Funny!

OK this made me laugh out loud! I grew up in the 70's so this was classic

Tough Day

Yesterday was a pretty tough day for us. Our dachshund, Penny, has had spine issues off and on for years and has even had two surgeries. (Ka-ching!) She was a sweet little dog that sure needed the rescue and went on to live a great life with us! Sadly, she was only 8, but we had to do the humane thing and put her down. Her pain skyrocketed suddenly and all the cortisone in the world was not gonna help what was wrong. Her "brother" doggie, Porter, had the same issues (it's a dachshund thing) and met the same fate last January. Two dogs gone within 10 months. Not fair!

This morning has been so weird. Our normal morning routine is no more. I may never see the back yard again! :)

Penny is the redhead in the picture and Porter is the black and tan. They were great little dogs!!

Dyslexia and Vision Therapy

I really, really wanted to pull my 3rd grader out of Catholic school. I really did. I knew that homeschooling was an option and thought it may be a good idea. His 3rd grade experience was horrible! The teacher enjoyed picking on him "for his own good" and accused me of babying him. Reminder: he was in 3rd grade and 8 years old. I'm thinking the school of hard knocks is a little premature for most kids who have only lived for 8 years so far! As adults, doesn't 8 years ago seem like yesterday? Sigh, yeah me too!

We didn't pull him out until beginning 5th grade. How I wish I had listened to that little voice in my head (not the schizophrenic voice, that's different! :) telling me to TAKE HIM OUT NOW! Damn! There is no going backwards in time. Want to know why I didn't just pull him? Well there were a couple of reasons actually. First one is that I got a really plum job with my former company. I worked from home in our office and my hubby worked for the same company. We occasionally traveled together for work. It was a great job and I loved it! The second reason was fear. Fear of reprisals since my daughter would have stayed there. She certainly didn't need to get subtly, or overtly, picked on because of my decision to pull her brother.

Of course I wish I had just pulled him out! He actually had post traumatic stress from the "wonderful" 3rd grade teacher's treatment. It was open season on my son and all the students helped pick on him as well. Know what's funny? (ok not ha ha funny, but weird) He was a GOOD student! I think it burned her butt that he appeared to NOT pay attention but always did very well. He had two things going on. He had dyslexia in a mild form but enough to make things like math speed drills difficult AND he is an auditory learner. This kid (or young man, now) remembers everything he HEARS! He was listening to the teacher and learning, but not looking at her. Much of that is due to his dyslexic problem which was later described to us by the eye specialist as "he can't believe what he sees."

After I pulled BOTH kids, we traveled all over the place as a family with Dad who still traveled for work. We also joined an "umbrella school" which turned out not to be a good fit for us, but we had the BEST curriculum coordinator there! She heard what I had to say about our son's problem, recommended the eye specialist, and problem solved! So, we paid the Catholic school thousands of bucks a year and they could not tell us what was going on. We saw this very lovely woman at the umbrella school ONCE and poof! Problem solved. OK after a lot of testing and vision therapy. After hours of vision therapy, my son was having way less reading problems and his confidence went UP and UP! When we left the eye specialists office one time my son looked at me and said, "So I'm not just stupid!" Damn! Breaks my heart! He had a very high IQ and was the #1 student based on testing to get into Kindergarten, but the teacher had the nerve to MAKE HIM FEEL STUPID! She is retired now and I hope she is having a lousy time. Seriously.

After the vision therapy he started reading a lot more and we left him alone to read whatever he wanted. He was 10 and started reading all the Garfield comic books we had. He read the Animorphs series, then on to the boyish Ramona books. One day my hubby and I saw these books that looked right up his alley and bought the first two in the series. They ended up sitting there and the only books his level that he had not read. One night I said he could either go to bed right then (he was 11 and did not want to go to sleep until, like, 1AM) OR he could read but the only book left was this one. He decided to read, but grudgingly. In the morning he didn't get up until really late, maybe noon. The first thing he said was "You HAVE to read this book it's great!" It was Harry Potter. When book 4 came out, all gazillion pages, he could not wait to read it! Here was a kid who had trouble reading paragraphs due to dyslexia now excited about the gazillion pages! I sure felt like going to the school and shoving those gazillion pages up that teachers..... You get the picture! :)

My son is now 21 and a senior at the university majoring in economics. He LOVES economics and looks forward to a great career! Vision therapy works! PLEASE contact me if you have any questions about it!

Dual Enrollment Rules in Florida

I talked to a friend today about a quandary she is in over her son and dual enrollment. She is an unschooler, like us, and her son has been moving along with things he is interested in. There are formal classes at a university, home schooling classes at home and various other clubs and interests. His birthday is late so she is considering slowing things down and "holding him back" for another year. She was asking me how this would impact his dual enrollment at the local community college here in Orlando. My answer is, it depends. The community colleges in Florida have a lot of leeway in making their own rules regarding dual enrollment.

It all depends on the "Articulation Agreement" that the community college has with the home schooling family. I wrote up many of the articulation agreements at this community college while I was there and can only speak for this school. Here are the "rules" regarding dual enrollment at the community college in Orlando.

If you are home schooling...

1. Through the county, your agreement will state that the student with a birthday from Jan 1 to Aug 31 will have the dual enrollment STOP at the end of the Spring semester if he turns 18 during these months. If my friend decides to hold her son back for maturity reasons or because his math is "behind" then his dual enrollment would stop after the Spring semester of his junior year.

2. Through a private school (umbrella school), your agreement would be through your private school. The private school has the agreement on file with the college and it states that your student can dual enroll for his junior and senior year. Period. No age limits mentioned. (at the point when I left this school. They may have changed)

My friend has to decide if she would like him to stay in his "grade level" and dual enroll right away, perhaps a little emotionally younger than she would like. Or, should she "hold him back" and he gets only one year of dual enrollment. Or enroll in a private (umbrella) school, pay the tuition and be able to hold him back without any dual enrollment consequences. She needs to weigh the private school tuition price against the amount of savings she would have on college costs.

This is for ONE community college in Florida! Even other Central Florida community colleges have different rules regarding articulation agreements! If you are considering dual enrollment ask your local community college for the articulation agreement. Read it carefully! Some schools do not even have arrticulation agreements, but for those that do, please read carefully!

Happy Halloween

Today is Halloween and the stores are crazy crowded! Maybe our economy will get a little boost today!

I have my HUGE bowl of candies which, sadly, are candies that I love! I know the "rule" is to buy something you dislike so you won't eat it. LOL Uh-huh! My bags of mixed types of Reeses and Three Musketeer bars are ready and waiting in the BIG bowl. Now we are just going to wait for the little-uns to come by. My neighborhood is pretty big and full of little kids. This will be our first Saturday Halloween here so I am expecting a huge onslaught. The constant doorbell ringing drives my dachshund crazy since she feels that she must protect the house from every little kid in Clermont! She is a good dog!

Today is also Samhain which is the Celtic end of the year. It is a day for remembering those who have passed away, for quiet reflection and for giving thanks. It was thought that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is the most thin during this time hence the newer meaning of Halloween with hauntings and ghosts. Samhain begins the "wheel of the year" which is the natural cycle of the turning of the seasons.

I Have a Dream.... Of an Interesting School Model

I've been reflecting back on our homeschooling years and the kinds of things my kids would have liked. We joined several homeschool support groups over the years but my kids would have liked more interaction with other homeschooled kids. There is a private school here in the Orlando area with a really interesting school model. The high school kids attend three days a week. The other two days are at home, getting their school work finished. You know, like homeschooling. As the advisor for the dual enrollment program at the community college, I worked with many of these students and even gave a talk about dual enrollment at their school. I liked what I saw.

My idea is to have a school where the lower grades (k - 8) attend two days a week for classes such as science, history and math. I know many parents are not into math (a-hem, myself included) and science experiments and equipment are expensive. My vision is to have the students meet two times a week for English, Math, Science, Social Studies and some sort of PE. The emphasis would be placed on Science, Math and with an integrative approach to History and English. Most of the writing, reading, quizzes etc. would be done at home. The experiments, math and the connection between English and history would be explored at the school.

The same would be true for the high school students with an extra day per week for things like debate, theater, music, sports, art, foreign language, student government and clubs. The students would still do much of their reading, writing and math problems at home.

As an unschooling family you may wonder, what the heck? Bear with me though. My goal is for the classes to be hands-on. Math? Hands-on? YES! Have you ever looked at the FULL set of Math-U-See manipulatives? Have you checked the price? Yeah, me too! My goal would be to use the math time to have the students SEE math, FEEL math and hopefully, understand math! Has your high school student ever had to read Shakespeare? Uh-huh. Know what? Shakespeare was meant to be watched, not read. I see the classes where students can take parts and act out certain scenes to better understand what he was saying. Also, English and history are so closely aligned that I would incorporate the two classes into one. It is hard to understand, say, The Crucible by Arthur Miller without understanding first, the Salem witch trials and secondly McCarthyism. Science. Wow. How many of you just wish you could afford a really professional microscope? Me, too! Science would be hands-on in the school where the parents do not have to clean up. We would have hands-on science with good equipment. Sigh, that would be great!

My school would ALWAYS keep the "umbrella school" model as well where students do not come to the school and do all of the school work at home. I would probably have some sort of a-la-carte, pick and choose classes plan as well.

This is my dream. Too bad money does not grow on trees. Maybe we could learn to grow money trees in science class?

My Daughter's Puppy

My daughter and son-in-law got a puppy about a month ago. He was a rescue and a mutt. They wanted a mutt since my daughter had her beloved dachshund die last January after many spine problems. NO more pure bred dogs. Ollie is a little bit odd-looking. Please note the photo. They wanted to know what his breeds were in case there was some sort of red flag that they could be aware of at least. Believe it or not, you can buy a do-it-yourself DNA test at Petco, send it in and in about two to three weeks you get your list of dog breeds and percentages of each breed. I thought that sounded pretty cool and it was not that expensive.

After three weeks of waiting, my daughter gave me "the call." Ollie is about 50% chihuahua (he is actually very tall and pretty big), about 20% or so beagle, about 20% or so pug, less than 10% afghan hound (what? How did that happen?) and less than 10% shih tzu. Weird. He really, really looks like a boxer, lab mix. But, no boxer or lab! How strange! We suspected that he was part chihuahua because one of his front legs shakes when he is sitting. Imagine a leg the size of a boxer, shaking. Weird dog! He is a great dog and has house-trained very easily when I think back to the house-training of our dachshund. It took us months to train Porter. Ollie? A couple weeks. Wow.