of applications from them. In 2000, 52 percent of colleges had written policies, like Stanford’s, to evaluate home-schooled candidates, according to a study by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. By 2004, 85 percent did.

Most of those policies, specified on application forms, Web sites, and admissions brochures, are designed to get around the challenges of evaluating grades given by Mom and educational backgrounds as individual as the applicants. Many home-schooled students, like Ms. Dutill, follow accredited curricula furnished by a booming industry of home-school retailers. Other families design their own courses of study. Some students, who identify themselves as “unschoolers,” direct their own learning, according to their individual interests. Translating years of independent study into something that resembles a high-school transcript can be tricky for the home-schooled applicant — and even more challenging for the admissions officer assessing it.

“In many cases their transcript is here, there, and everywhere,” says Paul M. Cramer, vice president for enrollment at Elizabethtown College, in Pennsylvania. That’s why the college “strongly encourages” all home-schooled applicants to go to the campus for interviews, he says.

One applicant’s schooling entailed traveling the country with his family in a motor home, Mr. Cramer recalls. A stop at a Frank Lloyd Wright house became a lesson in architectural history; a detour through Ernest Hemingway’s home, in Key West, Fla., prompted a discussion of American literature. “That kind of originality and enthusiasm about what they’re learning is fun to hear,” he says.

But sifting through homemade transcripts, extensive book lists, and portfolios can be unusually time-consuming for admissions officers. Eddie K. Tallent, director of admissions at George Mason University, recently received one application that contained a page of explanation for each class listed on the transcript. “That was a bit much,” he says.

Without traditional points of comparison, like class ranking and grade-point averages, colleges tend to fall back on standardized-test scores. Many require that home-schoolers take two or more SAT 2 subject tests in addition to an SAT or ACT.

As the number of home-schoolers applying to college continues to grow, admissions offices have attempted to streamline the process. The University of Richmond, for example, has one admissions officer assigned to read all applications from home-schoolers. This year the Common Application, a format used by more than 300 colleges, added a supplement for home-schoolers, which both pleases and unsettles some home-school advocates.

“We’re not fighting to even be considered anymore,” says Howard Richman, executive director of the Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency, one of seven organizations in the state that provides accredited diplomas to home-schooled graduates. On the other hand, he says, such standardization may cost home-schoolers some of the individuality that has set them apart.

In From the Fringe

Indeed, as their numbers have swelled, the college-application process for home-schoolers increasingly mirrors that of their more conventional counterparts. A host of home-schooling guides offers advice on compiling transcripts and highlighting the advantages of home schooling in application essays. So, too, do independent consultants, who offer the same sort of college counseling that a traditional high-school guidance counselor would.

Wendy J. Bush, an independent counselor in Maryland and home-school advocate who advises about 90 home-schooled seniors per year, organizes college fairs and financial-aid workshops, furnishes students with transcripts and letters of recommendation, and even holds home-school graduation ceremonies.

The Home School Legal Defense Association publishes a ranking of colleges with “home-school-friendly” admissions policies. In online discussion groups like homeschool2college, parents swap stories about navigating the admissions process and bemoan the difficulty of representing a summer of barn building on a high-school transcript.

Many colleges that once treated home-schoolers with suspicion now reach out to them as desirable applicants.

“Home schooling often really allows students to develop a passion,” says Sabena Moretz, associate director of admissions at Richmond. “With a traditional high school, most of the time you don’t see a kid who’s gotten so excited with the history of Monticello or got themselves onto an archaeology dig.”

Recognizing that sense of passion is what led Virginia Commonwealth University to create two engineering scholarships this year for home-schoolers, says Russell Jamison, dean of the engineering school. “We were looking at the kind of engineer that we needed to produce for the 21st century,” he says, “where part of the skills are not technical, but how to collect information through guided inquiry.”

It occurred to him that home-schoolers’ inquisitive, self-directed learning style — an educational model that often gets lost in the highly structured “problem-set oriented” environment of traditional high schools, he says — was particularly well suited to engineering. The school holds an annual open house for home-schoolers to get them interested in both engineering and Virginia Commonwealth. (One thing Mr. Jamison has learned, he says, is that when you plan a home-schooling event, the whole family shows up. At this fall’s open house, he included robot-building activities for elementary-school-age siblings.)

Social Smarts

The last hurdle in the admissions process for home-schooled students is persuading colleges that they have the social smarts to get along with their traditionally educated peers.

“There is an assumption that kids who are home-schooled are strange, that their idea of having a good time is sitting in a tree,” says Mr. Reider, the college counselor.

In a 2004 study of college admissions officers’ attitudes toward home-schooled applicants, Paul Jones, a vice president and a professor of educational administration at Georgia College & State University, and Gene Gloeckner, an associate professor of education at Colorado State University at Fort Collins, found that while the majority of respondents believed that home-schoolers would perform academically as well as their peers, if not better, 35 percent expressed skepticism that home-schoolers had the social skills to cope with college.

But, argue advocates of the movement, home-schoolers are hardly the hermits they are sometimes made out to be. Home-school bands, theater groups, sports teams, even proms are common now. Home-schooled students often study together in co-ops led by parents or the students themselves.

For an increasing number of home-schoolers, community college is the entry point to a four-year institution.

Julie Boiko, a sophomore at Stanford who was home-schooled, began taking classes at her local community college at age 13 to supplement her math and science studies. “You can’t do chemistry in the kitchen,” she says.

A self-described “science geek,” Ms. Boiko says her classes at West Valley College, in California — including microbiology, anatomy, and calculus — gave her a head start on the immunology research she now conducts at Stanford. At first, she says, her mother had to keep reminding her to put her name on her midterms.

While the few experts who have tracked home-schoolers’ academic and social performance in college have found little difference between their transition and that of their peers, the perception lingers that home-schoolers start college at a social disadvantage.

That’s why Grant Mukai rarely tells classmates at Boston University that he was home-schooled from second grade through high school. “Normally I say I went to a private school,” says the sophomore, adding that in many ways, the co-op he sometimes attended at a church basement was like a very small, very private school. While most of his friends there went on to small, religious colleges, Mr. Mukai chose Boston for its urban setting and strong communications program. “It was a little weird at first,” he says of going to college, but in the end not that big a deal: “It’s not that hard to learn to sit in a classroom.”

From the issue dated October 12, 2007

http://chronicle.com, Section: Students, Volume 54, Issue 7, Page A1