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

Struggling

I hope no one is overly interested in my lesson plans, because I can't guarantee they'll be posted any time soon. I've been really slacking in the organization department. And while some of you might try to tell me to just relax and not worry about it, what you don't understand is that I HAVE to be organized in some aspects of my life or I feel like it's falling apart. And this would be one of those areas.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at it's worst.

The next few weeks will probably be rather slow for this blog. We're coming up on what would be my daughter's six month birthday had she lived, and what is my first Mother's Day without her. And try as I might to not let it get me too down, depression slips in when you least expect it and takes over. Which is probably why my organization is slacking.

I'll be slowly updating the Archive blog to this one, probably doing one subject at a time for each week I'm behind in it. So it'll be a while before it's fully updated, but I'll get there. Slowly. Not like my lesson plans are intensive anyway, lol. You could probably do a better job than me anyway.

I'm still rearranging the schedule. I've already changed the schedule from doing History and Science every other day, to doing History for two weeks then Science for two weeks. But in doing Ancient Egypt, I came to realize that two weeks just isn't long enough for some topics. My boys were very interested in the pyramids, and two weeks didn't give us near enough time to cover all they wanted to know. So I may just relax on that part of the schedule and instead of setting a length of time limit, I'll just let the topic take us where it wants to go. If that means going a full month or month and a half on one topic in the same subject, then so be it. Whatever it takes for my boys to enjoy learning.

So far, so good.

Now we're doing Science. Earthquakes, to be more specific. I'm struggling to find GOOD quality information on Earthquakes that will interest them enough to pay attention. We got some books from the library today, but I question how interesting they really are. And my boys seem to learn better by having visual AND audio combined, which means videos. And the DVD's at the library I wanted to get were either grabbed before we got to them, or are located at another library in the county. I put in requests for them, but sometimes they can take as long as 10 days or more to get to my library. We'll just have to wait and see, I guess. In the meantime, there's always YouTube.

How do you do it?

How do you keep from stringing them up by their toenails? Or taping them to the wall with duct tape?

How do you keep from banging your own head against the wall day after day?

I know they're boys. I know they're kids. I get that. And young boys have the nature of ADHD, whether they HAVE ADHD or not.

Some days I can handle this. Other days (like today), not so much.

And this time it's not just Micheal. This time it's Christopher, too.

Neither one of them is concentrating on themselves. When one of them needs help with a problem, the other one has to sit there and watch. As if that weren't bad enough, the one doing the watching chuckles at the one needing the help if the question is something the one doing the watching already knows and apparently thinks that everyone should know it.

And then there's the ever present "I don't understand the question" (the question being [fill in the missing number] 1500-____=500)...FROM MY 4TH/5TH GRADER....after having done these sorts of equations for AT LEAST the last three weeks and could do them practically with his eyes shut from the start.

And it seems we have all of a sudden forgotten how to do basic addition. 2+2 is confounding today and in order to solve that problem one absolutely MUST use a calculator.

Does sunshine cause the brain to malfunction? Something like....Sunshine Alzheimers? Because that's what it looks like is going on here. The sun comes out and all of a sudden everything is forgotten.

And it doesn't help them any that Mommy is having an especially OCD sort of day and everything must be done precisely as planned in exactly the manner planned. Yes, I have OCD. Sometimes it's a problem, sometimes it's not. Some days I'm normal (ha ha) and spontaneous and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, but some days (like today) I'm very by-the-book scheduled. When it comes to housecleaning, it's great. When it comes to homeschooling...not so much.