Homeschooling for 3

My daughter is currently in the second grade. Next year begins the wonderful world of standardized tests which are demanded by the state and "No Kid Left Behind". When I was growing up, we had the yearly Citiwide examinations to test our math and reading skills, but that was nothing compared to what the system wants now. Back in the time of the dinosaurs, the most preparation that you received for these tests was practice filling in little circles and the importance of reading all of the instructions were stressed. Unbelievable as it may be, our teachers weren't worried about what we knew, because they had spent the better part of six months teaching us and helping us develop thinking ability. Fast forward to the future -- the school system spends 6 months teaching children how to take the test properly, and if they learn anything about how to learn and why they need to learn, that's by accident. I'm not blaming the teachers -- I come from a family of educators a...

Today in church our associate pastor (who is from Africa) delivered the sermon to the congregation. Before he began his study on Ephesians he took a few minutes to remind everyone one of the true reason for the holiday. Many were shocked because they thought it was all about the Indians and Pilgrims, when in fact it was a rallying call to bring the nation's attention back to God and the many blessings we've received. Amazing how this powerful holiday and call to God has been watered down to a fairytale about pilgrims and indians eating dinner together. It is amazing that today to invoke God's name, or sing religious Christmas carols I include the text in it's entirety. I have bold-faced the parts that were emphasized in today's service. ================================================================================ Proclamation of Thanksgiving Washington, D.C. October 3, 1863 This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanks...

Today my daughter, Jade, got her Yellow Belt in Taekwondo!!! She's training with Master Issak. He drives from West Orange, NJ to the Poconos to teach the kids in my development for $5 per class. I've included his website, just so you can be proud with me. It's www.karatewestorange.com. I'm so proud of Jade. She's 7 and has worked really hard to do well in the class. I think the hardest part for her is to stop worrying about hurting someone. She's the only girl in her class (the other girls dropped out) and you can see the difference when it comes to the punching and kicking. When she's practicing at home with inanimate objects she goes all out, but when she's working with the teachers, I can see her pulling her punches and kicks a bit. The boys, however, in her class try to see if they can kick the bags and cushions to the moon. But today she not only did her 15 forms correctly, but she broke 2 boards with her fist. (She did one before the ceremon...

I'm putting this out into the ether in the hopes that someone will stop by and give me some ideas. As I've mentioned before, I work with Prepaid Legal to earn extra money from home. But I've also signed up with another company for totally different reasons. The company is SendOut Cards (www.cardsfloat.com). Now, I signed up with them as a distributor mainly because I love their product and the distributor level gave me more greeting cards per month than the other options. I use these cards to keep in touch with family and customers. It's really an easy system and we plan to use their cards for our Christmas mailing. I haven't been doing much of anything with the business -- I just love the cards. Anyway , I think the greeting cards would be a great fundraising tool, but I'm not sure (a) how to setup a fundraiser or (b) who to speak to about learning about fundraisers. The way it works is you sell the retail membership for $25 and the charity (or organizati...

Thursday I was on the phone with a representative from FIS Marketing, Inc. I work with Prepaid Legal and they were offering 200 free leads, so I filled out the application and the rest was history. I called the 800 number to learn more about their services and what I heard was great, but a bit pricey for me at this time ($495), but you get 500 leads. They do ad copy, send out autoresponders, and if you speak to the leads that you purchase about your product and/or joining the salesteam and they turn you down, FIS will give them a call and close them for you. That's a really great program. And the leads cost about a buck a piece, so you can't beat that. Anyway, the salesperson (let's call him "G") was asking questions about my business, compensation plan, personal interests, etc. to see if they would be able to work with me if I decided to use their services. So of course, during the progression of our interview I mention that I homeschool my children. Well, ...

Today was my son's first birthday. He started his day off at 6:45 a.m. making a beeline to the kitchen. Well, actually, he did make a couple of detours. My 4 year old daughter was sleeping in my room, so he went to whack her in the head before deciding to bang on my bedroom door to be freed. It's a good thing the 4 year old really loves him and thinks he's her baby. I keep telling him that one of these days she's going to whack him back, but he doesn't seem to think that's possible ... Anyway, school went fine today. My husband took my 4 year old daughter upstairs to review her alphabet (she's trying to convince us that she doesn't know any of her letters -- strange girl) with the birthday boy. I tackled my 2nd grader's courses and had to resort to tickling when her brain took a powder. I've found tickling to be quite effective if applied before the meltdown has time to build up momentum. Anyway, all in all it was a pleasant day with the B...

I'm really trying to remember to do a blog a day. Right now I'm exhausted from a day of schoolwork and tears. Children are very interesting. You put them to bed early, wake up in a good mood and I think all that contentment makes them crazy. My daughters spent the day crying over various (and mostly imaginary) problems. My four year old (who knows all of her phonics and has been reciting the alphabet forever) suddenly doesn't know any of the letter names. My seven year old, who has a natural aptitude for math, suddenly can't do addition or subtraction. And I mean equations such as 15-5. The very appearance of equations made her cry. So, I let her play Harvest Moon for a bit (she needed to buy fertilizer for her farm and medicine for her cow)to let her get herself together before we got back to work. Mistake. The bull was sick too -- she was an awful farmer and the tears started flowing again. Her sister cried because her throat hurt her too much to recite the ...

Thanks to Amethy for bringing this to my attention. I got a kick out of it. Out of all of the points mentioned in the article Gripe #2 is my pet peeve. Here's what it says: "Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts." [For the full article visit http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/001/bitter_homeschooler.html ] Socialization (according to Clausen as quoted in Wilkipedia) refers: "to the process of learning one’s culture and how to live within it. For the individual it provides the resource...

I was received my daily dose of Kim Klaver ( www.kimklaverblogs.com ) and was very intrigued by an article regarding companies having to pay fines for violating the Do Not Call List. I'm personally on the state Do Not Call List, as well as the federal list, but still they call. So I was a tad bit bemused and befuddled by the article. Bemused : I am of the opinion that if you put your phone number on a survey, raffle, etc. you have to be ready to receive telephone calls from marketer. I mean, when you go to trade shows, the purpose of the show is to drum up revenue. So, why be angry when they give you a call. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but then again McDonald's did have to pay money to a man who spilled hot coffee on himself so ... Befuddled : I'm seriously confused since all of these people put their information out there for all to see and still get the company into trouble when they call them. Now, the reason that I'm confused is because I hav...

I've noticed that Sundays put me into a contemplative mood these days. Maybe it's because I've found a church that feels like home. Or maybe I'm just too pooped from the week of working, educating (and the never ending battle to keep my house clean) that all I have energy for is thinking. Today I stumbled upon a website that's whole premise is based upon the 31st chapter of Proverbs ( http://avirtuouswoman.org ). The person who was blogging about the site felt that it was very negative towards women. This of course caught my attention, so I went to take a look at it. I was pleasantly surprised to find it very practical. Now, I'm not one of those people who believe that women should be subservient to men. Actually, my older brother predicted that no one would ever marry me because I'm so opinionated and want to be right all of the time. Well, I proved him wrong -- I got two guys to marry me, so there! ( Ooops , I forgot, he probably won't be read...

You know, I hate when my kids get sick. It's not just because it's yucky and I don't get any sleep for a week. It's mainly because I get tired of people asking me why my children are sick. One day I think I'll create a diagram of the infection. It'll go something like this: J, A and M were sitting in McDonald's playroom (they have a really great one in Stroudsburg). Unknown child 1 wiped her nose with her hand before climbing onto the sliding board while grasping the handholds. Unknown child 2 sneezed without covering his face and the spray took in a radius of up to three feet in 180 degree spread. Unfortunately, my children were caught in the spray. A rubbed her eyes and infected herself that way. J breathed in the flying germs while laughing at her sister's antics. And M got it from his two sisters. I mean, how the heck does anyone get sick? Uh, they are around sick people and, duh, get infected. That's why we all still suffer from the common cold ...

A few years ago I joined Shaklee's as a way to make money, but the timing wasn't right and I really wasn't interested in marketing the products. I was very interested, however, in consuming their chocolate soy shake which helped me lose a lot of the post-pregnancy weight I'd put on after the birth of my daughter. Anyway, my sponsor's daughter, Lori ( http://www.shaklee.net/lorirussel ) still keeps me in the loop and shares "food for thought" articles. I found this one to be quite thought-provoking and thought that I might share it with you. Winner's Circle Network with Lou Tice - 11/2/07 - "Judging Others" Have you heard it said, that the things you see and dislike in others are things you probably dislike about yourself? When you see things about other people that you don't like, can it teach you anything about yourself? For instance, if you look at someone and think,"He is angry, and I don't like that," could it be that...

So, I was just bragging about the latest edition to the family. Well, let me tell you a couple of things -- my brand new baby doesn't like to speak to my in home network system. So, since the main reason I purchased the laptop is so that I can be mobile, this was really a bummer. But, like all new mommies, my newest baby was so darn cute, I was prepared to go the extra mile and find out what was wrong. I was even smiling about it. Then I tried to fix the network myself. Mistake. Big Mistake. After about an hour of trying to figure it out alone, I called Network Magic, the company that I used to setup my home network. The technician had me do a couple of diagnostics, but their software was working perfectly. So he told me I should call HP, especially since my computer had just arrived the day before. So I go to the HP website and setup a chat session with a technician. The first technician needs some serious retraining. She was courteous enough, but totally ineffectual and...

It's wonderful to be back on the internet again. Two weeks ago my faithful laptop booted up for the last time. I guess all the homeschooling and typing assignments finally got to it. It was four years old. Now, I guess I shouldn't be too sad since it did last four years and only over the past two months did I have to hook it up to my television because the screen died. And, yes pressing the right arrow key would take me to the save menu. But it was my buddy. It kept me busy during my sojourn of bedrest during my last pregnancy. It played videos on our two hour treks to civilization to visit the family. It told us many stories (I subscribe to Audible) and recently it began to play movies for me as I tune into Netflix for my entertainment needs. So, with a heavy heart (and mourning pocketbook) I purchased my new laptop from Walmart. It's a beauty. I'm still a little afraid of the thing. For one thing, it runs Windows Vista, which is a beautiful looking system,...