Welcome to Promise Academy!

I decided to put a name to our home school so it sounds more official. Our school name is now Promise Academy. When the boys get home I'm going to have to each design their own coat of arms for the school with some web pages I printed off, then we'll create it in Paint and PhotoPlus and then we'll figure out some way to decide which one will be our school Coat of Arms. THEN we're going to pick our school colors and mascot. I'm pretty sure I already know what the school colors are going to be....red and yellow (their two favorite colors). As for mascot, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose something like a monkey (because I'm always calling them monkeys) or a lizard (don't ask).

The way I see it is MOST schools have those things. And since we really don't know how long we'll be doing this (I'll do it through high school if I can...IF I can), we might as well make it official and fun.

I'm making a web page. A web page dedicated to unit studies. It's a work in progress, and only updated with a new unit study when I'm going to DO a new unit study, so it's kinda slow going. But I have such a hard time finding GOOD unit study information online for the topics I want to do a unit study on that I decided to just figure out the unit study on my own. At which point I also decided that I would provide a free service for those in my predicament also.

Oh sure, there is LOTS of information on the internet about unit studies. But the GOOD ones have to be ordered. And you have to have money to order them. Which I don't.SO, I decided our first unit study when the boys get back from Doug's at the beginning of August will be Creation. And I've spent the last week gathering information from the library on each day of Creation. Then I spent some time correlating subjects like Social Studies/History with the unit study. And now I am creating the web page. If you want to take a look, here it is....Promise Academy.

The Coat of Arms you'll see on the page is the one I created and only there temporarily until we get an official one chosen. And if that one is the one that is chosen I'm going to try to edit it a bit so you can't see the wings THROUGH the shield. It took forever to create that one though...lots of tracing and pasting...so it'll probably take some time.

Naming Your Homeschool

I've been doing lots of browsing lately, looking for education ideas for the boys, unit studies, everything. And I've noticed a rather abundant theme.....homeschool naming.

So I thought...wouldn't it be nice to actually have a name for our homeschool so when I sign up for things like, say, Scholastic, I have a name for the school?

But I am so NOT the creative type. Not unless it involved music. So I am drawing a blank as to what to name our homeschool. And to be honest, I'm kinda nervous about what ideas the kids will have. They are, after all, still kids. And they are, after all, boys. I have two ideas so far, but I'm not going to name our homeschool until I can get feedback from the boys, because it is, after all, THEIR school.

So tell me....have you named your homeschool? How did you come up with the name? How long did it take you?

Have you also included a mascot and school colors?

Preparing a Creation Unit Study

HO BOY! I just spent the better portion of the last six hours looking through our library's catalog looking for items to use for a Creation Unit Study. Next on the list....finding time to get to the library and go through all the resources to determine if they are truly usable for the unit study.

I even found science experiments for most of them, too. Experiments involving light (1st Day), atmosphere (1st Day), weather (2nd Day), water cycle (2nd Day), soil (3rd Day), ocean (3rd Day), the moon (4th Day), stars (4th Day), birds (5th Day), humans (6th Day). Whomever said that homeschoolers don't have enough resources available to them obviously never looked for them.

I also found a few places to go for field trips, as well as a listing of a Summer meteor shower. I think the meteor shower will be occurring during the week we will be studying Day 3 of Creation, but that is okay. Nobody said it had to be done during the appropriate week. It'd be a good way to lead them into Day 4 of Creation.

I also found books about Sabbath, resources on calendars throughout the ages (to show that today's Saturday is accurately the historical Creation Sabbath), Bible studies explaining how Sabbath is still to be THE Day of Rest as commissioned in the Bible (in case you haven't realized it yet, we are Bible Sabbath-keeping homeschoolers), as well as historical observations on how and why most Christians observe Sunday, special activities to do to prepare for Sabbath, as well as special activities to prepare for the close of the Sabbath.

I also have books and articles and videos discussing a literal 7-day Creation, books and videos describing how Creation and Science complement each other, and that microevolution IS Biblical.

Basically, I have at my fingertips an ARSENAL of information just WAITING to be studied. I'll post links to everything as soon as I get it all organized and decide exactly what I'm going to be using. I have so many resources documented right now that if I don't narrow it down, it will definitely be longer than a seven week unit study.

Now I need to purchase notebooks for journalling, art pads, and scrapbooks for our modified lapbooks. But I have until the beginning of August to get everything together, so I have time. As for the library items...I'll be getting three weeks worth of curriculum at a time. I'll get the first three weeks at once, then when I'm done with week one I'll take that back and get week four. When I'm done with week two I'll take that back and get week five. And so on. If I could figure out which items check out for how long, I could probably get more at a time and just renew them. Most items you can renew twice, and each renewal is another 21 days. So essentially I could have one book for 63 days. But not all items are like that, and I'm still new to this library system here so I haven't figured out those details yet.

The ignorance of anti-homeschoolers

I came across an article yesterday written by a woman who is EXTREMELY anti-homeschooling. The problem with her views is that she is completely ignorant about homeschooling, and only based her opinion on common misconceptions of homeschoolers, or on a random few homeschoolers she knows.

Here is the article.

She also has a blog here at blogspot. She provided the link in the comments in the article. Being the ever curious person I am, I checked it out. It's basically the article, only in more detail. MUCH more detail. Much more IGNORANT detail.

Here is the blog, if you feel like reading it and inserting your own two cents about the subject...or her ignorance.

I am just thoroughly disgusted at her ignorance and lack of understanding. I can't even compile my thoughts about her into an editorial because I am so angered by her ignorance my thoughts may come out as expletives. I have no patience for people who refuse to actually educate themselves on a subject before writing an article about that subject.

Ooh boy!

I'm not sure I'm cut out for the lapbooking thing. We're trying, and it has potential to be a good choice, but I'm not a scrap-booking kind of person unless the format is already laid out for me. I'm not doing such a good job at figuring out what to add to the WWII lapbook. I think this lapbooking thing works best for those who ARE scrapbooking type people. I'm not giving up on it, because it HAS caused the homeschooling to be a bit more laid back and not all rushy-rush.

They've been watching videos, that they seem to be enjoying (and I've told them that if the videos get too much to let me know and we'll turn it off...which they did when watching one about a Jewish man returning home after WWII to Germany, it got a little too detailed on the details of what the Jews went through...more than what my kids were ready to handle). Next week we'll be talking about the Japanese side of WWII, which they seem to be more excited about, but only for the Pearl Harbor aspects. Not sure why, but whatever. I think it might have something to do with the planes and the boats, because that seems to be where they got most excited on the German side of WWII. We'll see.

I do know that they're acting out battles when they play outside. Which causes me to PRAY that we get to Heaven before either one of them are old enough to join the military...or be drafted. Micheal already feels drawn to the recruiting centers every time we pass one. And he loves camoflauge...he'd wear it to church if he could. Of course, it doesn't help that the only games Mike really plays on his XBox are military type games.

So a month or so ago I put in a request to the Freecycle networks for an overhead projector. I figured it would be easier than trying to use the dry-erase board to teach lessons. I didn't get the overhead, but someone responded to me telling me they had a slide projector and some slides I could have if I wanted them. So I told her sure. Well, last week she finally made it into town and brought them with her. I finally got them organized onto a shelf. There's something for just about everything in there. From Health and Wellness to History to Science. We finally figured out how to load the projector. We'll be using it probably weekly for quite a while, especially considering that each specific topic has about three or four different slide shows to go with it.

More changes

I'm getting seriously burned out with the way I've been doing the homeschooling thing. I have a newfound respect for teachers who do this every day. Making lesson plans every week, printing out documents needed every day. It's no wonder I can't sleep.

Another homeschooling mom, World of Discovery, suggested doing unit studies and lapbooking. So I did some research. Find the right website, and they have the lesson plan all done out for you, all you need to do is get the book for the unit study and the supplies for the lapbook.

Next week, we start a unit study on America's White Table by Margot Theis Raven. Technically it's for Veteran's Day, but that's all the way in September. So since we have Memorial Day coming up, I thought it would be a good lesson for then, too, with a little tweaking.

I did have to do SOME extra planning additions, but that's okay. It's not ALOT. Next week we start on that book, plus learning about WWII. We'll be doing a lapbook for WWII as well, and I just got back from The Dollar Store with purchases of poster board, scissors, and a few other things. Yesterday we went to the library to get books and videos about WWII. I printed out resources like Germany's flag, Japan's flag, Israeli flag (for the Jewish aspect of it), and America's flag (starting with the original one first, next week sometime we'll do the current American flag), as well as georgaphical information on the primary countries discussed in WWII (mostly Germany, Japan, and the U.S., with a little Russia thrown in).

Yeah, I did some tweaking of it, but I used the base plan for my inspiration on the extras. The great thing about this is that a proper unit study can take at least five weeks to do. I've planned this one out to six (each week studying a different war), with the sixth week being special projects related to the lessons (like interviewing a Vet from WWII or finding an Aushwitz survivor to interview or getting together a care package for our current troops overseas). And once this unit study is done, it will be time for them to take their Summer Vacation with their Dad, which will give me six weeks to get a new unit study chosen and new supplies for a new lapbook.

Hopefully this will alleviate at least SOME of stress over getting things done and ready. We shall see.

Thinking about changing their schedule.

I'm thinking about changing the boys' homeschool schedule up a bit again. We just have to find what works best for us, and so far, multiple subjects in one day is too overwhelming...to both them AND me. lol That's the beauty of homeschooling. It's not "public school at home" unless you want it to be, otherwise you can set your schedule how you want it set. And in our case, one subject per day might be the best. At least until the boys get settled into it better. That way we won't feel rushed, and I won't feel like we're falling behind if they go slower than anticipated.

I don't know. We're going to give it a shot for a while, see if it works. If it doesn't, we'll change the schedule again. I'm actually almost tempted to just let them start a Summer Vacation already, but at the same time I'm afraid they'd forget evrything they've already learned thus far. We'll see. I may end up having to do two different schedules to accommodate each of the boys' needs. Which is fine. As long as I can figure out what each of them needs.

URGENT PRAYER REQUEST

I got this prayer request in my email from one of my homeschooling groups. If you're the praying kind, please keep this one in your prayers.

(BTW, the last time I asked for a prayer request was about a boy who was assaulted at school and had a broken neck. His neck wasn't broken, he was fine, just told to take it easy for a couple of weeks. The perp is being charged with aggravated assault)

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I have an urgent prayer request. My very close friend's nephew was shot in the face this morning. He is currently in the Critical Care Unit. Apparently he was shot in the mouth and has a crack in the skull. Because of the nature of the crime, the hospital is unable to give out much information. My friend's brother just arrived to the hospital (it is his son who was shot) and was in court all day, so he doesn't really know what is going on either. We will find out more in a little bit and I will update you all...Please, please, please keep him in your prayers...

Please pray that he heals and no changes for the worse...

His name is Deshawn Dyre