I would like to introduce...

Gunny, Rosie, and Gene.

J.T. did all the naming. Gunny is after R. Lee Ermey (J.T.'s a huge Mail Call fan) and Rosie as in Rosie the Riveter. Gene is the canary and we don't know what sex it is. For now, "he's" Gene as in Gene Simmons (yep, J.T.'s a KISS fan too lol) but if he turns out to be a she, we'll switch it to Jean.

Mystery Food

Yesterday, J.T. and I did grocery shopping at Sav-a-Lot.

In the checkout line, J.T. spied a table full of discounted food. Some of this food was dented cans and cans missing labels. He was very intrigued by the label-free cans and asked if he could get one. I figured why not. It was most likely a vegetable and we like just about all of 'em.

After a few more minutes of picking through the cans, he found a short round one without a label.

JT: "Look, Mom, it's probably tuna or canned chicken!"
Me: "Hmm"
JT: "Can we get it?" "It's only 20 cents!"
Me: *sigh* "Fine." "But no more mystery food!"

After getting home and getting all the groceries put away I started pulling out lunch ingredients. We were having tuna sandwiches with celery and peanut butter. J.T. excitedly came in and presented the short little can that he was convinced was tuna and wanted me to open it. I shook the can and it didn't sound like tuna. So I looked at the bright orange sticker on top. It said: Label Missing
.20
CAT FOOD

Yes, in big, bold letters like that. CAT FOOD.

Me: "Didn't you READ the label?"
JT: *cackling hysterically* "What if you would have eaten it!?"
Me: "I would have realized it was cat food before I ate it!"

No, we don't have a cat. Yes, Baby would have probably liked the cat food. But, I just gave it to the neighbor's outside cat or whatever other stray cat might have wandered over to eat it.

Note to self: Check the labels of things J.T. wants to buy.

Poodle Vs. Bigfoot

Thought I might have a really amazing YouTube video to support my title? Nah. Not really.

This afternoon, we were supposed to go to the library to learn about Bigfoot. Well we showed up, but he didn't. He had strep throat. Okay, not really. But the members of the Ohio Bigfoot Research Team had strep throat so they couldn't come do their presentation. I really hope they reschedule. They're supposed to bring some slides and maybe video and footprint casts. Should be fun. And a bit nightmare inducing for me. Since they couldn't be there, the library gave us bigfoot souvenirs. Which were simply a square of faux fur material.

J.T. and I brought ours in and Baby fell in love! She HAD to have the bigfoot fur. Had to!

She didn't want to play with it like a stuffed toy. She wanted to lay and chew on it and threaten to kill anyone that came near her. It's not real animal fur, I swear. I don't know what her fascination is.

In other news...when we picked up J.T.'s PS3, I told him he couldn't play it until he let me take a picture of him with it. This is what he gave me.


Praying to the Sony gods. Yes, he thought he was hilarious.

Late November Update

We have been schooling, honestly! I just haven't been updating :-p

We're continuing with Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows for reading. On chapter 8 or 9 I believe. I can't wait until the end of the book so....
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*SPOILER ALERT*
*
*
*
*
*
I can say "I told you so!" to J.T. about Snape not being evil. Heehee.

Our last and current chapter in History deals with slavery in early America. It's quite interesting because, for now, it is focusing on *how* slavery got started. The conditions that made America and England able to enslave Africans and why we didn't try to do the same to the Native Americans...and is also getting some into intentured servitude of whites in America. I think the whys and hows of history are very important to learn to help prevent similar mistakes in the future.

Today's Science was a Nova program on PBS. I believe it was called "Master of the Ants" and showed a tribe of people who use a breed of ants to fight termites when they have an infestation. I only half listened while J.T. watched, but it sounded pretty interesting.

In English...we're learning personal correspondence. We just finished "Thank You" letters today. Now I need J.T. to get something so I can make him send out a thank you note. LOL


On a Mom note, I'm doing a homemade holiday this year. I've made dog biscuits for all the doggies that belong to the families on my list and my mom's dog is also getting a couple of handmade toys...complete with squeakies inside ;-) I'm also doing popcorn balls for everyone and sewing some gifts...already sent my grandma's box to her and my mom and her husband's box will go next. So, other than schooling, that's what I've been amusing myself with.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful November!

Mmm...Chocolate...

Check out this contest to win a theobromine molecule t-shirt. And, while you're there, look around a bit. Fun blog! Added to my "blogs to read" list ;-)

History!

And this should end my curriculum posts. Right? If not, let's just pretend like it does, 'kay?

We own our history book...used of course ;-) because our library didn't have it and I knew for sure this is what I wanted for history this year. Last year, J.T. focused on ancient history...mostly roman times. This year, I wanted to do some American history. But real American history, not the stuff they teach in public schools.

The book we're using is A People's History of the United States of America by Howard Zinn. I use the abridged teaching edition.

This is actually a book that is used mostly in college classrooms, but I find that it's quite easy to teach from. I don't mean that J.T. is some amazing whiz kid at history, we just read each chapter together and it's not hard to understand. Now...the questions at the end of the chapter are a bit advanced so I pick and choose there and/or just do my own comprehension questions.

Zinn tries, with his book, to present history from a real person's POV rather than the leaders and heroes that other books generally focus on. Such as talking about the cultures Columbus destroyed rather than his "heroic" exploits.

With J.T.'s vacation break, we haven't gotten very far into the book yet, but already J.T. was disgusted with Columbus Day talk this year ;-)

I don't want to necessarily teach against everyone who is generally considered an American icon, or try to show that general American history knowledge is completely wrong (because not all of it is) but I do want J.T. to realize that when progress happens it's generally at the expense of someone or something...and to be aware of those affected negatively as well as being aware of positive results.

It's a pretty intense book and I haven't figured out yet if we'll complete it this year, but it is a very interesting book to delve into...even to just read for your own knowledge if not teaching from it. I also like that there are gobs of other programs, movies and books to compare and contrast with.

I think with History that pretty much sums up what we're using for curriculum this year. There is so much learning that J.T. does just on his own and not as "official" school stuff...I just have to get better at recognizing it in a way that the school board can understand.

Another Library Essay Update

Tonight was the award ceremony/pizza party for the winners and honorable mentions (that sounds like underwear for some reason) from the local library's essay contest.

They had a dorky dude dressed funny to sing some songs while everyone came in and sat down. I'm sure he amused the younger children. My 13 year old? Not so much :-p J.T. said he felt embarassed like he was the oldest kid there (he wasn't, actually, he just LOOKS it). I told him not to worry. One of the first place winners (there were two) was a woman who wrote her essay about her grandchildren. I'm sure she loves her library card and all and it's great she raised her family to value the library. Also, there was no age restriction on the contest. Still when the only adult wins one of the spiffy new blue bikes? Okay, whatever, I'm sure it was very fair.

Anyhow, before I get too snarky ;-)



This is J.T. after recieving his award. Being a kid, he didn't realize that when it was handed to him, he needed to be facing me so I can snap a pic.

And this is the award he received. They even framed it :)

That's all for tonight...not feeling great. Will post more when I get some sleep ;-)

The Pumpkin House

Happy Halloween! Gotta say that before it's over!
Tonight, J.T. and I went with some friends and their daughters to "The Pumpkin House". I found a 2006 write up about it HERE which includes better pics than I can take But, never fear, I did remember my camera, so here's some pics for ya!

There were so many people, that it was really hard to try to get any pics of the house itself...it has pumpkins all around, from top to bottom. Here's one pic:

And here's the tippy top of the house...those aren't orange lights, they're lighted jack-o-lanterns:

There are bleachers of pumpkins allllll around the property. Here's one line o' pumpkins:

And another:

And a pumpkin man:

A soda jerk:



They had quite a few religious pumpkins...like Noah's Ark and all the animals:



And this section...I thought it was Jesus (or maybe Eric Clapton?) being attacked by two vampires. Which would have been pretty cool. But, I was informed that the vampires are supposed to be angels:



They had a big wall 'o pumpkins that were synchronized to music...you can see when I snapped the pic, only certain ones were lit up:




There were quite a few college teams, local teams, NFL teams, and state themes. This WV one even had a bear inside:

Another group of pumpkins. J.T. liked the Mr. Peanut guy in the middle:

They had a "cat" theme for one section. If you look toward the lower left part of the pic, though, you can see Plankton from Spongebob!

There were even pumpkins watching from the trees:

It was very neat to see. Personally, my pumpkins would have been much creepier, but that's okay :-p

Afterwards, we were treated to an ice cream stop at Wendy's. J.T. had a chocolate Frosty and I had a chocolate Frosty float with Dr. Pepper. Mmmmmm!!!

English/Literature/Etc.

So, shall we move on?

English/Language/Grammar...whatever you want to call it.

Last year we used the PS textbook. It was okay. Informative but B-O-R-I-N-G.

This year, as you know from an earlier post, J.T.'s first English assignment was an essay for a library contest "What My Library Card Means To Me". I'm happy to announce that we received word just today that the essays had been judged and J.T. won an honorable mention :) J.T. is invited to a pizza party/award ceremony Nov. 5th for some free chow and to be awarded his honorable mention. We are going, of course, and I will do the mom thing and take pictures! I just need someone to remind me to take my camera because I always forget it.

I have a library book ready to continue with English. It is Extraordinary Emails, Letters, and Resumes by Marc Tyler Nobleman. It's time for J.T. to learn about different types of correspondence and I like that this book includes emails in that. We will probably skip doing resumes for a few years. While learning about and writing different types of correspondence, spelling and grammar happens naturally.

I haven't decided yet what we'll do after we finish with correspondence. I think English is learned best with practical applications...figuring out things that you might want to do "in real life" and why it's important to learn how to do that correctly.

For Literature, J.T. always picks out what he wants to read. He is a reluctant reader, so it's important that I don't force him to read something he might not be interested in when it's reading that is independent of other subjects. At the start of this year, he read some Stephen King short stories and has now moved onto Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To insure comprehension and to help prepare J.T. for tests he may take in the future, for each short story I either have him answer a few questions about the story or have him come up with questions to ask me. For Harry Potter, we'll probably do that every few chapters. And for all that he reads, J.T. always orally summarizes what he read each day.

What now? Oh, spelling. I am very nonchalant about J.T.'s spelling. Spelling came easily and naturally to me when I was in school, but it never has for J.T. We struggled every single week he was in public school. I would drill him on his spelling words, he would spell them correctly, and 20 minutes later would have forgotten how to spell every single word. I do give spelling "tests" to keep J.T. practicing spelling correctly. Each week I pick out ten words from whatever he is reading for literature. He has a pretest to see if he knows any of the words already (almost always the answer is "no" lol) and any words he misses he copies three times. The next day he practices them orally or does a word search. After that, he writes each word in a sentence and copies missed words a few times in cursive (to get some cursive practice in too). On test day, we review orally right before the test. The test is *not* me saying the word and him writing it...we would never be able to progress that way. Instead each word is in a sentence and I have two types of questions...he either picks the correct spelling with multiple choice or he has to decide if the spelling word in the sentence is spelled correctly or incorrectly. If he misses any test questions, those words get moved to the next week's list and that continues until he gets them right. But, like I said, I don't put much emphasis on spelling. There are plenty of bad spellers out there and it doesn't negatively affect them. There's always spell check (though not the best choice) and looking up correct spellings and, as an adult, how often do we have to spell words correctly on the spot without a chance to look them up?

Last year, we started a typing program that is really fun and easy: Dance Mat Typing and we need to get back into that this year. I'd also like J.T. to start a second language, it just seems there's so much "English" stuff to do that I don't want to overwhelm him with subjects.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! Tomorrow will be History.

And Now ~ Science

To start off the year, J.T. and I read a library book The Birth of the Earth by Jacqui Bailey and Matthew Lilly. A small, easy-to-read-in-one-sitting book. We chose this book because we've read and watched so many scientific theories about the beginning of the Earth that it was nice to have a compact, concise explanation to get us started with this year's Science.

And then we moved onto our "real" science book for the first part of the year. It is also a library find. It's one of the Eyewitness Science series titled Evolution. I really like this book because it's chock-full of information...from people of the time, timelines, types of animals and fossils, etc...but is still easy to read. We read about half the book then had a few days of review and a test before J.T. left on his "working vacation".

I should probably explain our tests and grading. I don't do grades. I don't see the point. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that J.T. does a subject or concept until he gets it, so he'd eventually get As on everything. The reviews and testing are mostly because we're so brainwashed by the way public schooling happens that it just feels "right" to have a conclusion for each chapter or section of a subject. And J.T. likes the casual way we do tests...if the tests caused anxiety we wouldn't do them at all. He gets a kick out of showing off what he knows though ;-)

Back to Science. We'll finish up this book on Evolution and head back to the library to figure out what we want to learn next. J.T. is torn between anatomy and learning more mechanical science. He has been dying to dissect a frog and I'm hoping that he'll be satisfied with a frog dissection CD-ROM.

We also use tons of TV programs and DVDs for science. There's so much good stuff out there! I bet J.T. watches three times as many programs that could be considered science than I actually keep track of. With library DVDs, the Discovery channel, the Science channel, National Geographic, and PBS we could probably do nothing but programs for science. The only problem is how it skips around from the different branches of science.

This year I simply let J.T. lead the way and pick out books that looked "cool" at the library. For Math, there are certain concepts he needs to learn in more or less a specific order. But, for just about everything else, he'll naturally learn best when he's picked out subjects that interest him. And with all the great websites, library options, and tv programs, I have yet to see a need for an actual science curriculum.

Back to Curriculum ~ Math

Okay, the kiddo is home so it's time for my lazy non-blogging to stop!

Back to curriculum. More specifically, this year's curriculum.

Let's start with Math. Yuck! Okay, as "mom-teacher" I'm not supposed to say that! But Math has always been a problem for me and, so, not an easy subject for me to know how to help J.T. learn.

Last year, we tried the public school math book. What a joke! I've never been so confused. Especially without a teacher's manual to go with it. Technically, we're "supposed" to be provided with all books and workbooks that the public school kids have...so the parents should have access to the teacher's manuals. But, they always say there isn't enough and it's best to leave the public school alone as much as possible in hopes that they return the favor. Plus, I've had enough experience with my son in public schools to know that given other options, their textbooks aren't the best learning tools.

This year, after asking around for what other homeschooling families liked most, we decided to go with Saxon Math. Version 7/6 to be exact. With J.T.'s almost-month-long trip, we haven't gotten as far into the book as I would have expected so I can't make any hard judgements just yet. So far though, I like the repetition that some other families don't like. But I still feel like in the very beginning they don't provide enough instruction and explanation as to WHY you are doing things a certain way and HOW to make sure you're doing that correctly. Lots of practice problems are great for making sure J.T. grasped the concept, but do no good if the explanation isn't clear enough for you to even move onto the first practice problem.

I'd love to hear any and all math programs/curriculum/websites/computer games/etc. your family uses and what you do and don't like about those you've tried.

Another quick math issue...

J.T. has always gotten good grades in math, tested highly on math standardized tests, and never seemed to have any problems. But, I found out that his last year in school...EVEN THOUGH HE MADE THE HONOR ROLL EVERY SIX WEEKS...he was struggling all year long! He never "got" multiplying double and triple digits and being the shy boy he was, didn't ask for extra help. How he was able to move beyond that baffles me...not to mention still getting good grades. The best I can figure is that he would add, add, add, add numbers until he got an answer. How frustrating that must have been! As someone who still has fraction nightmares, I feel it is extremely important for J.T. to have complete confidence in the basics before moving on to harder concepts; so that is definitely what I'm trying to stress. And we will never, ever move on to the next concept until I'm sure he understood the last one. Just another frustrating discovery of what the public school *didn't* do for him.

J.T.'s October Trip

I know my posts just completely stalled after my last curriculum one, but that is because I haven't been an active part of J.T.'s schooling this month.

On Sept. 28, J.T. left with my mom's husband, Greg, to travel with him while Greg buys and sells used buses all over the U.S.

Since they left, they have been in OH, IN, IL, MI, KY, TN, AR, TX...and a few of those more than once. They are in OH right now. The main goal J.T. has before coming home is to be able to visit with my mom in FL for a few days. As of last night, it looked like first they might need to pick a bus in VA and take it to NJ before they can head down to FL.

Being the single mom of an only child...yeah...it's been pretty hard for me to have J.T. gone for so long. But, I'm trying to be *good mom* and not deny him such an awesome experience.

Gosh, what could J.T. possibly be learning while on such a trip? If traveling the country (well at least a small part of it LOL) and learning about buying and selling used school buses isn't real life learning, I don't guess I know what is. But, of course, the school board will insist on each little experience getting pigeon-holed into one of the 5 "big" subjects. I think having to assign every learning experience a specific subject is probably my least favorite part of homeschooling. (makes the LOSER sign at public schools)

But, anyhow, here's a rundown of some of the stuff that's J.T.'s doing while on the trip...I should have been posting this all along, because I need to remember it come portfolio time!

Naturally, J.T. has been learning U.S. Geography! He's studied at an atlas to help figure out how to get...for example...from Lima, OH to Peoria, IL. He is the navigator while traveling.

At some point during travels, Greg thought it would be good to give J.T. some agriculture facts about all the cultivated fields they were seeing along the way. J.T. called me one night and informed me of the three different types of fertilizer and how each one works differently in a field.

When J.T. and Greg go to OH, it's to a big bus yard there where Greg buys a large number of the buses he sells. J.T.'s job is to look at each bus for sale and take notes about it...the manufacturer, year, mileage, type of fuel, type of brakes, condition of tires, amount of rust, etc. He has to do this in a way that Greg can actually read his notes...which means while he's been gone, his handwriting must have improved 100% ;-) Then, when Greg gets a call from someone looking to purchase a bus, J.T. gets to go over his notes and figure out what's available that fits the needs of that particular customer.

The last time J.T. was with Greg (he's traveled with him before...just never for so long) he learned how to hook car to a tow bar to be towed behind a bus. He's expanded that now to also learn how to hook the lights up on the car. He's also learned all kinds of mechanical aspects of the buses...checking fluid levels, etc. And, last weekend, he helped fix a fan on Greg's daughter-in-law's van.

While in Indiana, Greg and J.T. visited the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum...full of vintage cars.

Last night, when J.T. phoned he was in the process of organizing around 400 receipts for Greg. "In chronological order" he informed me.

So, for the past month, I've had a break from schooling...but J.T. sure hasn't stopped learning!

Our Curriculum

One of the pushes that helped me decide to homeschool was that I learned our state requires public schools to provide homeschooling parents with public school books free of charge. I knew that I could use the internet and library as resources (the cost of complete curriculums had me worried) but I felt I needed to at least see what other 6th graders were learning. So, last year, I requested the 6th grade textbooks when I sent my notice of intent to homeschool.

We didn't use the literature or history book at all. I knew, from the history books J.T. brought home from K-5 that the public school textbooks are full of errors and omissions. Last year, we did ancient Rome all year long. I did purchase one workbook from Ebay and the rest was filled in with library books, movies, and television shows. I noticed a gap in U.S. Geography. As of 5th grade, J.T. hadn't had any. My mom purchased a set of magazines from Highlights. There is one for each state. So, we are learning each state one by one and then will move on to mapping. We also used a state geography card game I found at a dollar store. And for literature, I thought it most encouraging to let J.T. pick out what he was most interested in. For spelling, I picked each week's words from the book J.T. was reading from.

For science, we started off the year with lots and lots of Bill Nye the Science Guy DVDs from the library. The Bill Nye series rocks! We then moved to the public school textbook and used it traditionally...chapter by chapter with the review at the end. We also did some at-home experiments, made use of J.T.'s holiday-gift microscope, and supplemented with interesting Discovery, National Geographic, etc. shows.

For english, we skipped around the PS textbook, cutting out a lot of the redundancy and using it for ideas for creative writing. I let J.T. do a whole lot of his work orally. He detests writing and, while I think it's important for him to learn to write properly, I don't feel a need to try to force a love of writing on him. We also did cursive writing practice. When I was in school, from 3rd grade until High School, we were required to write in cursive. While J.T. learned cursive in 3rd grade, they were never required to use it...so he needed to be reminded of the letters. We also utilized an online typing program.

We also used the PS textbook for math. I should say we tried to use it. The textbook is completely confusing....especially without a teacher's edition to go along with it. We actually mostly felt out what J.T. hadn't completely understood in previous years and practiced that.

There was also a Health book from the school. I picked out the most interesting and least childish chapters to go over now and then throughout the year. We covered a lot of "health" with science programs.

Art was just the every day stuff J.T. would do anyhow. Drawing, painting, using clay, building with legos, decorating gifts, etc. For music we learned and listened to different genres taking turns focusing on each one and taking random songs and deciding what genre we would stick it in.

Our state requirements for end of the year assessment (we choose a portfolio option) only call for proof of Literature, English, Science, History/Geography, and Math. Portfolio reviewers don't even want to see anything outside of those subjects...so those are done on a more casual basis and less detailed records are kept.

So, our first year of homeschooling was mostly learning how J.T. learned best and what types of materials to use. While I felt the need, getting started, to see the public school text book...I was completely over that by the end of the year ;-)

Up next...our curriculum for this year!

J.T.'s Library Essay

I know I said I'd talk next about our curriculum, but first I figured I'd share the essay J.T. wrote.

Our local library is having an essay contest. Their motto is something to the effect of "We'll Show You the World" and the title of the essay contest is: What My Library Card Means To Me. Anyone can enter and there's a 250 word maximum. This essay is all J.T. I helped by going over his first draft and finding misspelled words for him to look up and by, while he was writing the second draft, saying "write neater" every so often ;-)

What My Library Card Means To Me

My library card means many things to me. It allows me to get books I need to be home schooled. It also allows me to read about fictional universes, and I can learn about other countries that I'm interested in. I can also learn about ancient history and what life was like back then.

Thanks to my library card, I enjoy learning about ancient history. Like how Hannibal crossed the Alps into Italy to try to capture Rome. I also learned about the mighty 300. Only 300 Spartans defended Greece at the Battle of Thermopylae. They stood ground against over 1 million Persians. It was also fun to read about how Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire.

My library card means many things. I most enjoy using it to travel through ancient time periods.

Home Schooling Style

If I *had* to tell you what our home schooling style was, I guess I'd say it's closest to School at Home. But without any schedule or lesson planning (I gave that up at the start of this year). I do have particular books we learn from and (usually) follow those in some kind of order and do things like review questions and tests...mostly for things to stick in a portfolio at the end of the year. I started school with visions of how I would be TEACHER and stand in front of my child, having his rapt attention, while I regaled him with the day's information in a fun and interesting format...with a big easel in front of us for me to write key points on. Uh huh. Mostly I thought it would be fun to write on one of those big easels but I can't figure out exactly why I need one or what I would put on it.

I think our schedule has the ability to be as loose as it can be partly because I'm a non-working single mom home schooling an only child. I only have to make sure that J.T. and I are schooling when we want to...without worrying about someone else's work schedule or when anyone else wants dinner, etc.

That being said, please don't spit out your Diet Coke (does everyone but me drink diet pop? do you call it pop or soda? anyhow...) when I say that we sometimes are doing school at 6 a.m. or 4 p.m. or 10 p.m. or midnight. I sometimes suffer from insomnia. I've learned (and am very thankful I have the flexibility to do this) that if I'm tired enough to go to sleep, I had better do it. And, being that I'm the teacher, J.T. pretty much sleeps when I do so that we are awake at the same time. Our first year, I started off deciding that we must get up by XX and start school by XX and take a break at XX and be finished by XX. My first big wake up was when my entire day's worth of planning turned out to be about an hour and a half of school. When you don't have to wait for an entire class to get ready, and for everyone to ask their questions, and line up and wait for everything in between...a day's worth of work doesn't equal the actual time a child spends in school. Also, neither J.T. nor I are morning people and neither one of us enjoyed school in the mornings. Near the end of that year (last year actually) we said "screw it" and started just making sure we did the necessary work each day. Who really cares *when* it gets done? If my dad were alive to read this, he'd probably have a big 'ole cow. He's the kind that thinks if you sleep in until 9 a.m., you've "wasted half the day". I say if you go to bed by 9 p.m., you're sleeping half the day away! ;-) So, anyhow, we go to bed when we go to bed and wake up when we get up. We usually start school within an hour or two of waking up and take however long it takes to get it done.

We've played around with "where" to school also. We started off at the kitchen table, but my winter village took over the table last winter and we migrated to TV trays in the living room. At the start of this year, J.T. needed a new computer desk and his old one has turned out to be perfect for a school desk in the living room. We do reading and TV/movie watching on the couch, but he does paperwork at his desk. This also helps discourage the dog from getting jealous and trying to talk one of us into holding her instead of what we are doing ;-p

So, anyhow, that's our "style" and what works for us. I imagine it will evolve as time goes on but, luckily, I'm less panicky than when we started and we'll just go with the flow.

Why We Homeschool

1. Socialization...unwanted and lack thereof. In our district, children aren't allowed to talk on the bus or in the lunchroom and rarely get more than 30 minutes of recess for an entire week. When is this socialization supposed to be happening? Also, the children in J.T.'s last class were rude, mean, and disrespectful. He wasn't being bullied, but was very uncomfortable with the way his classmates treated each other and their teacher.

2. The ability to focus on what interests J.T. Last year, he was very interested in Roman history. Rather than one chapter in a world history book, we were able to spend the entire year on Roman history. If something is difficult, we take as much time as needed. If something is boring, we move through it quickly. If something grabs J.T.'s attention, we focus on that.

3. Improper information in public school textbooks. We are doing American History this year without all the bullshit about how great people like Columbus were.

4. No need to worry about a school trying to sneak religion into a science classroom.

5. J.T. is extremely shy and intimidated by authority figures. He wouldn't ask a teacher for permission to go to the bathroom...let alone ask for help on a math question. With Mom as his teacher he knows it's okay to ask away when he doesn't understand something. We have all the time in the world and no one is going to make fun of him.

6. A million other reasons we discover every single day!

About Us

Hi everyone :)

This first post is an introduction of my family for people who may come by my page and want to know what it's all about.

My name is Cory, and online you might also see me as "HeavenLeigh123". I'm a 32 year old (as of '07) single mom to J.T. who turned 13 this summer. I also have a 7 year old poodle mix named Baby, who really does think she's a baby.

J.T. and I are originally from Ohio. We lived a few years in KY and moved here to West Virginia in the summer of 2005.

I don't currently work...I've been disabled since 2002.

I considered homeschooling for J.T. (who has always been for it) for a couple of years before decided that YES we COULD do it too! I turned in my notice to the school board before the end of the '05/'06 school year and started officially homeschooling in the fall of 2006. It's possible that J.T. and I might decide he should go back to public schooling at some point, but it doesn't look likely at this time.

I don't have a homeschool "style" to tell you about. We aren't unschoolers or using Charlotte Mason or anything specific like that. We are secular schoolers and don't use any type of religious curriculum. Other than that we basically try stuff and if it works stick with it.

I'll talk more about why we chose homeschooling (I say "we" a lot rather than "I" because I feel J.T. should definitely have a say in his future and how he learns...I discuss with him, rather than dictate how his future should be) and particular curriculum we use in another post.

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to leave me a comment to let me know you were here and give me a chance to check out your home on the web also :)