Doesn’t matter if you’re only thinking of homeschooling, just beginning you home education journey, are deep in the trenches doing high school from home, or a long time veteran who has even graduated some of your kids from home school, the Carnival of Homeschooling is the place to be. Whatever stage you’re at, you’re sure to find some good reading. Boy, we homeschoolers are a talented lot .

This week the Carnival of Homeschooling is being hosted by Andrea from the Atlanta Homeschooling Examiner; the theme is Spring Fever. Good stuff, but bring your own popcorn – seems her popcorn machine is broken

“Hey Mom. Did I take chemistry?”
“Yes, honey, you took it last year.”
“I did? Are you sure, ’cause I don’t remember it”

The above conversation took place while a friend’s daughter, who did high school from home, was filling out a lengthy college application. The mom and I chuckled as she related it to me saying, “Guess that was time well spent.”

We all know that not everything in life is fun and we do well to impart this truth to our kids as we home school them. No matter how much we may enjoy something, there will be aspects of it that we don’t enjoy, but, oh well…that’s life!

Having said that, let’s consider the other side of the coin – courses designed or chosen specifically because they appeal to the interest(s) of our child. After all isn’t the freedom to decide what to study one of the major advantages to home education!?

Read the rest of this entry »

Ahhh….OK now….ah what was I doing? . . . . . Oh, I remember, I was getting ready to write a post about the brick wall that has hit our home school. No kidding, there we were working diligently on homeschooling and WHAM! -  it jumped right in front of us.

Seriously, five plus years into home educating and this is the first time I’ve felt it would be easier to trudge a mile in waist deep mud than finish assignments or anything for that matter. Brand new experience and I’m not liking it so much. We are all so ready for a break, a long, long as in really, really long. But it seems soooo far away, especially now with that brick wall in the way! Sigh. Bigger sigh.

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday, I read a post on Examiner.com entitled “Public School Enrollment Increasing Due to Economic Crisis“. Is this true? I don’t know.

Certainly no one can argue that money-wise things have gotten tough and will likely get tougher! Many people, if not fearful, are concerned, very concerned about the economy’s effect on their family and lifestyle. Many  have begun tightening and re-tightening their belts. Tough choices are being made.

The author, in the above mentioned post, wrote that many homeschoolers are considering putting their kids back into public school because the cost of home school is too expensive in today’s economic crisis. She stated she personally knew homeschoolers who are considering public school as an option in order to cut household expenses and to allow the homeschooling parent to get a job to further ease the financial pressures.

For any of you who may be considering the tough choice of putting your children in public school for financial reasons, may I encourage you to take your time in making this decision.

1. Pray. Ask God to show you His desires. Ask Him to reveal to you ways you can either increase your income or decrease your household outflow. Ask Him to show you creative ways to homeschool and to bring others alongside.
2. Consider why you began homeschooling in the first place and carefully, prayerfully reconsider those reasons. Have any of them changed? My guess is, if anything, they have grown stronger. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about money and the need for us to be teaching our high school students how to handle finances responsibly. Knowing how to handle money wisely will make a huge difference in their lives when they graduate high school and are on their own in the real world.

Let me side-track for a moment….if you read Teaching Teens Real Life Money Skills: What We’re Doing, you’ll remember by “rant” about one of my pet peeves regarding young people not knowing how to make change. Well, it happened again last night. The bill was $5.81. I handed the cashier $6. She entered it into the register and it showed her she needed to give me .19 cents in change. Then… I did the unthinkable, I said, “Oh wait, I have a penny” and held it out. She looked at the register, said “Ah”, “Ah”…. “I can’t take it because I’ve already entered it into the computer and it shows me how much change to give you.” I just sighed and took my .19 cents. My grandkids were with me and were surprised. My grandson, with his sweet, sensitive heart, said “Maybe she’s just tired.” Yeah, maybe…

OK, end of rant and back to the topic at hand: our kids need to know how to handle money, especially in this economy.  It’s part of life, a huge part. To help you with this, Read the rest of this entry »

Step right up, Ladies and Gentlemen and check out the latest Carnival of Homeschooling: The “Adventure” Edition, which went live this morning. This carnival is being hosted by, Wolf & Tiffany Holley on their “Life on the Road” blog. Thanks for all your work!

I’ve managed to steal a few minutes to check out some of the submissions & them are great! There are some very talented people in the homeschool community, but of course, we already knew that didn’t we

Don’t miss the opportunity to learn about new like-minded  homeschooling bloggers and make some new online friends.

See you at the carnival!

More and more, students, including homeschoolers, are using the internet for research. However, just because something is on a website does not mean it’s credible, reliable, or even true. For a few dollars, anyone can put up a website up, saying anything they want about any subject.

Netcraft, an internet research firm, reported in January 2009, that there are nearly 188 million websites, with almost 75 million of them active! Let’s look at these big numbers from a different angle: if you were to spend one minute, 365 days, 24/7 on each active website, it would take you nearly 143 years to visit all of them! Whoa!!!

Okay… we have nearly 75 million active websites, who is responsible for evaluating the reliabilty and accuracy of online content? Simply put, you are. There are no “Internet Police” monitoring websites and their content.  It’s up to you, the internet user.

The question is, how do we teach our home educated kids to whether or not a website is a reliable and trustworthy internet resource?

Helpful tips to determine if a website is a reliable resource: Read the rest of this entry »