Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!
Go to THIS PAGE to find the nominations and to eventually vote. Voting is April 9-15, 2007.
I’m listing this not because I will vote, I don’t know most of these people, but I am listing it as I think some of these people might be a good resource in the future.
This person has posted a way to get into a Homeschool conference for free.
From her site:
Want To Go To Your Homeschool Convention for FREE? This is a wonderful opportunity! If you have a homeschool convention coming up that you would like to attend but your budget is a little tight, TOS may be able to help. Want TOS to pay your way in?
TOS will pay for your full entry to the convention if you are willing to pick up business cards from the speakers and vendors at the convention. Once TOS gets your package and short written report, you’ll be reimbursed for your full entry.
Contact Gena first and make arrangements because TOS doesn’t want to pay for more than one person’s entry per conference. Anyone interested can email Gena at gena@tosmag.com and put CONFERENCE in the subject line.
Help get the word out! The more conferences covered the better.
Renee in Kingville sent me these links
Getting started in Homeschool.
This way I keep the links in case I lose the email! 🙂
Rather than keeping these in my in-box, I thought I’d post the last few Friday Freebies from The Old Schoolhouse here.
Superkids Math Work Sheet Creator – This is a site that allows a person to create their own math sheets.
Busy Teachers Cafe is a resource place for k-6.
Then there is Silly books. This is a “a cute educational website for the younger ones”. It “has more than 60 animated read aloud story books, story songs, fine art games, puzzles and more that help kids learn to read”.
a St. Patrick’s day unit study by knowledge quest.
Plus Free Learning Resources over at Googol Learning.
And a Valentine’s Day Craft from Lighthome Publishers. It’s in PDF format.
My thanks to Sara over at the Hemmeke blog for this link. apparently her daughter loves to make paper dolls, and she is able to go to making Friends Paper Dolls. In Sara’s words
I like these because I can print everything in black and white outlines, allowing my daughter to color and decorate them as she wishes. They are big, easy to handle and cut, and not at all the trendy grown-up Barbie-ish dolls. The best part is it’s all free!!
I don’t think that my boyo will be into paper dolls… but I can see that this site could be useful for outlines for making characters to tell a store or two though…… 🙂
Just the other day I was talking with my sister and she mentioned how busy she thought I would be with our boyo when he grew up a bit. She knows that we are planning to homeschool him, and she said “you’ll be busy driving him around, cause he’ll need his socialization”.
My first thought was
1. Don’t all parents drive their children around to activities of one sort or the other?
2. I’m not worried about socialization.
I look back at my school days. I loved learning. I hated the playground. The socialization aspects of things… ick! I did like when they let the “big kids” play with the “little kids” I had a blast organizing the little kids and playing games with them. Gave me something to do and people to help. Fun that was. Didn’t last long because “big kids can’t play with little kids don’tcha know?”
Why would I want to send my child to school to have to deal with socialization?
What if he ends up having to deal with bullying and name-calling and not having good friends at school? Why should he have to deal with all that “ick” in order to have “socialization”? I’ve been there, done that, don’t need my boyo to go through that.
Besides…I think he’ll learn a whole lot more, more quickly, at home.
He won’t have to deal with schoolmates liking or not liking him.
He won’t have to deal with bullying.
He won’t have to deal with having to decide…do I stick up for this child being bullied or do I run away so I don’t have to deal with it or get hit for sticking up for him?
He won’t have to deal with teachers pushing their own agendas (just his parents doing that!)
So, how do I answer the questions of socialization?
Should I just say…it’s not a concern for me?
I’d rather he learn how to function as a Christian in society, than that he spend his days with same age students learning how to social with them?
That yes, I will enter him in sports…but not because I want him to socialize, but because I want him to learn to use his body and to work co-operatively and to learn from someone other than me in something. If he makes new friends in the process… cool, if not, that’s okay too. 🙂
I’m not too worried I guess about the whole socialization. I figure he’ll make friends in time. 🙂
But what do you think?
Here is a site that might prove beneficial down the road. It is called Homeschooling Plus.
And another site that might provide useful helps. A to Z Home’s Cool.