Just for Fun

Another awesome post from "Ordinary Time" Guest Blogger.... 

(I was in charge of my homeschool support group’s most recent meeting.  Since I’m not overly fond of meetings on the whole, I like to liven them up a bit.  This was the result.)

We all know the reasons we give to others as to why we homeschool:  positive socialization, individualized education, efficiency, flexibility, etc.  But, we all know there are other motivations, as well.  Here they are, the top 10 reasons people homeschool, but don’t admit to anyone:

10.  Because you get educator discount cards to stores you really like.

9.  Because you don’t play well with others.

8.  You don’t enjoy packing lunches.

7.  It gives you an excuse to buy yet more books.

6.  You need to occupy your time somehow.  Because, truly, what would you do if your children were gone for 6 hours a day?

5.  You really do enjoy fielding questions from complete strangers regarding your family’s educational choices.

4.  It gives you an excuse to eat vast amounts of cookies all in the name of teaching the concept of fractions to your children.

3.  Your extended family already thinks you’re the crazy one, why stop now?

2.  This way no one will ever ask you to be on the PTA and to help organize school fundraisers.

1.   Because you didn’t really need the money which pays the property taxes which fund the public schools which you don’t use.

~"E"
www.ordinary-time.blogspot.com

What Does C-O-M-P-U-L-S-I-V-E Spell?

"Ordinary Time" Guest Blogger....

Sometimes teaching one’s children at home leads to the saying of things that seem rather ridiculous. Over the past 24 hours, I have found myself forbidding, yes, forbidding, various children to stop doing math and to stop trying to read. To explain, I need to back up a bit.

I can be a tad bit very compulsive. If I start in on a project, I tend to want to work on it obsessively until I either complete it or I run out of steam. This can drive my family to distraction since when in one of these phases I can often focus on little else. It shouldn’t be a surprise then, when my children demonstrate the same tendencies.

In the past few days, since returning from our camping trip, there has been a frenzy of academic work going on around here. This has been entirely child motivated. While we ‘do’ school year ‘round, I am pretty relaxed in the summer, and I am definitely still in summer mode. Not so my children. They evidently feel the need to prepare for the coming academic year: two daughters by working until they drop so they can start the next math book and one son by being able to read chapter books unassisted.

This is why I found myself this morning, before even being dressed or having the requisite cups of coffee, being followed by a string of children all begging for my assistance. “How do I do this math problem?” “What does s-u-r-e spell?” “How many problems should I do on this page?” “What does w-h-i-s-t-l-e spell?” “I forgot how to add fractions, how do I do it?” “What does t-h-r-o-u-g-h spell?” To write it out, it seems somewhat civilized, but you have to imagine hearing multiple questions all at once. It could also not be escaped. Moving to a different room only meant the cacophony followed along.

By the time lunch rolled around, fatigue (the children’s, not mine) was starting to take its toll. There were tears over fractions and tears over big words that my son was sure he would never be able to learn to read. I had to put a stop to it all; their brains were full. Food and rest were what was needed. This is when I found myself forbidding math and reading to be worked on. No one could take anymore (and here I include myself).

But this is what I love about homeschooling. My children are free to learn how they learn best. If my son learns to read by immersing himself in books for hours at a time, he can. My daughter can work as far ahead in her math book as she desires. And it also allows us the freedom to pay attention to our emotions. Sometimes our brains do the best learning when doing something else. After filling them up, time is needed to process what has been put in. We can take a three hour recess if we need to. And sometimes we really need to.

~"E."

Visit this guest blogger at:

www.ordinary-time.blogspot.com

Summer Reading

"Ordinary Time" Guest Blogger...


Watching my 9 year old daughter, P., carry a stack of books outside to read one afternoon, made me think about how all of us spend a good chunk of our summer.  As far as our family is concerned, summer was designed for lots and lots of reading.  While we all read a lot any time of year, the lack of structure activities during summer allows for larger, uninterrupted chunks of reading time.

So what are we all reading this summer?  My husband reads to our two 7 year old boys every night.  So far this summer they have read one of the Freddy the Pig books by Walter Brooks, The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit, and they are currently in the middle of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.  After lunch, while everyone is still at the table, we have a family read aloud time.  We have just finished reading The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong, but I am still deciding what we are going to tackle next.  We try to read books that are somewhat challenging in the use of language.  Often they are not something the younger children would ever be able to read by themselves, but are able to understand when read aloud.  We can also help clarify what is happening in the story if we sense there is some confusion.

As far as individual reading, I won’t list all the books everyone has read, but will highlight some of the more interesting selections.  B. our 15 year old son is in the middle of several books.  He is very interested in the Civil War and has been reading The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.  We have had some interesting dinner table discussion as a result.  He is also slowly working his way through The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, which is the first of her Lymond Chronicles.  She writes really well done historical fiction which is for adults.  I love having my older children able to read adult level books because it gives me more people to discuss books with.  (As a whole, we don’t encourage our children to read young adult fiction.  Much of it is not very well written and is about things that do not elevate our children’s thinking.  We would rather they spend their time on worthwhile adult literature.)

P., the above-mentioned 9 year old, has really taken off with her reading this summer.  She discovered a stash of old Camp Fire Girls books that I had forgotten about and is working her way through them.  They are a lot of fun since they were written in the late 1910’s and early 1920’s.  She is finding it very interesting to see what life was like for girls a hundred years ago.

Of course, the adults do some reading, too.  My husband, J., is currently reading the new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:  Bonhoeffer:  Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas.  He is thoroughly enjoying it.  I just finished reading, Keeping House:  The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson.  I loved it.  I loved it so much I’m in that difficult between books state where I want the one I just finished to continue and can’t find a new one which is as satisfying.  So I need a book!  (I’m still nursing my twin girls, so I really need a book.)  What have all you been reading this summer?  Anything good?  Anything you want to recommend?  I’m desperate!


~"E."

Visit this guest blogger at:

www.ordinary-time.blogspot.com

Introducing Our New Guest Poster... Author of Ordinary Time

I'd like to introduce our first guest blogger... author of Ordinary Time, and parent to 9 children! She's a homeschooler and homemaker... and she'd like to kick off her new arrival to The Homeschooling Blog with a little information on how her family started their homeschooling adventure!

How we started:

"What made us decide to start homeschooling?  This is a question we are often asked when others discover that we educate our nine children at home.  I’m never sure if the question is asked out of genuine curiosity or because the inquirer is anxious to know what to do to avoid what is perceived as outrageous lunacy.  My reply is often that we sort of “forgot” to send our oldest daughter to school when she was old enough for kindergarten.  This response often puts the other person at ease, since it confirms in their mind that we are obviously different from themselves, and therefore there is no fear of contagion from associating with us.

And it’s true; that we really didn’t ever get around to sending our oldest to kindergarten, that is.  When we were young(er) and had our first baby, visions of homeschooling never danced through our heads.  We bought a house in a “good” school district in the attendance area of a “good” school.  The school my husband attended as a child, incidentally.  But as our daughter grew we realized that while the rest of our community sent their very young children off to preschool (and paying through the nose for the privilege, I might add), we didn’t want to.  I was having too much fun watching my little girl explore and learn about her world and I didn’t want to share that experience with anyone else.  Besides, why does a three year old really need to be separated from her mommy for multiple hours each week?  Instead, I happened across a pair of mothers who planned on doing their own preschool with their daughters, switching each week who would plan and execute the activities.  I expressed interest and they agreed to let me join them. 

After jumping off the acceptable track the first time, it became increasingly easy not to get back on.  Since we weren’t enrolled in a traditional preschool, we never heard about the kindergarten information nights or registration days.  I suppose if I really had wanted to know when these events were, I could have found out, but I was enjoying raising my daughter and it never really occurred to me to find out until afterwards.  This combined with the fact that kindergarten in our city is a full-day program only helped us to make our decision that we wouldn’t send our daughter to kindergarten.  How hard could kindergarten be, anyway?  It wasn’t as though trigonometry and chemistry would be a part of the curriculum.  So we began, telling nervous grandparents that we were taking it a year at a time.

That one year has now turned into twelve and that one child has turned into nine and we are still homeschooling.  Very happily, I might add.  We also have many, many more reasons for choosing homeschooling now, though if I am honest, number one on my list continues to be that I am jealous of the time I have with my children.

But to the details and numbers of who we are…  I am E., married to J., and we blog at www.ordinary-time.blogspot.com  Our 9 children are:  M (girl, 17, and is currently on a mission trip with Teen Missions International in Samoa), B (boy, 15), A (girl, 12), P (girl, 9), TM (boy, 7, adopted from Vietnam at the age of 3 ½), D (boy, 7), K (boy, 4, adopted from Vietnam at the age of 2), and G and L (twin girls, 1 year old)."

Thanks so much "E" for sharing a bit of your story with us! If you've enjoyed reading her introduction, please either let her know here with a comment, or follow the link provided in this post and visit her blog directly. You'll also find her button in the upper right sidebar.  :)

If you'd like to apply to be a guest blogger on THB, follow my contact email under our THB header and let me know! You'll get a free spot on THB to place your site's button or badge and permission to share your link within the content of each guest post.