Confessions of a Home School Radical

Baby!

2010-07-06T21:40:00.003-04:00

I have been incredibly distracted lately for personal, family reasons. My mother has a bit of dementia (or Alzheimers, not sure) and my daughter has been through three miscarriages in one year. Oh and we lost both of our dachshunds. What a year 2009 was! I hope never to repeat that!

On the plus side, though, my distraction lately has been because my daughter is now 12 weeks pregnant! I am going to be a grandma! Needless to say we are extremely excited over here and that's about all we're thinking about. These 12 weeks have been nail-biting since she's had so much trouble but all is well now! The ultrasound today shows a normal-looking baby of indeterminate sex. The next ultrasound will be the BIG one where they find out the sex of the baby and I know if I should buy pink or blue. Yes if this is a girl she will have a ton of pink and purple.

In January we also adopted a puppy from the South Lake Animal League here in lake County Florida. He's a great mixed breed dog. We love him so much! We went from having two small (mostly short) dachshunds to a TALL larger breed dog. I never had to worry about food on the counter before. This guy can reach the counter with no problems.

That's what's happening in the personal life of the Homeschool Radical!

Transcripts

2010-06-22T14:17:00.003-04:00

I've been away to a family wedding and tacked on a vacation while we were at it! Back home now and ready to blog about homeschooling and other education topics! Any questions or comments, please post them!

Transcripts. The dreaded transcripts. Colleges need to see them and public and private high schools provide them but as a homeschooling family YOU are required to write one up. The transcript needs to be SIMPLE and easy to read. Don't worry about your grading rubric or how many hours each "course" took or each test and quiz. That is TOO much information! The college wants to see three things: course name, grade and your signature at the bottom of the transcript. Easy as pie!

A simple transcript will have ALL of the coursework for the high school years including online classes and dual enrollment. This way the college admissions folks can see all of it at once without having to flip through pages of college and online high school transcripts. I can only say what I did and it worked great for us and many of my friends.

First, set up a table in Microsoft Word or any other word processing program. This table will have the student's full name, SSI, date of issue and total GPA information. I used a two-column format at the top of the page. I called it Swithers Family Home School or something like that at the very top as a title. Below the first small, two-column table I made another table where the courses are located. Because my daughter did some high school classes while in 8th grade I have 6 columns in this table. Column one is for the course, two is for grade 8, three for grade 9 etc.

Fill in the larger table with the coursework in chronological order. Colleges are looking for course - grade, that's it! Write the course in the first column and then place the grade under the proper grade level column. If your student took a course at an online high school, list it in chronological order and then indicate, maybe with an asterisk, that there is something unique to this course. Under the larger table place the asterisk and then indicate what it means.

For example:

Biology* B
Freshman Composition** A

* indicates a class taken through the Florida Virtual School
** indicates a class taken at Valencia Community College

I needed both one asterisk and two asterisk notations for both the FLVS and dual enrollment.

At the end, write out:

Transcript Issued By - and then sign your name.

Florida State was not going to accept my daughter's transcript, and pull her from her classes, because I didn't sign ours. We sent a signed copy and all was well!

That's it! As an unschooling family I tried to group what my kids did into courses so I could have a transcript that made sense. Don't lie on the transcript. Please. If you wrote down that your child took Trigonometry but he didn't, and then the college uses that course as a prerequisite for another class, maybe Physics, then your kid will be out in the cold! He will not be able to do the work required. Be honest. It only hurts your kids when the transcript is not true.

If your student took courses at a college please have those transcripts sent to the university as well. Any college coursework requires a transcript in order to transfer the credit to the new college or university. I can email a sample transcript with the format if you need it! This was given to me by someone else, so I can't take credit for it! I know many people who used this and their kids are in college and many of them have already graduated, mine included!

FLVS and Homeschooling

2010-06-07T22:10:00.003-04:00

I have been really involved in a couple of homeschooling chats over the years and had an experience on Friday that I feel I should address. This also was something I saw frequently as the dual enrollment advisor.

Here in Florida we have a virtual school that is tied into the public school system. It's been a great boon to Florida for kids to take extra classes, to retake a class that was failed (oops), or for homeschoolers to take some, or all, of their classes. I doubt there are any high school kids in Florida who have not either taken a class from FLVS or at least know people who have.

On the down side, though, this has allowed many parents of homeschoolers to abdicate their role as education facilitator. I can't even begin to say how many families I have seen in this situation:

Kid has problem at the high school.
Parent hears about the Florida Virtual School.
Parent pulls kid out of high school and signs up as a "homeschool" family.
Kid signs up for the virtual school classes.
Parent does not follow up AT ALL.

While the virtual school is controlled by the state school system, the family that is signed up as a homeschool family still has to follow the laws for homeschooling in the state. Here in Florida they need to have either a standardized test or a portfolio evaluation every year. Students who are missing evaluations or test scores will have a problem later on when applying to a college! The county school system can not send the college a form saying that the student has been a homeschooler unless there are records of an evaluation. Is it fair? I don't know. It is the law, though, so it has to be followed.

FLVS is not a "school." They offer courses that are graded but there will not be a diploma when finished. Also, the virtual school will not figure out if your child is "finished." The parent who is the responsible party for the student MUST pay attention.

Sadly, many parents see the virtual school as a regular high school run by the county. It isn't that at all! Parents still need to write a transcript for their student. (don't forget to SIGN it!) They also will not get a diploma from the virtual school. As a parent you can print a nice diploma up or just forget it! My kids never needed one.

If you are using the virtual school for your kids please realize that you will need to write up a transcript for your kids in total! NO college is going to want to flip through pages looking for the classes your kid took! Next post will be all about writing up a nice simple transcript that a college will be able to read and understand!

Should We Allow a 13 Year Old to Dual Enroll?

2010-05-30T12:26:00.003-04:00

There is an interesting article in The Orlando Sentinel today about a home educated 13 year old girl who wants to dual enroll at a local community college here in Central Florida. This particular community college has refused to allow it citing safety concerns for such a young kid.

This brings me to my former job as the advisor for dual enrollment students at a different community college in Florida and how I would feel about this case. I can see both sides of this issue as a parent and as an experienced dual enrollment advisor. On the one hand you have a parent who wants to know where to go now with a very smart and gifted student. On the other hand you have college administrators who do not want to be sued.

The parents have offered to walk to any classes and even sit in on the class and the college says no. I know that this particular school does not allow dual enrollment students to take online classes without having a few in-class courses under their belts but I believe that this student does not want online classes anyway. As a parent I would be frustrated with the system as these parents are.

Here are the pros and cons of having a very young student on campus taking courses at the community college:

PROS:
*This child needs higher level course work
*She has taken college classes online from another venue, successfully
*There is no age limit in Florida statutes, it's up to the school

CONS:
*Most of the community college students punctuate everything with a swear word, usually F*
*Heck, many professors do, too
*The course work is ADULT including possibly R rated movie sections in humanities classes. It's 4 years before she can be allowed, in the theater, to see an R rated movie
*ALL of her information is confidential even from parents. It is the law . She is 13.
*Guys will "hit on" her. Most girls seem to look much older than they are these days

I would ask parents of gifted children to think long and hard about putting their child into a college class when they are under about 15. However, if there are waivers, to be signed by parents, and a parent walks the child to the classroom and waits nearby, then I think it should be OK.

That being said I HATED it when the top dog of the community college where I worked would reverse the dual enrollment director's decision about allowing a child onto campus for classes. If a parent complained to him, he would usually allow the dual enrollment and we look like total idiots. Why the heck are there rules? This led to animosity between the parent and the dual enrollment office.

Well, read the article HERE and you be the judge! Since I don't work there, I do not need to decide, thank goodness! I can see both sides!

What About Socialization? :::groan:::

2010-05-20T16:53:00.004-04:00

Socialization. Don't we just HATE that word? What about socialization? What about the prom? Sigh.

I have found that my adult children relate better to older adults than they do people their own age. Correction: Public school people their own age. Sure they did not have the same socialization that the public (and even private) school kids did. Nope not at all. Am I upset by this? Hell no!

Speaking of high school only, since my kids were 13 and 10 when we began homeschooling, my kids had an extremely "weird" social life. They didn't stay out until all hours of the night while that age. I always knew where they were since they were, you know, underage and all. Drinking? Nope, none of that. Drugs? Again, nope. Would I know if they were doing these things? Sure would! I was a pretty wild teenager back in the 70's where the drinking age WAS 18, and we, of course, drank much younger than that. Not proud of it, but what can I say? I am not saying that all public and private school kids do these things either. However, from what my kids saw in college, it seems that a great percentage do. Parents may not know it.

My kids also had no problem talking to adults. We traveled all over the U.S. and Canada with them and they met most of our customers. Talking to adults just was never an issue for them. Once they began their dual enrollment, they had no problem talking to their instructors. My son always talked to them and discussed things with them such as politics and current events. Weird kid, he wasn't hiding in the back of the class trying to nurse a hangover. Neither one of them did that in college, ever.

Am I mom of the year? Hahaha! No. We did the best we could with them and that's all I can say. Were we really strict? Again, no! My daughter actually thought, when she was about 15 or so, that I was totally cool allowing her to see N'Sync concerts and hang at the mall with her friends. Yeah, well, I went to all the N'Sync concerts, too, and I always sat at a table in the mall drinking a cup of coffee waiting for the girls. For some reason this was still pretty cool to her. She actually had a couple of teen friends ask her if she hated her mother. She said no. They thought it was weird because everyone hates their mother. Wow!

So, after homeschooling them until college I can say that they got just the right amount of socialization from other homeschooled kids, neighborhood kids and each other. We traveled all over and they each went to Europe, without us. Heck, I've never been myself, but both kids have gone. My daughter went to a prom with her then boyfriend who is now her husband.

We are an insanely close family even now when the two kids are 22 and 25. My 25 year old daughter is married and she is still close to her brother and to us. We watch each other's backs and we have a great support system. I am not sure this would be the case, at least with my two still being close, had we not homeschooled.

Dual Enrollment and Advanced Placement Blog Posts

2010-05-19T20:03:00.003-04:00

I've noticed more activity on my blog lately and many people seem to need information about both Advanced Placement classes and Dual Enrollment. On the right-hand side of my blog page there is a list of subjects with the number of posts in each. One of these days I will clean this up by tagging my posts in a more consistent manner. Click on the subject area you are interested in and the posts will come up. Remember that the blog posts read from the bottom (oldest) to the top (newest) so to make sense scroll down to the bottom of the posts and read up!

If anyone has any questions about the posts please feel free to e-mail me at: karen@preferredlearningacademy.com

When I was working at the college in the dual enrollment department I realized that most parents did not know how the Advanced Placement classes worked and how the college credit was awarded. AP classes really are the reason I started this blog since there was such a mystery surrounding them. Also, during my time promoting Dual Enrollment for the college, I saw that MANY parents had no idea that there was a way, in Florida, for their kids to get free college classes. So sad! I cannot tell you how many times a parent would say, "Why didn't I know about this?" My goal is to educate people about what dual enrollment is and what it isn't.

Please read the blog subjects you are interested in and remember to read from the bottom up or some of them may not make much sense!

Florida Homeschool Convention 2010

2010-05-18T15:17:00.000-04:00

The Florida homeschool convention is at the end of the month and I would really like to attend except that MOST of the vendors and lectures are all about being Christian. Now, the FPEA is NOT a Christian group (supposedly) but it sure seems like it. When I started going to the conventions twelve years ago they had some really great keynote speakers like Micki and David Colfax the authors of Homeschooling for Excellence. They were amazing! Religion was not mentioned since it is irrelevant to the subject. Now, I cannot find a secular vendor or speaker.

OK not until THIS year. One of my son's economics instructors is also a very active Libertarian and he is going to speak there this year. He is a Christian but he is SO worth listening to! NOW I want to go since he is really good! Jack Chambless is an instructor at Valencia Community College where I used to work as the dual enrollment advisor. My son took his Microeconomics class quite a few years ago and DID NOT PASS, but the man totally changed his life! Jack Chambless is the reason my son has a degree in economics and the reason he is very politically active. Awesome guy! (My daughter says he has the whitest teeth she has ever seen. LOL)

So now I am trying to decide if I will attend the convention. I like it, and I like some of the vendors a lot. I am not happy about the Christian-only theme they usually have that makes others uncomfortable. But Jack Chambless would be worth it.

I am not anti any religion and my school does not discriminate based on religion either but I hate to see this huge, supposedly inclusive, group move to only one religion or to any specific world view. We are all homeschoolers and we can be religious or not, we can have any type of religious views or no religion at all, but we are all trying to educate our children the best way we know how. We should work together to that end.

Teaching Less Math, Makes Sense

2010-05-13T22:28:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine came across this article a while back and I am finally getting to blog about it. This is from a March 18th blog on Psychology Today's website. The author of the article talks about schools teaching LESS math to young elementary school students. Yes, LESS math! Now, I am all for less math, but seriously, the article points to several studies that show that this "less math" idea has a lot of merit. Here is the proposal:

"One of the recipients of this challenge was L. P. Benezet, superintendent of schools in Manchester, New Hampshire, who responded with this outrageous proposal: We should drop arithmetic! Benezet went on to argue that the time spent on arithmetic in the early grades was wasted effort, or worse. In fact, he wrote: "For some years I had noted that the effect of the early introduction of arithmetic had been to dull and almost chloroform the child's reasoning facilities." All that drill, he claimed, had divorced the whole realm of numbers and arithmetic, in the children's minds, from common sense, with the result that they could do the calculations as taught to them, but didn't understand what they were doing and couldn't apply the calculations to real life problems. He believed that if arithmetic were not taught until later on--preferably not until seventh grade--the kids would learn it with far less effort and greater understanding."The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning.”
(Peter Gray, March 18, 2010)

This makes sense to me since MOST kids today do not understand WHY math works the way it does. Memorizing the formulas and memorizing the "math facts" does not lead to understanding. I know, I am the product of the 1960's - 1970's NEW math that really just did not make sense to me. I learned math while homeschooling. Sure I knew how to do algebra and the "math facts" that are drilled into our heads in school but real understanding did not come until much later.

"Today whenever we hear that children aren't learning much of what is taught in school the hue and cry from the educational establishment is that we must therefore teach more of it! If two hundred hours of instruction on subject X does no good, well, let's try four hundred hours. If children aren't learning what is taught to them in first grade, then let's start teaching it in kindergarten. And if they aren't learning it in kindergarten, that could only mean that we need to start them in pre-kindergarten!"
(Peter gray, March 18, 2010)

The above statement reflects my children's generation. The competitive aspect of school really cranked up in the 1990's when parents were routinely doing the work that their kids should have been doing so that Johnny and Mary could get an A. Parents were concerned that their little genius get into the BEST most competitive preschool for goodness sakes! This all lead to certain subjects such as math being taught WAY too early for the child to grasp. The researcher, Benezet, then asked schools to try an experiment in math.

He asked the principals and teachers in some of the schools located in the poorest parts of Manchester to drop the third R from the early grades. They would not teach arithmetic--no adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. He chose schools in the poorest neighborhoods because he knew that if he tried this in the wealthier neighborhoods, where parents were high school or college graduates, the parents would rebel.
(Peter Gray, March 18, 2010)

This experiment was a success!

“By "recitation" he meant, "speaking the English language." He did "not mean giving back, verbatim, the words of the teacher or the textbook." The children would be asked to talk about topics that interested them--experiences they had had, movies they had seen, or anything that would lead to genuine, lively communication and discussion. This, he thought, would improve their abilities to reason and communicate logically. He also asked the teachers to give their pupils some practice in measuring and counting things, to assure that they would have some practical experience with numbers”
(Peter Gray, March 18, 2010)

The results were fantastic! The students who did not learn formal math caught up within ONE year! Plus they did better on word problems.

Please read the whole article here:
Psychology Today
When Less is More: The Case for Teaching Less Math in School

Honors Programs

2010-05-11T22:07:00.002-04:00

I mentioned honors programs in my last post. Let me elaborate here.

Valencia Community College offers the honors program to dual enrollment students. The student must contact Jackie Cole, the director of dual enrollment, to start the process. Eligibility is based on test scores and GPA. Please allow your STUDENT to do all of the college legwork as it is important that he or she gets used to the college environment. Dual enrolled students are considered adults at the community college and therefore must act as such.

UCF also has an honors program with the Burnett Honors College. A transfer student from a community college with an AA in the honors program can then get into the Burnett Honors College. The benefits of being in the honors program at UCF include priority registration, small classes, honors housing, scholarships and others.

Had I known about the honors college and what it entailed I would have really looked into it. A student at Valencia cannot register for an honors class without first being in the honors program.

If your community college in Florida is NOT Valencia, then please ASK about their honors program and your dual enrollment student. It certainly does not hurt to ask.

Honors Programs & Dual Enrollment

2010-05-10T17:59:00.002-04:00

We've been extremely busy here so I have not posted in a while! My son graduated from the University of Central Florida on Saturday and then, of course, there was Mother's Day on Sunday! It is sad and exciting at the same time to have my "baby" graduate from college! Another chapter of motherhood is over and a new one can begin.

Another unschooled child has graduated from college with no stigma, no "gaps in education" and no problems whatsoever! A former friend was certain that I was doing the wrong thing by unschooling and not forcing the kids to "do work." Well here we are with both of them graduated from college with B.S. degrees (yes, go ahead and laugh, BS degrees!) and very good GPA's. My son is looking for work and planning on graduate school. He needs some more math to get into a top tier graduate school in economics so he's prepared to take a year to do it. However, if he finds a decent job before then, he will take that and postpone the grad school in favor of experience. What the heck, he has plenty of time!

I have learned quite a bit about the special advanced programs at UCF and will share these in the coming posts. As a homeschooling parent I just did not know about these programs and how to get my kids into them. I'm afraid that may cost my son a possibly good graduate school. Frankly, a lot depends on his GRE scores so we shall see. I need to do some legwork to see how homeschooled kids can get into some of these programs such as leadership and honors.

Recently Valencia Community College has allowed dual enrollment students into the honors program there. Of course it is expected that these students will stay after high school graduation and finish the AA degree with honors. This is a big deal! Many students did not take dual enrollment courses since they would not be part of an honors program, but now it is available to them! Please check the website for the requirements to get into the honors program and also speak to the director of dual enrollment, Jackie Cole.

Unschooling Smear

2010-04-19T21:15:00.004-04:00

I clicked on an article on Parent Dish, which should have already warned me not to, and discovered this article about unschooling. The article is written by ABC news after the reporter talked to a couple unschooling families. My blood is boiling over this because it totally misrepresents unschooling and does not have follow-up about unschooled kids who are now grown. Why didn't ABC news talk to some of those people? Probably because it would not meet with their agenda to smear the homeschooling community and the more "radical" unschoolers. Can you tell it pisses me off?

My kids were unschooled. My son was 10 and my daughter was 13 when we first began the homeschooling journey that quickly led us to unschooling. They were in charge of their education, for the most part, even to this day. My son is graduating from the university in May with a degree in economics and my daughter graduated a few years ago with two degrees, one in real estate and one in finance. Obviously unschooling works and allowing your child to have control over his education is a good plan. I call it being respectful to your child. Is it for everyone? I would have to say NO WAY! However, if you are interested in unschooling pop me an email. It can be found in my profile. Unschooling, it works.

You can read the offensive article here:
The Unschooling Movement: School's Out Forever

Cheaper College

2010-04-14T18:20:00.003-04:00

Just want to get this out there, YES I watch American Idol. There I said it! After the show last week I kept the TV on and watched the local FOX 10 PM news for a little while. On that show there was a segment about online college classes from a company based in Virginia and ONE of the community colleges here in Florida has allowed the credits. My thought here is, if ONE allows the credits how can the others Disallow them?

The company is called Straighter Line and they appear to offer 11 college courses that the Florida community college allowed as Florida college credit. These are pretty basic classes but the BEST part is that they are CHEAP! OK not cheap, cheap, but MUCH cheaper than taking the classes at the local community college as a college student.

Obviously, Dual Enrollment is cheaper still if your child is still in high school, but when your child graduates, and looks into college, this may be a good option! Looks like there is a monthly fee of $99 and then the courses are $39 each. Holy cow! If your student is motivated, he can zip through some of these courses quickly. There is a one-time fee option, without the monthly subscription plan, of about $399 per course instead.

Lake City Community College is the Florida community college that has allowed these credits. If this sounds interesting, go to your local community college and find out if they will accept the credits from Straighter Line.

For more information check this out:
Straighter Line

AP Classes Revisited

2010-04-03T15:51:00.002-04:00

I thought that it would be a good time to revisit the AP class question. Your kids should be deciding their junior or senior year courses and the question of AP may come up.

Many parents are not exactly sure what AP courses will mean for their child so let me explain. First off, your child does not get college credit for passing the AP course. She will have to pass a one-day rigorous AP exam. She can receive all A's during the school year but MUST pass the AP test with a 3, 4 or 5 in order to receive college credit. Many students do not pass the test. I think the percentage runs just under 50% who do not pass the AP test.

Your student will also take this AP course for an entire school year which is, in Florida, the equivalent of two college semesters. If he receives a 3 on the AP test he will receive the credit for one college course. He could have had two courses during that time.

Please read this post by clicking on the link below:
To AP or Not to AP

Sometimes schools do not tell parents which college classes are received for the AP course. I have seen MANY students from local schools take AP Human Geography and not receive the college credit from the university they attend because only ONE of the state universities I looked up offer the course! What a waste of possible college credit time! A good advisor can help you choose which courses will be useful to your student.

Please read this post by clicking on the link below:
More on AP Courses

If you have any questions please e-mail or post a comment. I will be glad to help!

Test Taking and College Admissions

2010-03-30T15:49:00.004-04:00

Does your college bound child have to take the SAT? Good question with no easy right or wrong answer. Generally, yes, he would have to take the SAT or ACT test. Universities expect them and base admission decisions on these test scores. However, your student can get an AA (2-year) degree from a community college and then transfer to the university without having to take the SAT or ACT. This is for Florida since I don't know what the rules are in other states. A student with a 2-year degree from a state community college MUST be accepted into a state university. Of course it MAY NOT be the one your child wants to attend. Be aware.

Before your child enters the community college through dual enrollment or after graduating from high school she will need to take the CPT test for placement into math and English courses. This tests college readiness in English and math and is required if there are no other test scores. So a test must be taken but the CPT is not for admission, it is for placement.

Many colleges do not allow a student to dual enroll without reaching college level on the CPT test so please ask about the testing requirement.

Dual Enrollment Time

2010-03-29T16:04:00.003-04:00

If you are a Florida homeschooling family with a 10th grade student, it is time to start thinking about Dual Enrollment. Actually, if you want your child to take summer courses then it is probably too late what with budget cuts to the community colleges. However, it is NOT too early to look into Dual Enrollment for the Fall semester! Some of the community colleges in Florida allow Dual Enrollment for students from 9th through 12th grades and some require students to be entering 11th grade. Check with your local college to find out the rules there.

Some of the community colleges allow the Dual Enrollment students to choose classes at the same time as the regular student body but others will wait a few weeks before opening the courses up for registration for the DE students. Again, check with the local schools. Either way, summer classes have either filled up or are filling up fast!

Your first step is to contact the Dual Enrollment (sometimes called Early College) office at the local community college to find out the "rules" for that school. You may need something from your school districts homeschool office to verify that your student is a homeschooling student. You will need to fill out application forms and, as a homeschooling parent, you are acting as the guidance counselor.

Please remember that your student will be in classes with the general college population and will be considered an adult. The courses may have adult content so be aware. The instructors do NOT know that your student is younger than 18 and will treat him or her as an adult.

Even though your student is younger than 18, you will NOT be allowed to have any information about your child at the school. This is a federal law so complaining to the college is useless! Hopefully as a homeschooling family your child will be close to his parents and share his grades and other information. If not, then there are other problems at work that won't be solved by talking to the college.

If your student has a problem with one of his instructors then PLEASE you MUST allow him to handle it! One great way to help your underage student with this is to role-play. Go over what he needs to say to the instructor and even go over some of the possible things the instructor may say. The instructor does not have to talk to a parent!

More on Dual Enrollment coming up.....

Non-Profit Status or Fun With the Government

2010-03-26T12:48:00.003-04:00

This is really just a post to gripe. I received a letter from the IRS concerning my school's non-profit status YESTERDAY. The letter was dated the 12th but mailed the 22nd. Yeah, great, and they expect a response by the 1st! What?

That's just the beginning of my problem with this lovely letter. Seems they are not thrilled that I am catering to one segment of the population, homeschoolers, and they are requesting quite a few additional things from me that, for the life of me, I can't see has anything to do with the non-profit status of my school. Why do they need a copy of our curriculum? What does this have to do with my non-profit status? Will they not allow my school to be non-profit if I want everyone to use Abeka? Or maybe Saxon math is the only math program allowed? OR could it be that homeschooling is a no-no and they are harassing me over it? I am not accusing anyone of anything but it sure seems really curious.

I also have to have a racially non-discriminatory policy (which is pretty much a duh) and this requires me to publish such information in a newspaper or other such publication where people from all economic groups can read this policy. They also want any advertisements, catalogs or brochures dealing with student admissions. Someone at the IRS has THIS MUCH time on his hands? They want to read through anything I have published for the school?

There are MANY more things that I must send to them including position descriptions, methodology in determining prices charged, the content for all guest speakers, and it goes on and on. All by April 1st.

These are the people now in charge of our health care. Great!

Field Trips

2010-03-24T20:01:00.003-04:00

Don't we love field trips? The kids get to be involved and really learn stuff! A school in Minnesota loves field trips as well. These middle school kids went to the state government offices and PROTESTED against welfare reform. Here they were, 11 to 13 years old, protesting with signs and slogans at the capitol, as a field trip. The parents did not know exactly what was going to happen, allegedly. Interesting. This is not learning so much as indoctrination. Please, do you think most of those kids knew what they were actually doing? Do you think most of them even really understood the complexities of the issue? It doesn't matter what the issue, most of these kids are too interested in sports and video games than in politics at this age. Middle school kids are usually too young to really understand the social complexities of politics. Sure there are some really politically aware young students but ALL of them?

Please click on the article and video here:

Minnesota Middle School Field Trip

Disturbing

2010-03-11T09:24:00.004-05:00

My friend over at My Foil Hat had a disturbing post regarding her teenage son and his new part time job. As a homeschooling parent I understand that a homeschooled kid, especially one taking Dual Enrollment classes at the local community college, will have different "school hours" than a teenager who attends a public high school. We tend to forget that a lot of people do not understand homeschooling AT ALL! I guess these people think that we "start school" at 8 AM, take a bathroom break after a couple hours, then maybe a lunch break at noon to finish school by 2 PM. Wow. I doubt there are many homeschoolers who follow this schedule, ever! Unless maybe it was a total coincidence! Education can occur AT ANY TIME OF DAY! This may come as a total shock to many people out there but kids CAN LEARN even in the evening! (Yes I am being snarky here.)

Amy's son was given some paperwork (we are in Florida) to fill out as a home schooled kid as part of his usual work paperwork. Luckily his very smart mom READ it all! One of the things that she needed to sign had something to do with her son being a "Disconnected Youth." Huh? Turns out that this is part of a government program to help at-risk youth (defined as ages 16-24) and gives the employer some of our stimulus money. Nice.

Read Amy's total post here:
MOM-dar

I was pretty upset as it appeared that the employer found a way to cash in on some stimulus money but Amy then added this post:
Thinking

She felt as though the person was simply ignorant about homeschooling someone who is 16 or over. I may not be as convinced, but then again, I can see conspiracy theories as plausible sometimes. :)

Please read the above posts as I am not sure, and neither was Amy, how this would affect her son later in life once labeled as a "disconnected youth." Parents, please read ALL paperwork even those you do NOT need to sign! Our kids are just that, kids, and are probably more trusting than is totally safe these days!

Long Time No Post

2010-03-09T18:42:00.004-05:00

Well my posting has slowed to a crawl and then a stop! Life has this way of insinuating itself into well, LIFE! I have been dealing with small issues that have conspired to keep me from my blog posting.

I am almost 51 years old with children who are almost 25 and almost 22. (ALL of our birthdays are in April!) I also have parents who are 81. This puts me in that category of the "sandwich generation" being sandwiched between having a "child" that I am still responsible for, and having parents that I am also responsible for. Not complaining but sometimes these responsibilities keep me hopping and then I just don't feel like posting on my blog. My brain is empty and I want to chill with a book! My dad had a cancer on his ear which the dermatologists office blew way out of proportion. Yeah I know he had a melanoma several years ago, but jeez don't scare the old folks (and their family members) until we know what we are dealing with!

Turns out to be an aggressive, but not too bad skin cancer but it had to go fairly quickly. Dad goes to the pre-surgery stuff and they discover an irregular heart beat. OK great! He never felt a thing! After several days in the hospital with every non-invasive test for the heart, they shocked him (not with the bill, Medicare, remember?) with an electric shock to get the heart rhythm back to normal. It worked just fine! While he was there though, they discovered his sleep apnea that we ALL KNEW HE HAD! Come on, Dad! That snoring HAS to be sleep apnea since we can hear you stop breathing! I blew the whistle on him so they were listening for it in the hospital! Ha! He had a sleep study. Then he had the surgery on his ear. Poor Dad never really had a lot of problems. My mom, yes, but Dad? Heck no! I go with my parents to nearly all doctor appointments since they can't always remember what the doctor tells them. Sometimes I don't remember either! Next up, a C-Pap machine for the apnea. Turns out, sleep apnea can cause heart arrhythmia.

We also have a new puppy that keeps me hopping! He is sweet and growing fast! He was such a little guy but in two months he is like a teenager in the dog world.

This has been my life. Nothing serious, really, but enough to keep me on my toes. I WILL be posting more here soon!

Natural Math

2010-02-02T14:25:00.005-05:00

"I love algebra! It is like a puzzle!" A friend of mine once told me this several years ago. Do you think her algebra teacher loved the subject? You bet! Math is a 4-letter word to some people (well it IS a 4-letter word, after all) me included! My math teachers basically just said, "this is how it is, I can't tell you WHY!" I think the WHY is way more important than the end result. My daughter's 5th and 6th grade Catholic school math teacher taught math one way. If your student had a hard time understanding it she would, very nicely, stay after school to go over it. The exact same way! Isn't that the definition of insanity? Seriously, these poor kids just never got it, over and over again. The teacher never understood that she was the problem.

Now, if you are a homeschool parent, then YOU are the teacher. Which leads me to the point of the post. Research the math before you have your kids learn it! Math is basically a series of relationships and patterns. That's it! Like a game, math also has rules. Approach math in this way and it won't seem so scary! (scary to you and your child!) I never liked math but I always did "ok" in it. The reason? I have a pretty good memory. By memorizing the math "facts" and the rules, you can get the correct answer. But, is this really learning? I never learned the relationships and patterns that make up what we call "math." Fast forward to our homeschooling days, and I was forced to see that math is actually these patterns and relationships! This was my "a-ha" moment! Did this realization make me want to run right out and take a college math course? NO, but I feel much more secure in my math abilities.

Take a look at this website for some natural math learning ideas. These are great for both parent and child!

Learning Math Naturally

Cooking for Science and Math

2010-01-31T18:45:00.003-05:00

My last post was all about sourdough baking and making a sourdough starter. Pretty cool stuff and my starter has made some great bread for me! Gets me thinking about cooking as science, since it IS science!

Here is an interesting link: Science of Cooking

Looks like a lot of cool ideas! This website can keep you in science experiments for a long time!

Many of you will see the science in cooking, but where is the math? Have you ever tried to halve a recipe? Or maybe double it? If you are doubling a recipe and it calls for 3/4 cups of flour, how much flour do you need? These are all valid math "problems" all in the guise of simply cooking!

What if cooking is not really for you? You can use cup measures and spoon measures with water to show the relationships in the fractions. Take the same "problem" above but use water to figure it out. A large liquid measure and a couple small ones would work wonders! Your child can fill the smaller liquid measure to 3/4 and then pour into the larger one, then do 3/4 again. She will see that she gets 1 1/2 cups of liquid. This is ALL math! Design a math and science program using cooking!

Sourdough Bread "Experiment"

2010-01-24T09:38:00.008-05:00

Here is a great experiment or science project!

Sourdough bread:

First, you must start out by making a "starter" for the sourdough. This allows you to make bread with NO packaged yeast because you are using the natural yeasts found on the flour and in the air. It may sound gross, but who doesn't like a nice San Francisco sourdough? (ok, my son doesn't like it but he is weird!)

To make the starter you must have a clean jar, like a Ball jar, with a lid. Poke a hole in the lid so the gasses leftover from fermentation can escape. Now add about 1 cup flour and about 2/3 cup of warm, not hot, water. Stir it up and put the lid on. Place the jar someplace warm, between 70 and 80 degrees. See photo at top.

After a while the starter will start to ferment. See second photo.

Every day remove about half of the starter, then add 1/2 cup flour and about 1/4 cup warm water and stir. Replace the lid and set in a warm place. Do this every day at about the same time. After a few days to a week you should be getting some nice fermentation and the sourdough smell.

To make bread, pour all of the starter into a bowl and add one cup flour and one cup of warm water. Let this bowl sit with a dish cloth over it until it turns bubbly. It can take up to 8 hours so check on it every so often. In the meantime wash and dry the jar and lid for the starter.

When the bowl of starter is bubbly, you can remove about 2 cups into another large bowl. The remaining starter goes back into the jar with a half cup of flour and 1/4 cup of warm water stirred in. You can place the starter into the refrigerator and now feed it once a week.

Add about 4 tablespoons of butter, melted, a teaspoon of salt, 4 teaspoons of sugar and about 3 cups of flour to the 2 cups of starter in your bowl. Add the flour 1/2 cup at a time stirring well after each addition. You want a pretty dense dough. Knead the dough adding flour if necessary. Allow this to rise until double in size and again, this can take several hours. Knock the dough down and knead again, adding flour if the dough is not firm. Form into a round and place on a greased cookie sheet. Allow the dough to rise again for about an hour. Bake in a 350 degree oven until the top is browned and sounds hollow when you rap on it.

The photo of the finished bread shows what happens when the dough is not dense enough! A sourdough pancake! The flavor is there, though, so I will just make a better loaf next time!

Resources:
Sourdough Bread: How to Begin

How to Make San Francisco Sourdough

Why Families Home School

2010-01-22T19:48:00.002-05:00

My friend, Ami (using her online persona name), writes a pretty funny, informative and otherwise interesting blog. She is a homeschooling mom of two kids. Her recent post, We're Quitters Here, sums up how I feel about homeschooling kids. She writes far better than I ever could, despite my BA in English, and certainly sums up homeschooling so well!

Please take a look at her blog and read the post HERE.

Homeschooling and Sports

2010-01-18T13:17:00.003-05:00

I have not covered sports while homeschooling in this blog. Here is an article about a group of mostly home educated kids in Mississippi who just want to play football. They have a team and play against the private schools but are not funded except through whatever the parents can scrape together. The story of Tim Tebow, a homeschooled young man who went on to become one of the best players at University of Florida has the homeschooled community looking for state laws to change to allow these students to play on high school teams. He is from Florida and played for a public school. Floridian homeschooled students are lucky that Florida allows these kids to play sports on their teams. Sadly, the college football coaches look to high school football teams to make scholarship offers so students from other states are at a disadvantage.

If your student is interested in sports in high school, many states force the family to choose between home education or attending the local public high school in order to play.

Please read the article here:

Homeschooled players Fighting for Access

There are many other sports that homeschooled students can participate in that do not require a high school team but football seems to be one that does.

Really Funny Video

2010-01-17T10:56:00.001-05:00

As a cat lover and former "owner" (does one ever really own a cat?) of two cats I found this to be hysterical! You have to watch it through as it gets funnier! If you know anything at all about cats you can usually figure that they HATE the water!

Oregon School bans Service Dog

2010-01-12T16:46:00.003-05:00

This one seems pretty sad to me. A county school district in Oregon has banned an autistic child's service dog from the classroom. Now this is a very expensive and TRAINED service dog that has been trained to help calm autistic children. Why on earth would the school ban this dog? Would they ban a blind student's service dog? Wouldn't this dog make the teacher's life easier?

I cannot understand government school regulations sometimes and this is certainly one of those times.

Read the article here:

Service Dog Banned From Classroom

New Year Greetings!

2010-01-01T19:28:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year! Here's hoping that 2010 is a great year for everyone!

The school is up and running with all paperwork filed and finished! The old lawyer is gone and a new company is helping with everything! Yippee!

Please take a look at my older posts concerning:

Dual Enrollment

AP Classes

Beginning Homeschooling

Read the posts from the bottom up since that is the way they make sense.

Happy Holidays

2009-12-15T13:33:00.009-05:00

Just wanted to say "Happy Holidays" from Preferred Learning Academy! Hanukkah, Christmas, Winter Solstice (Yule), Kwanzaa, whatever your holiday this December through January, please stay safe and be happy!

Here are some stories about these holidays! Click on the name to get the interesting story behind the holiday!

Hanukkah

Christmas

Yule

Kwanzaa

Parents Suing School System

2009-12-07T16:30:00.002-05:00

This falls under the category of "wow". While I find parents demanding accountability something to applaud, I rethought my opinion after reading the article. These parents in Orange County, FL, are suing because their kids are not getting the best education. Heck. I could have told them that! One reason we homeschooled our kids! The reason that the parents claim that the education is substandard is due to the amount of money spent per child. OK, hold on now! What? Parents are demanding that Florida, and Orange County specifically, spend more money per child in school. Where do they think this is going to come from? Pulling it out of our collective a--'s?

Read the article HERE

Do these people know where the government money comes from? Is it a total mystery? I know I have an economist son, but please! TAXES! Yup, it is OUR money that the government so freely spends. "Shouldn't we spend it on the CHILDREN??" Of course, but what OTHER program would you like to cut? Programs for the blind? Old people? People with disabilities? The library? Hell no! No one wants to cut anything but the government needs to spend more? More what? More of the taxpayers money! There is only ONE pie (represented as the tax money) and it can only be sliced in different ways. We can't make more pie.

Unless....well we could start having a state income tax! Sure, just like every other state except for a few, like Florida! Everyone would love that! How many people move to FL, TN, TX, AK, NH or NV because of the lack of a state income tax? I know it was one reason we stayed here in FL.

The article goes on to say that per student spending here in FL is pretty low, but we also have no state income tax. Our property taxes are fairly low as well. My house in Lake County, FL is taxed about $2,200 a year while my sister's smaller house on a smaller property has taxes nearing $10,000 a year! We are talking apples and oranges here.

What is the answer? Well, homeschooling and private schools, which are not for everyone I know or maybe throw the doors open to all schools and parents pick where they want their kids to go. Let the per-child money follow the child to any school. We'll see the public schools scramble to offer up some better options then! Nothing like a little, dare I say it? Competition!

Shoulder/Neck Injury

2009-12-03T13:28:00.004-05:00

Well I have injured my shoulder. "fun"

The shoulder has been hurting on and off for a while starting with certain moves with free weights. Started out that I could no longer do rows with the weights. Then other exercises started hurting as well until I was left with nothing for the upper body at all. I decided I had better see a doctor. Physical therapy has helped some but I am still in pain from my shoulder blade, up around the shoulder, then up my neck into a headache. I just love headaches. sigh

The doctor has ordered an MRI and for a claustrophobic like me, that is killer! Luckily there will be Valium. The whole thing will take about two hours although I will be in the machine for about half an hour, out again for a dye injection, then back in for the shoulder. We shall see what I can take. I figure that my main concern right now is the cervical spine, and if that gets done the shoulder may have to wait until I can screw up my courage and do it again! As long as I know one way or another if I have a herniated disc in my neck, then the shoulder may wait. Physical therapy should help.

Typing for long periods irritates the stupid shoulder so I have not been keeping up with the blog as much as I would like to!

I'll be back soon with more education posts!!

OK after looking for pictures of the exact MRI machine I will be in, I discover this photo. That guy looks to outweigh me by quite a bit and it doesn't look that bad! I am a total weenie!

Go Parents!!

2009-11-29T08:31:00.002-05:00

This little video from ReasonTV shows what parents can do against a HUGE school district! As a home schooling mom I certainly would rather home school my kids but I also know it is not for everyone or even possible for some. In those cases, choices are what this country is all about! Listen to the teachers union guy. I mean, really, is that all you got to go against parents? No wonder it passed!

Funny!

2009-11-25T14:37:00.002-05:00

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

Tough Day

2009-11-23T10:04:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-15T11:49:00.006-05:00

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

2009-11-02T18:46:00.003-05:00

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

2009-10-31T12:12:00.005-04:00

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

2009-10-27T08:12:00.003-04:00

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

2009-10-23T18:49:00.003-04:00

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.

Shoulder Injury Ouch!

2009-10-20T18:54:00.002-04:00

Well, I have a nasty shoulder injury. It stinks. It all started a couple years ago when I was going to personal training and had some problems with a certain machine. Trainer said we'd use something else to get the same result. No problem. Then, when I realized that I was paying him to simply count repetitions with me, I stopped the training and was doing it in my own at the gym and suddenly one of the moves with the free weights started my shoulder "clicking." At this point it didn't hurt but felt weird.

Over the last year different exercises started making my shoulder hurt. I slowly dropped most of the upper body stuff I was doing. Damn, my arm muscles looked good, too! Now, they are back to the "bat wings" of a sedentary 50 year old.

This past weekend really capped it. I have NO idea what I did but now I can't move my right arm without stabbing pain. Crap! I am, of course, right-handed and I drive a stick. Fun. I hate asking people to help me with stuff and, frankly, people (meaning my family members) hate doing stuff for me that I normally do myself. No one else understands how to DO WHAT I DO! :) Ever notice that? "Can you please get that pot out of the cabinet?" "Just a minute." Wait, I want it out now, I'll just get it myself. Yeah, well, that's not happening anymore.

Through most of my kids lives my hubby traveled for work. He would be away for a week or two at a time and then turn around and head out again after a few days. It was weird and difficult but I learned how to handle pretty much everything on my own. Yes, even getting that HUGE palmetto bug (roach that flies and is the size of a mouse) that was on the wall right above my bed! I love my vacuum. So now his job keeps him home in our home office. I love having him home but I am used to doing stuff myself. I hate asking for help. He does it willingly and would rather I didn't hurt myself more. But it is weird for me to ask. I also whine a lot. Poor hubby!

I see the specialist next Tuesday which seems like forever! I looked him up on RateMDs and he had the highest rating for an orthopedic doctor. You have to check this website out. Very cool and they have a link on the doctor's page to the medical board in his state. You can check if he has had any, umm, "problems" in the past. You can see where he went to school, where he has worked and see those pesky problems. Cool site! I know the rating site is not scientific, but so far, it has been very helpful to me and my family.

Finally Fall here in Florida!

2009-10-17T15:42:00.004-04:00

We are finally having some cooler weather here in central Florida. I was really getting tired of the 90 degree weather. All the windows are open to let in the cooler breezes! It is in the mid-70's here which is not exactly cool for some people, but for Floridians, it is awesome! The family will all come over this evening for dinner and some spiced cider. Sure it is a little warm for this for MOST people, but not for us!

While we were up North a couple of weeks ago we bought some mulling spices that are in the form of tea bags. How easy is that? You take your old (or new) coffee urn, put apple cider where the water goes and then the mulling spice "tea bags" where the coffee would go, and voila! You have spiced cider after it percolates! Yummy! I am making something with apples (we bought a bushel while up there as well) and pecans. Thinking about making apple crisp again, but with pecans. I made it last weekend since it is my son's favorite apple dessert.

I'll keep the windows open and let the cool air in so we can feel like it is actually Fall here! We are coming into the best time if year. THIS is why I live in Florida!

College is not for Everyone

2009-10-13T22:01:00.004-04:00

I know, the title of this post is crazy, right? College, not for everyone?? Are you joking?

No, I am not joking. Seriously, there are some really good options out there for young people that are NOT college options. College here would mean a four-year university degree. Well, trade schools are an option which is still schooling, but the students there get good hands on experience which, face it, college just does not provide. My husband and I are both college grads (BA degrees from a NY State university), my daughter has two BS degrees from Florida State and my son is a senior at University of Central Florida and will receive his BS degree in economics in May. (difference between a BS degree and a BA degree in these cases is the foreign language requirement in college) Obviously my family enjoys college. However, there are a lot of other options out there that parents need to consider.

1. Firefighter school - Check out this website - Fire Academy
2. Police Officer - Orange County Sheriff's Dept. - Police Officer
Requires two years of preparation, must be 20 years old.
Salary? $37, 000 - $38, 000.
Not too shabby!
3. Technical School Programs - These take a LOT less time, and money! Check out
Orlando tech
4. A.S. Degree Programs - A 2-year degree that moves the student right into the work force.
Here are the programs at Valencia. Valencia A.S. Degrees Watch out for pre-requisites that
can take a lot of time! The Nursing Degree, while fantastic, can take 4 or more years!

Students can also get a job locally and move on up the ladder without a college degree. If your student is artistic he can also go out on his own with freelance photography and art. Think outside of the box. If your student is not into getting a four-year degree, then please find other options! You can lead a kid to college but you can't MAKE his pass!

Sometimes a student needs more time to decide. Give him that time! He can do a lot of other things. Check this out: Seth Godin
Seth Godin has some amazing ideas for marketing both yourself and your products. Please read this post. If your student needs more time to figure stuff out, there are some great ideas in that post to keep him moving forward.

My son's good friend was an indifferent public high school student. Maybe indifferent is a little better than the reality. He graduated from high school, started working at a fast food place and tried to decide what to do. In January he decided to start at the community college. Still a bit of an indifferent student but decided to make a go of it. Two years later he has graduated with an A.A. degree and is now at the university. He would like to get a Ph.D. How is that for waiting to decide? Had he started right out of high school I am not sure he would still be in school now.

As a homeschooling family you get to know your child very well. Come on Mom and Dad, you know if your kid is not really into college. You also know if he really would rather be an artist, firefighter, police officer, well, you get the picture!

Reform School or Home School

2009-10-12T15:36:00.002-04:00

I came across this article which seems so absurd to me that I just can't wrap my head around the idiocy. A six year old brings his new set of fork, spoon and KNIFE that he recently got for a Boy Scout camping trip to school so he could use them for lunch. Boy gets expelled with the options of REFORM school for 45 days or home school. What the hell is wrong with these people? I mean, come ON, take it away until the end of the school day, or better yet, have Mom come in to pick it up and get "the lecture" about zero tolerance. But REFORM school for a six-year-old? Does anyone else think that MAYBE that would be a far worse option?

One of the saddest things about this case is that the parents want to PUT HIM BACK IN SCHOOL! They are petitioning the school to take him back. Sigh. They are already homeschooling the child rather than reform school but to want to send him BACK? I cannot even imagine what his "permanent record" will look like. Also, he will always be "that kid" who was expelled for a KNIFE! Don't they realize that this will follow him throughout his school career?

These parents need to think long and hard about having that little incident hanging over his head. Could this impact college admissions? Seriously he would be "that kid" who brought a KNIFE to school. Home schooling him the rest of the way through would give them the opportunity to erase this.

Click below for the NY Times article:

It's a Fork, It's a Spoon, It's a ... Weapon?

This is just my opinion and I do NOT know the homeschooling laws in Delaware.

Choosing to Homeschool

2009-10-11T10:00:00.003-04:00

I know it is a difficult decision for many people. Do we homeschool, use a private school or public school? We've done all three. Here is what we found:

Public school in Virginia was pretty good. My daughter had Kindergarten and 1/2 of first grade there. I liked the school and the methods, except for teaching reading, but my daughter was reading by the time she got to school anyway. They were into "whole language" which pretty much did not work very well for most of the kids. Public school in Florida was a nightmare. Which brings us to.....

Private school in Florida was OK. They went to the Catholic school and actually had a good education there. for a while. They did with 30 kids per classroom what the public school could not do with 20. However, they also were still into "speed drills" for math and had some teachers who were just not very good and perhaps not really qualified to teach. But they were Catholic, as though that made up for the rest. Sigh. My kids got to be abused while we paid for it.

Which brings us to why we homeschooled. I pulled them out of the Catholic school after seeing the harm that was happening to my kids. Frankly, my daughter did fine there for the most part, but she was getting to the teen years and I could see the writing on the wall. My son had an abusive 3rd grade teacher who did not like his auditory learning style and was not compassionate about his hereditary dyslexia. She was totally toxic and completely changed him after all of the abuse. He got good grades, was a quiet and obedient kid, but she just could not stand him for some reason. Luckily she only taught one more year then retired. I do not wish her luck in her retirement. My son had vision therapy and reads all the time now with no problems. Duh. Here was a woman who clearly hated kids and mostly hated the boys, so why on earth was she teaching? Why on earth did they continue to allow her to teach?

My kids ASKED us to homeschool them. We had talked about it for about a year and they made the decision. Every year after that I would ask if they wanted to go back to school and every year they said NO. My hubby was a little worried that having the kids competing for my attention all day would send me to the looney bin, but it turns out that they never had to compete for my attention. They always had my attention.

Our homeschooling started out relaxed and then turned completely to unschooling. It worked. If you allow kids to get educated the way they want to, they WILL get educated. I thought my son would never learn how to spell. Guess what? Once he was in chat rooms online all the time, he learned how to spell. His desire to NOT look stupid was greater than his laziness about spelling. That pretty much sums up unschooling. Desire. If they desire something, they will work towards it!

Anniversary

2009-10-10T10:45:00.003-04:00

Today is our 28th anniversary! Where did the time go? I still feel like I am 22 years old but it would be hard to explain the 24 year old daughter and the 21 year old son. Hubby has one of our favorite jazz albums on now which really brings us back. It is not available on CD, so, yes, we are listening to something on vinyl. :)

The picture is from our trip up North last year. I don't have any of our wedding pictures in digital format.

Money to Pass the AP Test, Huh?

2009-10-09T08:26:00.004-04:00

OK, you all know I am not a complete fan of AP (Advanced Placement) classes for high school students. There are generally better ways to get the college credits, in my opinion, especially in the state of Florida. In an article from The New York Times I see that some New York City high schools, both public and private, are now offering up to $1000 to students to pass the AP exam.

What? We now have to give a monetary incentive to students to do well on the tests? What happened to "do your best?" I mean really! Sheesh! The schools get money for every student taking the course. The teachers get money for every student who passes the AP exam with a 3 or higher. Now the students must get paid in order to do well? What the heck is wrong with this picture?!

Don't you think that MAYBE the teachers should want to teach the course properly in the first place, the schools would offer the AP option as just another public school class, and that students would try their hardest to do well on the test? Am I in dreamland? Are we raising a generation of "gimme, gimme" adults here looking for monetary compensation for a normal job well done? If all of your paperwork is finished on time, do you get a cash bonus? If you get your normal job done do you expect to get a little extra in your paycheck?

We are raising kids into adulthood expecting compensation that would normally be considered "just part of the job, ma'am."

Read the article here: New York Times
(click on the above link for the article)

Just Signed up for Twitter!

2009-10-08T18:53:00.001-04:00

The Homeschool Radical is now on Twitter! Send me your Tweets and read mine here!

HSRadical on Twitter!!

(Click on the above link)

Funny Video About Homeschoolers and the Homeschooled

2009-10-07T09:43:00.001-04:00

I saw this video on Facebook. If you home school your kids or are a home schooled student you should find this pretty funny! This kid is a riot and very creative!

Vacation and Presentation Update

2009-09-23T19:32:00.005-04:00

Just wanted to remind everyone that I will be giving a presentation about Dual Enrollment and College Admissions on Tuesday the 6th of October at 7PM.

The Cameo at Misty Forest
1013 East Colonial Drive (near Mills Ave.)
Orlando, FL 32803

(click the above for map)

I will be on vacation from September 24th through October 5th but of course my phone is always with me as well as the computer!

You can always reach me at: 407-484-0457
Preferred Learning Academy
karen@preferredlearningacademy.com

If you have questions please feel free to call and e-mail!

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

2009-09-21T13:18:00.003-04:00

Someone asked me how I felt about The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Frankly I had never heard of it so I had to do some research. This is something that the UN has been working on for a long time and I suppose it has now come back into vogue. Here is the TEXT of the bill. Basically it is a childhood bill of rights that includes the right to have a childhood and it has been written in response to countries that exploit children. Of course it all sounds good. Heck, who doesn't want children to have rights? Who wants children to be exploited, harmed, overworked and underrepresented? NO one does!

The problem I have with it is two-fold. First, if our government passes this legislation, basically following the rules of the UN, then what happens to the Constitution? The US, IMO, should not be following other forms of government. Period. If we want to legislate something, then we should do it through our own laws. The second problem I have with this has to do with the language of the legislation. If you read the TEXT of the UN Right of the Child you can see that it is extremely vague. Some people have interpreted the vagueness as a threat to homeschooling. I can see where they are coming from. Articles 28 and 29 in the TEXT refer to education. Again, kinda vague. Here is an article referring to the possible threat to home education:
United Nations Children'ss Treaty

No one wants deplorable conditions for children. I mean really, that is just inhumane to think otherwise. However, not only is the language a bit vague, but how will it be enforced? Every "state" will have a committee that is elected to make the specific rules for that "state." BUT how will it be enforced? Will the UN make the United States the policeman to the Children's Treaty? I sure hope not! Will the UN troops enforce this? If so, who gets to pay for it? The US pays the bulk of the expenses for the UN as it is.

These questions need to be answered first before anything is passed. I seriously doubt it will pass anything since this has been around a long time already.

A School Library Without Books, What?

2009-09-18T08:47:00.003-04:00

I came across this article and did a little research. Interesting, no books but a cafe with an expensive espresso machine. Huh?

It seems that Cushing Academy, a prep school in CT, decided that paper books were like ancient scrolls and too outdated. They have decided to transform their library into a media center with Kindle-type readers, computers, TVs and, of course, fancy coffee. How sad for those kids! Their website says that they are not going bookless, they are just offering books in electronic media. I find it difficult to curl up in bed with my computer. You know, all those wires, the mouse, the monitor...they all get in the way! What happens when a student needs to bring a book home? They are to use their computers instead. As a prep school I suppose every student has a nice computer, but how can they do this? I mean, really!

Here is the Cushing Academy website: Cushing Academy Library
Here is an article from the Boston Globe: Welcome to the Library, Say Goodbye to the Books

The tactile sensation of holding a book and turning the pages is all part of the experience of reading. They are portable and easy to pop in your purse (if you have one) or even your briefcase. You can read in bed without being all wired up. There is no annoying glare while trying to read as there is when reading something from electronic media.

It sounds as though this school has stock in Kindle, or they are just trying to be a New Age school appealing to the cappucino buying parents who send kids to a "prep school" to appear high class while hoping their kids make good "contacts" for later in life. Learning be damned!

Dual Enrollment/College Admissions Presentation

2009-09-16T23:12:00.002-04:00

You are invited to a presentation about Dual Enrollment and College Admissions!

Tuesday, October 6th
7:00 - 9:00 PM

I was the dual enrollment advisor at Valencia Community College and now am director for Preferred Learning Academy, a private school for homeschoolers!

The presentation will be here: (click to see the map)

The Cameo at Misty Forest
1013 East Colonial Drive (near Mills Ave.)
Orlando, FL 32803

Bring your teens! Ask your questions!

This is for parents of students in late middle school and high school. Start planning now for your child's Dual Enrollment!

Vacation Coming Up!

2009-09-16T08:19:00.002-04:00

I will be vacationing later on this month. We are visiting the family up North and then maybe a short trip to Vermont. I miss the Fall weather living down here in Florida and, to me, the weather should be cool right about now. Uh huh, yeah. It is usually still in the 90's here during September and then in the upper 80's for October. No crisp cool mornings for us! Those will arrive in December. This is the time of year when I really miss New York weather. Of course come January when they have icky ice and snow I stop missing it completely.

My husband, who is 51 years old, actually still has a grandmother living in PA. We will visit there since it has been way too long since he saw her! She will be 99, I think, come November. Damn! I feel terribly that we just don't make that trip up there. My grandfather lived to 100 in fairly good health and now my husband's grandmother appears to be doing the same. We gave our kids some damn fine genes! (Shh, we won't talk about the strokes, heart attacks and cancers in the family!) Here's hoping they inherited both of their great grandparents genes!

If anyone still needs questions answered, either about the school or anything else, please feel free to call the school number as it is a cell phone and comes with me everywhere! I will have the laptop and phone so what else do I need?

Preferred Learning Academy - Link to the school with the phone number! Watch the video and see what all the fuss is about!

Dual Enrollment Information - LSCC

2009-09-09T13:29:00.003-04:00

The Dual Enrollment manager at Lake Sumter Community College called me back and I found out the "rules" for Dual Enrollment.

1. Must be in 9th grade or higher
2. Must pass the CPT with the below scores:
English - 83
Reading - 83
Math - 72 (to take MAT1033C - Intermediate Algebra, an elective)
95 (to take MAC1105 - College Algebra)
Please check the Dual Enrollment Manual for SAT and ACT scores that could take the place of the CPT.
3. Must have a 3.0 high school GPA
4. May take 12 college credits per semester and more after successful completion of the first two semesters
5. Dual Enrollment students may not take LSCC online courses

Please check out their Dual Enrollment Manual for more information!

Renting College Text Books

2009-09-08T15:36:00.004-04:00

My friend over at My Foil Hat has alerted me to something pretty cool! College Text Book rentals! There were two sites that I found: Book Renter and Chegg. They both rent college texts and costs vary. My son looked up his Economics text for his Game Theory class and found that the used books at the university were pretty close to the rental price on one of these sites. It's a very specialized course so I am not surprised. He also looked up his text for his Econometrics class and found that renting was MUCH cheaper! Econometrics is a pretty popular and important class for both economics and finance majors.

My thought is that the more mainstream the course the cheaper the rental book may be. Just a thought.

I am not endorsing either of these places since I have never used them myself and I don't know anyone who has used them. The prices sure beat buying the text at the college bookstore! For parents of students who have not been to college yet, text books will give you sticker shock! MOST texts will run over $100! Multiply that by 4 courses for a full load and you already have your sticker shock!

Thanks, Amy, for the information!

High School. Schedule part 2

2009-09-05T21:23:00.003-04:00

The last post had a high school schedule for an 11th grade student who was going to full-time dual enroll at the local community college. This next schedule would be for the student who did not want to dual enroll full-time or in the case of a Valencia Community College student, who did not pass one of the segments of the CPT.

This is for an 11th grade student who has passed the English CPT scores but not the Math. (Both of my kids did not pass the math portion the first time around)

English - ENC1101 - Freshman Composition I - Fall semester
ENC1102 - Freshman Composition II - Spring semester
Math - Algebra or Geometry - Florida Virtual School (I recommend boning up on the basic Algebra I course through the Virtual School then retake the CPT, SAT or ACT)
Science - BSC1005C - This is a biology with lab for non-majors - Fall semester
AST1000, BSC1050 or ESC1000 - Science with no lab
Social Studies - POS2041 - Fall semester
PSY1012 - Spring semester

This would give the student 9 or 10 college credits per semester and allow her to study for the CPT math. Again, this 11th grade student will be finished with the English requirement for high school and have 1 1/2 credits of science, the half credit of American government and then the half credit of elective with the psychology.

If Your Child KNOWS What he Wants!
If your student KNOWS he wants to be a doctor, then you need an advisor to get the best selection of courses from the community college and dual enrollment! For example, he would need:
BSC1010C - Biology I
BSC1011C - Biology II
CHM1045C - General Chem with Qualatative Analysis I
CHM1046C - General Chem with Qualatative Analysis II
PHY1048C - General Physics with Calculus I
MAC2311 - Calculus with Analytical Geometry I
MAC2312 - Calculus with Analytical Geometry II
STA2033 - Statistical Methods

Plenty of courses! However, he can get his AA degree in General Studies and still get in all of these courses, plus everything else required for the AA! That's what MY job is! As your high school advisor I can also advise about college and the optimal use of Dual Enrollment!

High School Schedule

2009-09-05T20:07:00.002-04:00

Many people have asked about an example of a high school schedule. Here is an example for a college bound student in 11th grade using Dual Enrollment. I am assuming that the student passed the English and Math portions of the CPT. (Computerized Placement Test used by community colleges)

English: ENC1101 - Freshman Composition I - Fall Semester
ENC1102 - Freshman Composition II - Spring Semester
Math: MAC1105 - College Algebra - Fall Semester
STA2023 - Statistical Methods - Spring Semester (This would be for the student who either is not sure about his major or is interested in a major in business or social sciences)
Social Studies: POS2041 - US Government - Fall Semester
PSY1012 - General Psychology - Spring Semester
Science BSC1005C - Bio for non-majors with lab - Fall Semester
or
BSC1010C - Bio for majors with lab - Fall Semester
AST1000, BSC1050 or ESC1000 - (Astronomy, Environmental Science, Earth Science) These will have no lab and satisfy a science requirement. This is for a non-science major.

This is a full-time schedule with 12 or13 college credits per semester. This is how the credits will fall for high school:
ENC1101 = 1 credit of English
ENC1102 = 1 credit of English
MAC1105 = 1 credit of Math
STA2023 = 1 credit of Math
POS2041 = 1/2 credit of American Government
PSY1012 = 1/2 credit of elective
BSC1005C or BSC1010C = 1 credit of science
AST1000, BSC1050 or ESC1000 = 1/2 credit of science (no lab)

Your student now has two years of English out of the way, two years of math out of the way and a year and a half of science out of the way. He also has the US Government out of the way. If he started as a Junior, he is now finished with High School English and High School math assuming he has taken the English and Math in Freshman and Sophomore years. This frees up his time to take more college courses in the Summer semester and then Fall and Spring of his Senior year!

Still Waiting

2009-09-03T19:24:00.003-04:00

Today was a day of calling and leaving messages. I left messages for two community college Dual Enrollment coordinators, the Florida Department of Education and e-mailed (no phone number was given) another Dual Enrollment coordinator at another community college. Guess which one actually called me back?

Yup! The Florida Department of Education! Amazing! They called me back within about a half hour! My question was answered, the problem is going to be fixed and that's it! For some reason my school did not make it onto the private schools list on the FLDOE school choice website. Problem solved!

Now, if the community college people would kindly call or e-mail me back I can answer some questions here about Dual Enrollment rules.

Local Community College Dual Enrollment Rules

2009-09-02T21:57:00.003-04:00

OK, here we go!

I have been to the local Central Florida community college websites and found information about Dual Enrollment (or Early College). Each community college has some leeway when it comes to admission policies.

Valencia Community College - This is where I used to work so I know the ins and outs here. The rules:
1. Must be 16 and Junior in high school (rising Junior is OK, Summer Term B after 10th grade)
2. Must have a 3.0 unweighted cumulative GPA (basically a B student)
3. Must take the SAT, ACT or CPT test (they must have test scores in the system)
That's the basic rules. At Valencia a student does not need college level test scores in order to Dual Enroll. Even if a student has low test scores he can still take courses that are NOT English or Math.

Lake-Sumter Community College -
1. Must be a high school Freshman, Sophomore, Junior or Senior
2. Must take the SAT, ACT or CPT and reach COLLEGE LEVEL scores in order to Dual Enroll
3. Must have a 3.0 CGPA, unweighted
It is unclear if a student can Dual Enroll with a lower than college level test score. Two locations on the website differ.

Seminole Community College -
The website is extremely vague. I know it can be done! I will need to call them to find out the specific requirements! The website does show that DE students can register in mid-December for their courses which, sadly, would give them the bottom of the barrel. Most of the other students would already be registered for classes by this time.

Brevard Community College -
This website is also vague. I will call them as well to find the information!

Valencia allows DE students to take up to 19 credit hours per semester and the student can register at the same time as any other student.

Next post: Update on the rules for BCC and SCC and the test scores required for taking classes at each community college. (they differ somewhat!)

Dual Enrollment, Get Ready 10th Graders!

2009-09-01T12:48:00.004-04:00

After much legal wrangling and sleepless nights the school is totally READY! Hip-hip-hooray! I have a little more paperwork but it does not affect the school's day to day running. Yippee!

My plan is to have a couple seminars about home schooling in general and getting your child ready for college in particular. I can set up a room at the NEW Cooper Memorial Library on the property of Lake Sumter Community College in Clermont, Florida. I will announce this on the blog and the school website as soon as I get the Lake County Library to give me the room. I would like to set something up in Orange County and am in contact with a home school support group based there. These seminars will be recorded so I can put some of the content on my website.

If anyone is interested in attending please contact me through my school website:

Preferred Learning Academy

NOW is the time for 10th grade students and parents of 10th grade students to prepare for Dual Enrollment! Students can Dual Enroll as rising Juniors, in other words, Summer term B after they are finished with 10th grade! Valencia Community College in Orlando starts Summer registration in February! So please, please start thinking about what you will need for your student to get him ready! Budget cuts have limited the number of classes offered and new students register on a first come, first served basis after the open registration date.

My next post will have the rules and regs for Dual Enrollment admission!

Starting to Homeschool, How To

2009-08-28T13:36:00.005-04:00

Back in 1998 when we first began thinking about homeschooling I went to my trusty AOL and looked for a chat regarding homeschooling. The chat hosts were great and extremely helpful! If you are considering homeschooling here are some things you need to do.

1. Know the laws regarding homeschooling for your state. You can go to A to Z Home's Cool website and click on your state. They are listed on the left side.
2. Follow the laws. If you need to contact the school district, then do so. Usually you need a "Letter of Intent to Homeschool." In Orange County, Florida, they sent me a form letter. Orange County has a great Home School office.
3. Once you let the school district know, then you are on your way! Follow the laws.

Now what? I know many people have come into the chats, either AOL or A to Z, wondering what to do NOW? "I've pulled him from school, now what?"

First answer: CHILL! Your child will not get "behind" (whatever that means) and he WILL learn what he needs.

Well, now YOU get to decide what to do! I would suggest that you DO NOT purchase a boxed curriculum! Let me repeat this, DO NOT buy a curriculum! If your child is younger, say, 10 and under, I would do a lot of PLAY! Read a lot, play games, TALK quite a bit about everything! Explain a little about the bank (no they do not give us money, it is actually OUR money), the post office, and dry cleaners or any place you go! Take a look at my Learning Math blog post for math ideas. There are a couple other blog posts that are relevant. Also, do not underestimate DVD's from the library. Kids usually love Bill Nye for science. OR you can get videos from History Channel, TLC, PBS and Discovery channel all from your library! Pick a subject, say, Ancient Egypt. Get books and videos about that subject from the library! If you need to keep track, for a portfolio, write down all of the books read and the videos watched. If your child doesn't read yet, read books to him! Even if he does read, nothing compares to quiet time on Mom's bed listening to Mom read a book out loud. (For all of you moms out there, put some feeling into it when you are reading!)

Once your child is older, over 10 or so, then I would add some more structured education. After playing with manipulatives, counting coins and learning to write the numbers, now is the time for some simple math workbooks. You know the kind, from WalMart. Let him play with those but DO NOT force it! Make it fun. A good way to begin grammar lessons would be using Mad Libs. They are funny and fun! We did a lot of Mad Libs during long driving trips with the kids. You can explain what a verb, noun, adjective and adverb are and then you are on your way! If your kids still have questions during the game, then help! So we've covered Math, English, History and Science (don't forget Bill Nye and other videos) so what else do you need? Your child will be well-informed and ready for the middle school and high school years!

Updated Website Up and Running!

2009-08-27T07:03:00.003-04:00

My webiste has a new look! Check it out here:

Preferred Learning Academy

Many many thanks to Susan for her hard work in getting it up and running! It is difficult to get all of the segments of the site to work together and she did it! I love the stepping stones and "4 Easy Stepping Stones to Enrollment" part! She is a genius! Please take a look even if you are not from Florida because I just want to showcase what this great friend of mine can do!

Love at First Sight, Seriously

2009-08-25T21:54:00.003-04:00

OK this is not exactly about homeschooling or college admissions or dual enrollment. It IS about what happened to me my first semester in college. With many students starting college either right out from high school or even dual enrollment, I thought this may be a good idea to tell what can happen. In a good way.

I graduated from a public high school on Long Island, New York back in 1977. Doesn't seem that long ago, but hey, I don't feel 50 either! I had a boyfriend from high school who was pretty much bad news. Not sure why, but there it is. Anyway, at the end of my first week of college I met Al. Yup my hubby. My roommate and I heard Jethro Tull's "Songs From the Wood" coming from the suite down the hall and my roomie decided she HAD to meet whoever was playing that album. (back in the days of vinyl records)

Al and his roommate were there listening to said album when we waltzed into the suite and into the bedroom. Such bold girls. We talked for a while and then went on our way. Later I learned that my dear hubby thought I was a total flake. :) I guess I was, actually. He ended up coming around my room to say "Hi" quite a bit and then we started going to breakfast together. Fast forward to now, 32 years later, and we are still together. I was 18 and he was 19 when we met. My parents were thrilled that I broke up with the bad news boyfriend but not thrilled when I announced that Al and I were serious and he was "THE ONE." I was only 18. We both graduated from college before we married. An important step, I think.

We've had 32 really great years with a few times that were rough. Who knew having kids could be so stressful? Also, who knew you can't really live on love and money is pretty important? We were young. Now, we are settled and the kids are grown. We have a lot in common still and like each other's company! So, parents, when your daughter comes home from college saying that she found "THE ONE" well, he just might be! Give them a chance. You never know!

My daughter met her husband when she was 17. Sigh. History repeats itself!

Good News

2009-08-22T12:40:00.002-04:00

My son met his two roommates yesterday and they are NICE. Thank goodness! This is his last year for his undergrad degree. Next up, Master's Degree! Hard to believe.

I will be setting up some speaking engagements around central Florida regarding Dual Enrollment, College Admissions and other college-related topics. Some of them will be recorded and then on my school website. There will be more posts about this when we get closer to the actual date.

My school website is in the process of getting a new look. I revamped the fees page since it was actually pretty confusing. What, you can't read my mind? :) The page makes more sense and has more explanation. The website will also have a stepping stone-themed steps for registering.

Look for the new website soon!

Preferred Learning Academy

Back to College Time

2009-08-21T07:24:00.003-04:00

My son heads back to UCF for the Fall semester this weekend. First of all, I can't believe that he is a senior already since he is MY BABY! How can I have a baby that old? Also, how did the time move so fast? Seems like just yesterday he was 16 and heading to his first Dual Enrollment classes excited but nervous at the same time. He has been a college student, part time and full time, for five years already and he is 21.

The next two semesters are going to be brutal for him. He picked a difficult major, economics, which is mostly a form of calculus. All of the "fluffy" classes have been taken and now comes two semesters of ALL economics classes and of course all the really difficult ones. Since UCF doesn't offer all of the economics classes each semester he has had to double up on two of the most difficult classes in one semester, econometrics and reasearch methods. He also has two other classes which I believe are international trade and something else I can't remember right now. Mom is getting old I guess.

My daughter and I are moving him in to an apartment today but he won't actually fully move in until Dad can help us with some heavier stuff on Sunday. His last apartment situation was OK but his roommate was weird. Nice, but weird. He actually acted as though my son was invisible most times. Made for a lonely first year away at school. He decided to get into an apartment with three bedrooms to up his chances for meeting some nice people and it is cheaper. We like the cheaper part.

He is closing in on the last year of health insurance from us. Scary thought! He will need to find something out there in May to make up the difference. He is pretty confident that a job is out there for him but I am a worry wort.

Another Post About AP courses

2009-08-18T12:34:00.004-04:00

My AP posts have been very popular! You can look at them here:

Four Blog posts about Ap classes : Read from the bottom up, it will make more sense!

I thought I would just make a list of things to consider about AP courses.

1. Your child gets the college credit only if he passes the AP test. ONE test given ONE day. If your daughter has cramps, oh well!

2. Your child can get credit for more than one college class with one AP course, such as AP English Language, IF she passes the AP test with a 4 or 5. The highest scores. For the AP English Language example, she would get ENC1101 and ENC1102 for her year of that AP course IF she passes the one test with a 4 or 5.

3. If your child dual enrolled, she could also have ENC1101 and ENC1102 during the course of the school year as long as she passes the entire course and not just one test.

4. Some of the college courses given for AP classes are NOT OFFERED at many of the state universities! If your child attends a state university that does not offer the class, he does not get the college credit there. The same holds true for Dual Enrollment but a good DE advisor will tell you which classes will transfer to the university of your choice. Many high school counselors either do not know or will not tell parents this truth.

5. In Florida, the state universities can NOT discriminate against Dual Enrollment courses for admission consideration. If your child has AP English Language and passes the test with a 3, the university MUST gauge it the same as your child taking ENC1101 for Dual Enrollment.

6. Dual Enrollment classes have the same weight as AP classes on a high school transcript.

I hope many of you find this information helpful! Any questions please feel free to call, e-mail or respond to this post. My information can be found on my school website:

Preferred Learning Academy

Why I Think of Math as Coins

2009-08-15T21:51:00.004-04:00

Weird title for the blog post but I am running on empty and could not think of a better way to put it!

My brother had a paper route when I was just a little one. He is eight years older than I am and I always wanted to hang around with him. I was about four or five when he was starting with his route. I guess I was a pest because, to keep me busy, he would have me stack his coins from his route into one dollar piles. As a four or five year old, before any "formal" math lessons, I learned that there were 10 dimes or 4 quarters or 20 nickels to make up one dollar. My brother knew that I could count at least up to 20 and so I could help him out by stacking up coins into dollar piles. As we both got a little older, and he started with both local papers as a paperboy, my duties increased to making the coin piles for the paper coin wrappers. Now, I was counting out 40 quarters for 10 dollars, 50 dimes for five dollars and 40 nickels for 2 dollars. My fingers were still too small to get the coins into the wrappers but I was accurate and fast with the sorting and counting.

This "lesson" in math has stayed with me to this day! I think in terms of money when thinking out math problems. I can actually SEE the quarters etc. when I am figuring out something with math. Weird.

This is one way to naturally teach your child math. Math is not numbers, it is patterns and relationships! Once a child "gets" the pattern and the relationship, he will be able to understand the math concepts.

Public School Starts Soon

2009-08-13T21:09:00.003-04:00

Here in Florida schools usually open around two weeks before Labor Day. Some open a little earlier and some a little later. The news is full of swine flu warnings now that students will be packed into schools. One of the reasons home education is appealing to me is that my kids do not have to be around a bunch of sick kids in a close, school environment. Kids are not going to wash their hands as well as they should and they are not going to keep their fingers out of their noses. (gross, but you know it's true) Also, parents are not going to keep sick kids home from school because they use the school as the babysitter. If the kid stays home, then Mom or Dad has to stay home from work. No babysitter.

The Orlando Sentinel had an article about the flu and schools recently which really underscores the use of the schools as a babysitter. Sad, but true. Many kids are not going to stay home when they should and many others are going to get infected with the flu virus, swine or otherwise. Frankly, I wouldn't want to be a teacher right about now standing in the front lines of the sneezing!

In the Spring, when the swine flu started rearing it's ugly head, many schools ended up closing and getting a scrub-down. That's not going to be the case this time. Maybe the scrubbing didn't actually do any good or maybe the time closed angered too many parents who needed the school "day care" and obviously couldn't get it while the school was being cleaned. For the children's benefit. :::shrugs:::

Here is the full article from the Sentinel:

Don't Rush to Close Schools for Swine Flu

Cute picture

2009-08-12T22:38:00.004-04:00

Just wanted to share the cute frog pictures from the outside window ledge of my dining room window. These babies sure know how to make a racket! We have a small pond in the front garden and the tadpoles are numerous. I believe we can thank them for keeping the mosquito population at bay. Can't run the pond pump or we would end up straining tadpoles through it, ewww. The picture in the middle looks like froggie love! The one on the top looks like a frog third wheel!

Homeschool Memories, Dual Enrollment Rules

2009-08-12T13:14:00.006-04:00

Finally feeling much better after a surgery and then complications from said surgery. Fun.

Schools here in Florida are starting up again this month, and one county started Monday! Wow! I grew up in New York state and we went to school the Wednesday after Labor Day. Those first few days would be hot as summer and then the cooler weather would come in. By mid-September the weather would be crisp and cool in the morning and then heat up to maybe 75 during the day. Those are great memories!

As a homeschooling mom I would start gearing up towards the end of August with school supply purchases (during the sales) and figuring out what we were going to do "for school" that year. Unschooling is extremely flexible, of course, so we did whatever we were interested in doing. The kids read a lot of books, we traveled a lot, we watched interesting videos about interesting topics and we did science experiments. Some days we didn't get out of jammies until lunch! Those were the days!

Locally, college classes start around the 24th of August so many students are getting ready to dual enroll. For all parents with Dual Enrolled students please, please read these simple "rules" for the homeschool parent. (or ANY parent)

1. Let your child handle the paperwork, advising and course registration - you told the college he is as mature as an adult, so allow him to be!
2. If there are conflicts in the classroom, let your child handle it! He must first talk to the instructor. After that he can talk to the department. But PLEASE have your student talk to the instructor first! Alone! One way to help is to role play what he needs to say when he talks to the instructor.
3. Do not call the Dual Enrollment office or any other office at the college to get information about your child. They can't tell you. It is illegal! There are privacy laws in place that protect the privacy of the student no matter what age.
4. This is a public institution and your child will be in a classroom with adults. Religion is not taken into consideration. Also, instructors can swear, show R rated movies, nudity and discuss adult topics. They are allowed. The students are adults as far as they are concerned. The instructors have no idea that your child is Dual Enrollment. They don't have a list or anything. As a parent, look at anything along these lines as a learning experience. If your child tells you she was watching some nude scene in a movie in Humanities, then you can discuss it! Great starting point for discussion at home!
5. Stating the obvious. Do not do his work for him!
6. When talking to the Dual Enrollment office or Advising, let your child do the talking! If he wants to be a fireman, but you think he should be an engineer, well, too bad! Allow your child his own dreams! Sure he may change his mind later, but I have seen pushy parents get bitten on the butt when their kids end up dropping out and getting a fast food job!

New GED Rules

2009-08-09T15:55:00.002-04:00

Chalk this up to what, insanity? Or just plain old government. Florida USED to have an option for high school students to take the GED test and then get the regular high school diploma and get out of there! Hold on now! No more! A student who takes the GED now will get the same equivalency diploma as a student who dropped out and then took the GED. As a homeschooler I don't really care too much about this but as a citizen I think it is nuts. Who knew there was a way to bypass a bit of high school to get out and move on? Hell, no! Not anymore! I believe the reasoning is that if most kids have to endure all 4 years of high school, then everyone does, too! How sad. I hate to see options taken away from students.

Read the article here:
GED Graduates Won't Get Standard Diplomas

Bright Futures Scholarship, FL Specific

2009-08-06T16:21:00.003-04:00

The Bright Futures Scholarship is offered to Florida students based on SAT or ACT test score. A student can receive 75% tuition or 100% tuition based on the scores. Not a bad deal! Sadly, many parents in the public schools have NO IDEA about the scholarship! I know that high school counselors here in central Florida have so many students that it is nearly impossible to personally know each one. And, I know that many students receive printed handouts from the guidance offices with information perhaps explaining the scholarship. Here in central Florida, many, many parents do not speak or read English as a first language. Heck, many of them do not read English at all and speak it only slightly. How on earth are they going to understand a student handout? You may say, "The students need to be responsible and get the information to the parents." Yeah, uh huh. Do these peple HAVE young teenagers? I think most teens are completely incapable of understanding the amount of money we are talking about here.

After working at the Dual Enrollment office of the community college for a while, I realized that many of the students had NO idea how much money they were saving by taking these courses for FREE! I kept a chart on my cork board showing the current amount of money per credit and then how much each 3-credit course would cost. Right now it is around $262.00 for a 3-credit class at the community college where I used to work. Many of my students took a full load of classes (12 credits, or 4 classes) which would have cost them $1048.00. Per semester! This is not even factoring in fees for the classes.

Now, imagine that parents knew that the Bright Futures Scholarship could pay for even 75% of the tuition after their student graduated from high school and was no longer eligible for Dual Enrollment! That adds up to a lot of money!

If you live in Florida, and homeschool THROUGH THE COUNTY, and NOT an umbrella school, your child WILL have to score HIGHER on the SAT or ACT test than private school or public schooled kids for the same scholarship. Yes, unfair I know!

Check out the Bright Futures Website here!

Scary as Hell

2009-08-05T18:57:00.003-04:00

OK you must see this video. It is NOT retouched or edited in any way. This is from the White House Blog website. I snagged it off of YouTube but click on the link and you can find it yourself. You will have to scroll down and down to find it. The links are to both, but the video is from YouTube. I know it is not sized properly for the blog, but I felt it was important enough to screw up the look of the blog for a few days.

If this does not scare you to death, I don't know what will! We are living an Orwellian nightmare!

Personal Note, AP info and Good Article

2009-08-05T18:23:00.003-04:00

Just a quick personal note here. I have been through a small surgery (yesterday) and am feeling pretty good today. I expect to be back to the usual in a few more days. Heck, I may even get to finally see the newest Harry Potter movie this weekend!

I have had a lot of response about AP classes and the college equivalent courses. I can only show the Florida courses since that is what I know. PLEASE if you live in another state and your child is considering AP classes, look up the college courses that are awarded in your state for the AP class! THEN, check the universities in the area to see if that course is even offered! Also, the AP English Language and the AP English Literature "thing" here in Florida surely is not isolated to Florida alone. Check it out! I really hate seeing parents deceived because the school will get money for having students in that course!

I'll be back with more information for parents soon! In the meantime, check out Mike Thomas from the Orlando Sentinel. I usually like what he has to say and when I don't, I still think his ideas are well thought out. This editorial article is regarding getting the kids out of the public high schools who do not want to learn. Very interesting! Of course you can bypass this by homeschooling your kids, but frankly, it is not for everyone!

More on AP Courses

2009-08-03T13:22:00.005-04:00

As an advisor for Dual Enrollment, I saw a lot of students and parents in my office, or talked to them on the phone. At any given time we had about 1600 Dual Enrollment Students and I had a good relationship with quite a few! There were two things that shocked me. Number one, many of the parents and students in the public schools did not know anything about the Bright Futures Scholarship. That is going to be the subject for another post and is also Florida specific. The other thing that was shocking to me was that the students and parents did not KNOW the college courses that could be earned with the AP courses. Read my AP or not to AP post for examples.

I have had a lot of activity on my AP or Not to AP blog. I decided to look up more information that could help parents regarding the AP situation. It looks as though there is a proposal to allow 3 more credits of English for a score of 3 on an AP English Literature test if the student already has the ENC1101 credit. That would be great! If you read my AP blog post, you will see that a student who already has ENC1101 through the AP English Language test, receiving a 3 on the AP exam, will only receive the SAME Enc1101 course if he received a 3 on the test for AP English Literature. Here is the new proposal,which is not set in stone yet. Most parents are NOT told about this little snag with AP. Please read the AP or Not to AP blog post for further information.

Lets look at a few more AP course equivalencies. Do the State Universities offer any of these?

AP Computer Science A: Course equivalent - CGS1075 or CGS2075 (same course, the first digit does not matter. Can be a 1 or a 2)

UCF, UF, Valencia CC, USF, FSU ALL do NOT offer this course! I looked on their courses for Fall 2009! Your child can receive the credit from his college only if the college offers the course!

Lets look at another example:

Here's a popular one around the Orlando area. AP Human Geography: Course equivalent - GEO2400 : GEO1400 or GEO1420 : GEO2420 (Again, the 1 or 2 as the first digit does not matter)

USF, Not offered
UF, has GEO2420
FSU, Not offered
Valencia CC, Not offered
UCF, Not offered

With the AP Human Geography course, if your student plans on attending UF, he can receive the college credit for that test. If he chooses to go to FSU, USF or UCF, he will NOT receive the credit.

Let's do one more:

AP Psychology: Course equivalent PSY1012 or PSY2012

This is the main psychology course in the state university system! ALL state schools offer this course!

You can see that not all AP classes are going to help your student providing he passes the AP test with a 3 or better.

I will be out of the loop for a few days with a minor surgery. If you have any questions please feel free to e-mail, post a comment on this blog, or call me. My number can be found on the Preferred Learning Academy website. I should be able to get back to you by Friday at the latest!

Website Changes

2009-07-31T19:59:00.002-04:00

My school website, www.preferredlearningacademy.com, is going through some much-needed changes! Look for some new content soon!

I have been having some female health problems which have kept my attention away from the school. I will be laid up for a few days starting next week but plan to add blog entries anyway. We'll see how THAT goes! I am sure I'll be fine by the end of next week!

Today I had a meeting with my website manager, adviser and all-around great friend to brainstorm some cool ideas for the site! Look for:

*More streamlined fee schedule
*A sample education plan for a college-bound high school student
*Step-by-step "how to" moving parents from the inquiry stage towards how to enroll
*Video of my "high school to college" presentation

If anyone has any questions please feel free to e-mail, call or post a response here! You can find my e-mail and school phone number on my main web page!
Preferred Learning Academy

I welcome your questions!

Back to School, soon

2009-07-30T21:23:00.004-04:00

I can tell it is "Back to School" season. How? Well, from all of the ads in the paper! Is it me, or are the retailers sounding desperate? "Please, PLEASE buy your back to school stuff here!!" Can't blame them, frankly. One part of homeschooling that my daughter didn't like was the LACK of back to school purchases. After a year or so we usually went to Office Depot or one of those large office supply stores this time of year and bought pens, pencils and some art supplies every year. She liked that!

Want to know a secret? Homeschooling can be practically FREE! That's right, FREE! Of course there are some things like pens, pencils and paper. Really, other than that, you can get away with a library card! You can use fancy math manipulatives but you can also raid your kids toy box and pull out the Legos. REAL books from the library are way more interesting than heavy, and expensive, textbooks that may or may not be accurate. An internet connection would be helpful as well, of course! The only textbooks that would be really worth buying would be math books. May not be totally necessary, until high school, but would be a good investment.

With homeschooling you can give your child a custom education, no cookie cutters here, and it can cost you very little! Throw in a good umbrella school advisor, and you can save a bunch on college costs as well. A homeschool private school is a good investment as long as you get good advising. Paying for a very inexpensive school, then getting nothing but a diploma, is a bad investment. Paying a little more for a good private school with good advising can be a GREAT investment. Take a look at this former post about designing a college plan. You will see how much money can be saved with a good plan and advising with someone who KNOWS the college system!

This and That

2009-07-29T20:27:00.005-04:00

We just got back from moving our son out of his apartment at UCF. It actually wasn't too bad although I did mention that the tub was actually white, originally! :)

It is hard to believe that our son, who is 21, has finished his junior year at UCF! How fast it went! He decided to move out of his apartment because he seemed to have gotten the booby prize of roommates. Don't get me wrong, the guy was nice enough, and even helped my son with an internet problem, but MAN is he weird. He acted as though my son did not exist most of the time! I know he was not wild about having a 20 year old junior move in when he was in his mid-20's and a grad student. But come ON! At least give the guy a chance to show he is not some moronic twenty year old who parties all the time! My son seems more adult than I do most times!

Anyway, my son is going to try his luck with a three bedroom apartment instead of two. This way there will be two guys other than himself and maybe, if he's lucky, one of them will be decent. Heck, maybe even a fun roommate he can do things with occasionally! Plus the three bedrooms are cheaper than the two. Can't hate us for that!

Both of our kids went to pretty large universities. UCF has 50 thousand students and is the largest in the state system here in Florida. There's not a whole lot of stuff going on, at least not the way it was back when my husband and I were in college. My daughter went to FSU and also did not have a lot of stuff going on. Weird. Such big schools and not a lot of college sponsored activities!

My husband and I went to a fairly small, or maybe mid-sized, college in the State University sytem in New York. We were in Central NY in a town called Oneonta. A cow town really, with two colleges, SUNY (State University of New York) College at Oneonta and a private college called Hartwick. The writer of the Dilbert comic strip was at Hartwick while we were at Oneonta! Small world. In the three years we were together at Oneonta (hubby is a year older than I am) we saw: The Kinks, Stan Rogers - watch him here,, Stanley Clarke - watch him here, Carlos Montoya- watch him here, The Dixie Dregs- watch them here, How to Change a Flat Tire (I know, weird name, but it was Celtic music), a guy from Africa with the Mbira or African Thumb Piano, Peter Gabriel, Howie Mandel (when he was with The Comedy Store) and so much more! All in three years! We saw Stan Rogers, now deceased sadly, many times!

We are sad that our great college experience was not the same kind of experience that our kids have had. I am not sure if it is just the way things are now or what! Anyone have any insight? My college years were the best years of my life! The most free and the most fun!

Designing a College Plan

2009-07-28T08:17:00.003-04:00

If your child is 16 and getting ready to dual enroll or 18 and finished with your high school program, he will need to plan out his college classes. When my kids were in dual enrollment I looked at the classes like a buffet. A little of this, a little of that, then see what they like. I knew some of the requirements back then, but was unconcerned about the other classes figuring they were free (except for books). We could have saved money down the road had I really thought about it! I know many kids just don't know what they want to major in at that age. Or they know, and then change their minds. My daughter, from the time she was 16 until college graduation, changed her expected major three times! The second time was while she was in London on a study abroad program with FSU.

Some of my dual enrollment students knew what they wanted and seemed pretty set on reaching that goal. I designed many programs for students who wanted to get into a "pre-med" style program. However, most of my students did not know what they wanted AT ALL! That's ok, my son changed his mind twice as well. He thought about maybe Psychology and then had a general business major planned. After he took his ECO2023 class (Fundamentals of Microeconomics) he knew what he wanted! By this time he had been in college for two years through dual enrollment.

Here's How to Start Planning: (Florida specific, assuming the student will attend a state university)
1. What are his interests? If he hates math, well, he probably won't be in Engineering.
2. Will he go to the community college for two years? Will he take some dual enrollment classes and then bring those to a university? Will he go to a state university?
3. Pick General Education Classes - These are the required classes that every student needs to get a degree in that school. Choose the classes that most of the state schools will accept as General Education.
4. Start backwards when choosing a major and courses. What? Yes, start backwards. If he wants to go to medical school, start there. Which majors do they usually like to see? Which specific classes? Take those! In the undergraduate major they want to see, which classes can your student take at the community college? Take those!
5. If your student wants to go on to get a graduate degree, say a master's degree in Economics, find out what the school would LIKE him to have before applying for the master's program. Ask me how I know this! My son will take a year off to take those pasky classes he didn't know were sort of required, although it never states this in the college catalog, to get into the master's program. Sigh.

These are some basic ideas when choosing college classes. Students at my school can expect to have as much (or as little) advising as they would need on an e-mail or telephone basis. Also, high school students and their parents can have up to four one-hour advising sessions with me per year to help them plan out high school and college classes! Don't fall into the "buffet" trap with dual enrollment classes! Look at these classes as $$$$! If your student takes a class he does not need, here in Florida at Valencia Community College, right NOW, that three-credit course would be like throwing away $262.08! Here, lets take 10 $20 bills, a $50 bill and toss in a $10 bill, a couple singles and some change! There ya go! Toss it in the trash! Well, I hate to say how much I "tossed away" with both of my kids in college classes! Sure it is free, but your student needs 120 credit hours to get a B.A. or B.S. degree at the state university here in Florida. Why waste your money with unnecessary classes?

Memorized Phrases for FCAT

2009-07-26T21:33:00.003-04:00

The FCAT tests are required for public schools here in Florida. Everything financial hinges on the results of the FCAT for each school in the state. A rated school? Here's your money! F rated school? Here's your new principal! Already parents and students are unhappy about the pressure to do well on the FCAT. Schools suspend teaching the usual fare in order to drill for the test so the school can receive a high rating. I understand that the people of Florida wanted a way to improve student learning and to have a better ranking in the US (Florida's school motto: Thank God for Mississippi, or we would be #50). State testing was instituted to help determine which schools were in dire need of a change. As everything government usually does, it backfired and the test became the ONLY thing that schools were trying to teach. Poor kids!

Now, 49 schools have been "caught" teaching the kids to memorize certain phrases and then write them for the state writing test. Obviously the teachers discovered certain catch phrases that would ensure a better score on the writing portion of the test. These phrases were colorful and creative but know what? MANY kids used the same phrase! Duh! How on earth did the school expect to run this by the testing folks when the catch phrases were so unique?

Read the whole story here:
Teaching Canned Phrases for FCAT Essays

OK I know the clipart image is lame. I couldn't find anything in a bit of a hurry!

Busy Busy

2009-07-25T10:57:00.003-04:00

As a middle aged woman with a kid still in college and elderly parents, I am smack dab in the middle of the "sandwich generation." Not only do I have my own nagging middle age health issues but I also am helping my parents with their "more mature" issues! Yesterday was doctor day for us with a visit to my dad's dermatologist for a skin cancer removal, then on to my own doctor for some female stuff. Fun. Gotta love getting older!

We have family visiting from up North so will be busy for a few days. We're showing them the sights of beautiful Lake County Florida, where the cows outnumber the people! :)

Today will be Woody's BBQ, a visit to Tavares (the county seat), the Yalaha bakery and then on to Lagniappe Brewery for a cold one. As home brewers of both beer and mead we like to see what small brewers have to offer. Oddly enough I am excited about going to Tavares since I have never been there. We're basically having a good, old-fashioned Red Neck day!

Learning Math for Kids and Adults

2009-07-23T18:51:00.004-04:00

I am not a math person. let me get that out there right now. I majored in English in college and back in the 70's math was not required for an English BA degree. I could choose a math or science. Ha! Science won hands down!

Back in elementary school and middle school, math was not so difficult for me. It made some sense and algebra was pretty easy. The following year was geometry and that made NO sense to me at all! I think I really needed something more tactile than a damned book! Jeez! When my kids asked me "why do I need to learn this?" I always had an answer. "See that tile floor? It required geometry for Dad and I to put it down!" It also required algebra and basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Thank goodness I have my husband for that! Really, it is pathetic. He is really good with math and numbers, he is a programmer.

My kids were 10 and 13 when we started homeschooling so the math fear for them was already there. My daughter a little less so than my son. Third grade, in Catholic school, brought math speed drills. Now I understand that the purpose was to have them learn the basic multiplication tables by heart to make math easier later on. Sounds good in theory. Sadly, for a dyslexic child like my son, who WAS good in math, they were simply torture. Of course, because it is school, the name of the game is ridicule and shame. There was a lovely chart up on the wall with each student's progress or lack thereof. Naturally, everyone could see the "smart" kids and the "dummies." His teacher never "got it." I talked to her, my dad (who is also dyslexic) talked to her but she either didn't gave a rat's a** or she was too stupid to understand that not every kid learns that way. My son changed that year and has never really been the same. Luckily she left teaching after one more year. Of course the damage was already done to MY son. Thanks Mrs. B.

Learning math is very natural if a child can learn on his own with some manipulatives. Legos work just fine! Of course I would love a whole set of Math-U-See manipulatives but, well, it was not in the budget for kids who were already 10 and 13. If they were younger, and I could have gotten more years out of them, maybe.

My theory about teaching math is that a child will learn, with your help, how to "do" addition, subtraction, muliplication and division.
Addition: Mom, I have two cookies, can I have one more?
Subtraction: Hold on, you have too many cookies there, let me take a few. Dinner is in a few minutes.
Multiplication: Sally is coming over. I have three cookies, do we have six so Sally can have three, too?
Division: I have six cookies, here Sally, you take three and I take three.

Very natural stuff. To make it even more clear you can use those Legos. Set up three piles of four Legos each pile. Your child can count them to see there are twelve. Now ask him to put them in two equal piles. He then divides. Make sense? There is NO SENSE making it much harder than that until your child "gets" the sorting. He can SEE what math looks like. Once he is good at it and can understand the relationships in the math, he can start learning the terminology. I think schools get so caught up with the terminology that it scares kids away from math. Oh and did YOUR school have nice manipulatives for each student? I didn't think so.

How to Have a Good Relationship with Your Adult Kids!

2009-07-22T09:41:00.005-04:00

I really really enjoyed our homeschooling! My kids are such great adults and I figure that the homeschooling has to be part of the reason. They were 10 and 13 when we started so I didn't get to have them home the whole time, sadly, but the time we did have was really fun. My husband and I really know our kids. How many parents can say that? Heck, I even know some of my kids friends better than their parents do. How sad is that?

Having a great relationship with your kids is not just about homeschooling and time spent together. And, no, I am not going to talk about the "quality time" garbage that people like to spout off about. (If I see my child for three hours a day at least we spend an hour of "quality time" reading a book together.) TIME is important and time just being together is very important. BUT time is not the only answer. We must, as parents, be respectful towards our children. Sure, sure you may think that you are the adult and they need to respect YOU! Ha! It does not work that way! First of all, you must earn their respect just as you would with another adult. Secondly, you must show them respect as well! So many parents miss this and end up ruining what could have been a perfectly good relationship. Sometimes parents mistake fear for respect. That is a whole different story! If your child fears you watch how fast he moves away as an adult and never looks back!

Your daughter is 12 and wants you to watch some inane TV show about kids her age. Do you:
1. Watch it with her, complaining or looking at your watch?
2. Tell her you don't have time for something that stupid?
3. Watch it and talk about what you are seeing?

Obviously the answer is three. The other two answers are the same as telling her that what she likes is not important. Turn this around and instead of your daughter, this is you and your boss. You would like your boss to listen to a presentation you put together (or even a presentation you saw on the internet that would help your company) and she tells you "That's stupid" or complains about wasting the time while watching it. These scenarios are the SAME THING in the eyes of your child.

Another reason, using the example above, to watch what she is watching is to see exactly that! You should know what she is seeing on TV. I am not about censorship at all! BUT I do want to see what she is seeing so we can talk about it. I watched Dawson's Creek and Gilmore Girls with my daughter all the time. I even cried with her during the last episode (Jen died! sniff) of Dawson's Creek! I watched these shows (which were actually pretty good) so I could watch what she was watching! I knew what images and ideas were being tossed at her from the TV. We had some really good conversations about stuff like sex, AIDS, gays and drugs. All very valuable conversations that we would never have had if I didn't watch these shows with her. Also, she would have only the TV show's views on these subjects. This is also true of books she read and music she listened to! I was not intrusive, hell, I saw three NSync concerts with her! I cheered as much as she did! I also did not censor too much, although she apparantly saw "American Pie" without telling me. LOL So much for the little bit of censorship that I did try!

My kids even have blogs! Check out:
Life is a Bookshelf
How to fix America

To AP or not to AP

2009-07-20T21:01:00.006-04:00

Chances are good that you have read or heard about the virtues of AP classes. AP, or Advanced Placement, might get your child college credit. Most likely, it won't. MOST of the students who take AP classes do not pass the AP test, so no college credit. Here's how it works:

Your child signs up for the school-year-long AP class, let's say AP English Language. Your child will have a LOT of work in this class. OK that's not bad, right? No problem. Your child gets an "A" in the class. Wait! That's not the end. He still has to take the AP test at the end of the school year. Passing the test with a score of 3, 4 or 5 will give college credit. Here in Florida, if he gets a 3, he will get credit for Freshman Composition 1, ENC1101. Great! In two college semesters he received the credit for ONE college class. Let's say he gets a 4 or 5. He will then get the college credit for ENC1101 and ENC1102 (Freshman Comp 2). So, in other words, in two college semesters he gets credit for two college classes. OK, Dual Enrollment can do that. And he would not have to pass ONE test to get the credit! Lets say your child takes AP English Language and does NOT get a 3, 4 or 5 on the AP test. Maybe your daughter woke up with cramps that day, or she is under the weather in some other way. Too bad, the test is the test. If your child takes the AP class and does NOT get a 3 or higher on the test, she does NOT get college credit. That's how it works.

Next scenario. She gets the credit for ENC1101 by taking AP English Language and getting a 3 on the AP test. Great! She could have done that in half the time, but no matter. The following year she is encouraged to take AP English Literature. She takes the course and again gets a 3 on the AP test. She then receives the credit for ENC1101. Wait! She already HAS that from her AP class last year. Oh well. No on told her, or YOU, the parent, that is the way it works. Now this is for Florida public colleges so I can't vouch for any other state or for any private colleges here in Florida.

Now lets say your child takes the Geography AP class. She receives a 3 on the test. Well, she gets a college class but some of the colleges do not offer it! In other words, she CAN get the credit for the class, but only if her college offers it!

All of the Floridians are now saying, "what about UF (University of Florida)?" UF likes to bill itself as the exclusive state university here in Florida. Well, in Florida, a state university can NO LONGER weigh AP classes higher than a Dual Enrollment class when considering applicants! Now, Dual Enrollment is given the same weight as AP classes both on high school transcripts and for consideration when applying to a university!

Did I mention that the tuition for Dual Enrollment is FREE here in Florida? In the above scenario the student took AP English Language and AP English Literature which would take the same amount of time as 4 college semesters and received ENC1101 for her effort!

Please feel free to e-mail or call, the number is on my school website www.preferredlearningacademy.com, for any clarification!

A Good Reading Day

2009-07-19T12:02:00.003-04:00

It has already rained here in central Florida and it was before noon! At least we've cooled off to the upper 70's for now. Looks like we'll have a cloudy day so I will consider this a perfect reading day. Laundry is finished, dinner is planned and yard work is as finished as it will get!

Right now I am reading The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud which is the second book in the Bartimaeus trilogy. I really enjoyed the first book, The Amulet of Samarkand, but am having trouble getting into this one. In over 200 pages, I am still feeling a little like the book is disjointed. I still think the story is good and I love how the author puts footnotes to the thoughts of Bartimaeus (hysterical!) but it just isn't catching my attention as well as the first book. Of course it could be me and it could be that I have the next Sookie Sackhouse book sitting on the counter waiting for me.

After this book it is back to Sookie for a while. Sometimes I just need to have a little book candy to read. The books are short, they are entertaining and quite adult!

Healthy Eating, Finally

2009-07-18T18:55:00.003-04:00

I have finally gotten back into my healthier eating plan, again. I lost a bunch of weight (30 lbs.) a few years ago and now it has been creeping back up there. Maybe 10 lbs. I feel gross! I am a total sugar NUT! Holy cow, sugar is going to kill me one day!

See that really nice photo from my daughter's wedding? Well I don't look like that anymore. Even there I had gained back some of the weight I lost from pre-wedding anxiety. I like to eat. Did I mention the SUGAR addiction? I am also a really good cook. Have apples in the house? Whip up a few apple turnovers. Hey, it is fruit, right? My family loves my cooking and I have a few signature things that they ask for, a lot! Biscuits. Muffins. Ack! My dad's birthday cake the other day (he turned 80!) was made with:
9 eggs
4 teaspoons vanilla
16 oz. (yes, one pound) of chocolate chips
1 cup of heavy cream
4 sticks of butter (yes, one pound)
1 cup of sugar

The ganosh topping:
1 cup of heavy cream
12 oz. chocoalte chips

Oh my God! It is really good but I can't believe that I made it AND ate it!

Today is a new leaf. I am trying to de-sugar myself. Wish me luck!!

100 Video Views!

2009-07-16T10:31:00.002-04:00

My school's video has reached 100 views! Yahoo! My friend and I put this video together to show, rather than state, what the educational philosophy is for Preferred Learning Academy! We are a school for both traditional and non-traditional learners and unschoolers are most certainly welcome! Take a look and see what you think!
(note: FCAT is the Florida state tests for public schooled children)

"Umbrella" School or Not? That is the Question!

2009-07-16T07:27:00.004-04:00

When my kids were still homeschooling we had the option to use a private "umbrella" school or sign up through the county. We actually did the private school thing for the first year then decided that they were just not for us. What I would have liked was a nice secular private school with a wide range of ages but also with a nice group of teens. At the time, I could not find what I was looking for. We went through the county. There really is NO problem just flying solo with homeschooling until your kids reach those high school years. Here is my list of reasons why we SHOULD have used a private "umbrella" school.

1. Math classes. I have a degree in English and did not need a math class, back in the 70's, to get it! Enough said!

2. Companionship. While my kids had friends who were not homeschooled and kept up a fairly busy social life, they really could have used a nice group of college-bound kids who were also homeschooled. My son had always said that his public schooled friends just never "got" the homeschooling thing.

3. Advising, both parental and student. I had to do all the legwork to figure out things such as how to get students signed up for SAT tests, how to apply for scholarships, how to make an ok-looking transcript and how to (and when to) apply to colleges.

4. Bright Futures Scholarship (Florida specific). A homeschooled child in Florida who is not in a private school must score higher on the SAT or ACT tests to receive the SAME scholarship as a public or private school child. Yes, how unfair! My son missed the 75% tuition Bright Futures Scholarship by ONE POINT on the ACT. He refused to retake the test. (you can lead a kid to the ACT but you can't make him take it!) He is a stubborn kid (young man) and is now literally paying for his stubbornness. He knows it. We don't talk about it. He has student loans out the ***. Had he been in a private school, he would have received the 75% tuition scholarship.

5. Diploma and professional-looking transcripts. I know, a diploma is not necessary. My kids don't have one for high school although I have the pretty diploma paper for the computer and never used it! Their transcripts are OK but certainly don't have the credibility of a school transcript. Has this hurt them? Not really. Would it have been a nice touch? Hell yes!

6. Never having to say Home Schooled to a college admissions officer. Oh yes. Try going to the college admissions office during your college seeking trips and telling him your child is homeschooled. Watch the glazed look come into his eyes. "Home schooled?" Yeah, as though they have never ever had a home educated kid at the university before. Sigh. We got the runaround while looking into colleges for our daughter. Our son went to the community college for his AA first and I worked there. No problem.

Had I known all of this before I would have started my own secular private school for homeschoolers earlier!

Planning for College, Start Early!

2009-07-14T08:42:00.006-04:00

This seems timely.

Do you have a high school freshman or sophomore? Planning for college starts now! If you have boys chances are you are looking at them and they appear to be your babies still. I understand that. Many of them still sleep until noon and play online games until all hours of the night. They certainly don't look like college material. No way! There is a BIG difference between 15 and 16 when it comes to boys. It seems like they "wake up" during the 16th year and by the time they are 18 they appear to be totally human! Amazing!

As a freshman in high school (or age 14-ish) you should be discussing college and interests. Sure he may want to be something totally off the wall. Heck, when my daughter was 16 she wanted to be in the music industry because she LOVED music! She wanted to take the community college version of music technology. I said, "sure." Luckily the A.S. degree required some of the usual basics for all college degrees such as Freshman Composition 1 and 2. Thank goodness! I knew she really wasn't all that interested in the music industry. She was interested in meeting the guys from N'Sync, the popular boy band from the late 90's and early 2000's. Had I mentioned this to her at the time I would have received the scathing look and eye-roll of that age group. Several years later she laughed and admitted that she only wanted to meet famous bands and N'Sync in particular.

So number one: talk interests and do NOT minimize ANYTHING he or she may say. Go along with it since he will most likely change his mind later anyway. Get books on the subject (like, how to be a Music Producer) and talk about career options. Obviously if your child is tone deaf but wants to be a singer, well, that is a problem.

Number two: Talk colleges and start taking some trips to see them. HUGE university or smaller. State university or Ivy League. Talk budget since your kids have NO clue about money at that age. Oh they may have a general idea but they will have total sticker shock when they see tuition and BOOKS! (Please set aside several hundred dollars for books per semester!)

Number three: Start looking into dual enrollment and this is going to be specific to Florida here. Each community college has it's own rules regarding dual enrollment. Each school has rules regarding GPA requirements and age. (quick note to unschooling parents. If you do not test and have GPA info. then give your best guess. Be realisitc. We want your child to do well there!) Some only allow a few courses, some allow a full load. Find out the "rules" of the one closest to you. Many times home educated students do not have to go to the CC that is in their county. If heading to Valencia is doable, then you can go there even if you are in Seminole County. Check the Articulation Agreement of your local community college. The dual enrollment office should be able to give you that information.

Number four: Start preparing for the CPT test. Again, this is Florida specific. You can purchase study materials at the community college book store. Get them and use them. The "Reading" portion of the CPT is weird. Your student should be familiar with the style of the questions before taking the test.

Number five: By the time February of your child's 10th grade year rolls around, you should have him apply for dual enrollment. I know Valencia allows rising juniors (in other words, 10th graders who just finished 10th grade) to take Summer Term B courses. This will allow your student to have Summer B semester, Fall and Spring of Junior year, then summer A and B between Junior and Senior year, then Fall and Spring of Senior year. Do the math. Lots of semesters and they are FREE tuition! Your child, if his test scores are good and he is motivated, can get his AA degree by the time he graduates from high school! And the tuition is free!

Number six: prepare for the SAT or ACT test. Look at the requirements for the Bright Futures Scholarship NOW and begin planning. (Florida specific, sorry)

Number seven: Have your student set up a Fastweb account. (www.fastweb.com) for scholarship info. This is a clearinghouse for scholarships that will be e-mailed to your student based on a very long survey he fills out. Good luck getting him to actually DO any of the scholarship essays. My kids look back now and wish they had. Those student loans do not get paid with "I wish I had"'s.

I hope this has been enlightening! This is the reason I have set up my school. I am a good adsvisor and my boss still asks me to come back! Any questions please visit my website:

Preferred Learning Academy

Public School Waste of Money

2009-07-13T19:20:00.003-04:00

Although this comes as a "duh" to homeschool people, there are so many ways that the public school systems waste our money! As home schooling parents we still must pay school taxes if we own a house, or we pay the taxes anyway through any rent we pay a landlord. What do we get for our school taxes? Not a hell of a lot! When our kids in Florida reach high school age some of them can dual enroll and the tuition is free, although books are not. That's what I get for my school taxes. At least we are not in New York City. There, some teachers (700 of them) are paid to sit in a room and do nothing. While collecting their pay. Which averages around $70,000 a year! Oh and it appears that they get vacation time as well. Vacation from the grueling work of doing nothing. This is what the unions have led us to. Sigh. Please read the article here:

700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing

Amazing!

Books Books Books!

2009-07-11T13:51:00.004-04:00

Our small local library, part of a larger county library system, is moving into a new location in mid-August. Lucky for me, the new location is less than 1/2 a mile from my house. Right now, the old library is still loaning books, but the return date is August 17th! So much more time to read the books without renewing! My daughter and I have gone book-wild! I believe she is up to about 14 books checked out and I have two. I have also been reading some of the 14 she has checked out as well! (the beauty of living three blocks from each other: book sharing)

I am currently reading To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I am about halfway through so I can't really review it yet. This is a thrift store book that my daughter bought for 25 cents! I love the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store! My next library book, which will also be my next book, is the second in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. I also have the third, no sense in trying my luck getting the book later. I have read Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty which was pretty good and I have the next one, Second Helpings. These also are library books. We have a lot of books ready for the reading! Bring on Summer!

Book Review: Outliers

2009-07-09T16:59:00.003-04:00

Outliers is a great book that documents the circumstances surrounding what makes certain people or groups of people successful. Not just successful, but incredibly successful! Bill Gates, trial lawyers in the 1970's, Asian math scores are all explored. VERY interesting book and a fairly quick read! Check out the video on YouTube from Amazon.com.

Traveling on a Shoestring

2009-07-09T08:14:00.002-04:00

My last post was all about two of our trips we took while homeschooling. What I forgot to mention was HOW we were able to travel on a single income that was not a huge one at that!

First off, my husband's airline tickets were always paid for by his company. We still had to pay for three tickets on our own, but at least the fourth was paid for! Secondly we always had the hotel room paid for as well. My husband did all of his own travel arranging so we could choose anyplace we wanted within a reasonable price. We always chose a place that was either a suite or at least had a microwave and a fridge. Most times the hotel had the free breakfast and we quickly learned which places had the best breakfasts! (doughnut and coffee VS eggs, waffles and the works!) If we played our cards right, many of those breakfast items became lunch later on. I brought boxes of ziplock bags. Bread, packets of peanut butter, those little jelly squares were a perfectly good lunch. I learned to bring plastic cutlery. If the local hotels did not have a suite or a fridge in every room, I learned to ask if we could have one brought in. Believe it or not, they usually had them for the asking. Some of the hotels had those milk machines (look like a spigot or plastic tube coming from a machine) that operated 24 hours and some even had coffee (good coffee, too) 24 hours.

When we went to Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island (near Nanaimo) we stayed in a nice condo on the beach for two weeks. It was winter. It was cheap. When we were traveling to Canada we were getting $1.50 Canadian for every $1 American. Those were the days. The condo had a full kitchen and a sleeping loft with a privacy curtain (thank goodness) for hubby and I. The kids slept on the main level in twin beds. There was a coin laundry facility on the premesis, too. I found this place on the internet. We loved it! After looking around online it appears that this place does not exist any more. It was sitting on prime oceanfront real estate so I am guessing someone sold it for development. Oh well. Our trip was 10 years ago.

We always went to the local grocery store to get frozen dinners, milk, juice and whatever else a young family would need. Of course snacks were a must!

Hubby always took a few days off either at the beginning or end of his 9-day trip and sometimes at both ends. This way we could travel around together and see the sights. We always had a rental car, also paid for, so I could drop Dad off with his customer and then the kids and I could tool around all over during the day. My daughter was 13, we saw a lot of Canada's malls!

Travel, the Lazy way to Teach Your Kids

2009-07-08T16:06:00.004-04:00

Well travel is certainly not exactly a "lazy" activity but it sure gave my kids a better education than anything they could have found in a book! We were extremely fortunate, in our earlier years of homeschooling, to have traveled extensively with my husband. I have talked a bit about our travels before but the sheer magnitude of the traveling in such a short period of time, in hindsight, is mind boggling!

Back in 1998 when we first began our homeschooling career, my husband was in computer installation and training which took him all over North America most of the time. One of the reasons we decided to homeschool, other than the abuse from the Catholic school which, btw, we paid for, was to spend more time with Dad. I missed him, the kids missed him and frankly the kids needed him. He had a trip to Newfoundland planned in April or May of 1998, while the kids were in school, and we couldn't go because the school would not tolerate travel during school days. Sigh. We missed out on that trip and then nearly came to blows when I wanted my kids to miss the last day of school, which is a total waste of time anway, to drive to New Jersey for my grandfather's 100th birthday party. How many kids have a great-grandfather who lives to be 100? (keeping all his marbles as well!) (ok MOST of his marbles, I think he lost a few by then.)

We decided to homeschool after we got back from that trip. What a load off my mind! The first trip we took as a family was in September to Newfoundland! What an adventure that was! We flew to Toronto then had a six hour layover before the flight to St. John's, Newfoundland. The adventure began at the airport when we were detained at immigration because my husband was going there for work. Canadians are funny about Americans working in their country. We learned to tell them that he was employed by an American company paid by American funds. After all of that fun waiting with two little kids, I thought, "why not go in to Toronto while we wait?" After a series of planes, trains, buses and automobiles, we were there in the heart of Toronto with all of our carry-on stuff included! I think my kids may have hated me by that time! We arrived in Newfoundland late at night and proceeded to have a great time! We saw so many neat things there! What would I have done without the internet? Please click on Newfoundland to see what the Avalon area on this nifty Island has to offer! (The photo is of "Bird Rock" and it is awesome! What you may not notice is that you are 400 feet up on a cliff with no fence!) We visited Niagra Falls on our return trip. I remember the falls being larger, but I was only about 9 or 10 when I was there before!

We went to Toronto several times and then on to Vancouver, British Columbia. We stayed there a few days and then lived in a condo on the beach on Vancouver Island just north of Nanaimo for two weeks. If you have seen the movie "Twilight" you can see a basket of Nanaimo Bars sitting on the edge of the counter in a scene at a store. Check out the recipe, they are SWEET! It was winter. It was cold. But we went to Mt. Washington (on Vancouver Island) and did some really fun snow tubing! I thought I was gonna die going down the mountain but it was really fun. Did I mention it was COLD? We are Floridians! We traveled to Victoria and went to the Royal British Columbia museum. We saw a salmon farming operation, we went to various Provincial parks, we walked along the beach in the snow and saw different kinds of eagles. It was a blast! We also went to Whistler (In photo above) and took the gondola up to a nice restaurant for lunch. It looked like the photos we've seen of the Alps! We flew in to Seattle and rented a car to drive up to Vancouver because it was so much cheaper so we had a day in Seattle as well. We went to the Woodland Park Zoo which is one of the nicest zoos I have ever seen.

These trips were all within a few months. There were many more trips that I will talk about later. The kids have no idea just how lucky they have been to see the things we have seen!

Texting, A Sneaky Way to Stay in Touch

2009-07-07T16:48:00.004-04:00

Continuing on the missing-my-kids topic, I have discovered a great way to talk to them without actually talking to them. Texting! Whoohoo! Now I can be a techno mom and still keep in touch without being TOO much of a pain in the ass.

We never had texting on our phones since it cost more and my hubby was not into it costing more. Besides, why on earth would you spend the time and effort to tap out the letters to a text when you can simply CALL the person on the phone? Really, it does seem dumb. However, my married daughter explained that she can text her hubby, who has a very simple teeny sound as text notification, while he is fixing the computer at a customer's place. No annoying RING, RING and he would have to quickly turn the volume off etc. The 'ole ball and chain checking up on him again. :) Now, she can text and he can answer very surreptitiously. Brilliant! Another way to keep the manly thing going AND for daughter to ask husband "when will you be home?"

Recently I have discovered that my kids do not seem to mind hearing from me if I text. Good thing I have a qwerty keyboard phone or I would go insane! So I am a texting fiend! "Morning! how are you?" "Don't forget to watch Glenn Beck. He's on in a half hour." "Are we still on for the gym?" Stuff like that. No pesky phone calls but still giving and receiving information.

Now Shhhh! Don't let them know this is only a trick for parents of grown children to check up on them and keep in touch. You know, sad, lonely parents who USED to be the center of their world but are now superfluous!

Life After Homeschooling

2009-07-06T15:50:00.002-04:00

If you read my profile on Blogger then you'll see that my kids are now grown. One problem with retiring from homeschooling is that your kids were the meaning of your life during the homeschooling timeframe! I mean, every day was all about the kids. Now that they are grown they really don't want to be the center of my universe anymore! :)

Becoming superfluous is a little sobering. When did they stop really needing me? Do they realize that I still need them? I have a really good relationship with both of them, and they call me often but I have to stop myself from being too nosey. Of course I am too nosey anyway. I think they understand this about me and just roll their eyes. Heck, maybe they talk to each other to complain a little. Who knows? I sure as hell don't want to know!

My school stuff keeps me busy but the kids-at-the-center-of-my-universe thing is still there at the back of my mind. Hmm, maybe one day I'll have grandkids and make THEM the center of my universe. Of course they "may" end up a little spoiled...

Interesting Article About Education

2009-07-05T14:19:00.005-04:00

I live in the Orlando, Florida area and receive the local newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. We have several opinion columnists who write about local issues but Mike Thomas is probably my favorite. Now I don't always agree with him, although one MAY think he was a Libertarian once you read a few of his columns, but today's column was quite interesting. He talks about education in general and then specifically Florida education, but he makes the point that our brightest students are being left in the dust to boredom and ennui. What a surprise! I could have mentioned that from my own memory of high school back in the 70's! I am the product of a progressive Long Island, NY high school program where we were pretty much left to our own devices. We were so overcrowded that we were encouraged to LEAVE the school when we had no classes. There was no room for something called "study hall." Consequently we had students sprawled all over the campus smoking cigarettes and pot, right out in the open and from the grapevine, a principal who "did lines" of coke with some of the students. Now I don't mean lining up cans of Coca Cola either.

It was an "inner city" type of school out in the burbs where race relations were sketchy at best and all out race wars were not uncommon. I only felt protected by the crowd I ran with, which was not the most scholarly, to say the least. Education was an afterthought at this school and I am amazed that any of us actually left the school and did well in life. I graduated in 1977 and went on to an upstate NY state college where I met my husband and began the process of learning how to learn. I was a good student in high school but after going to college I could see that I was totally unprepared.

Please read the article by Mike Thomas of the Orlando Sentinel.

Happy 4th of July!

2009-07-04T09:32:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to post about July 4th! I want to thank any and all military personnel either active duty, retired or discharged. While the military was not in the cards for my kids I am grateful for those of you who DID choose to serve! You put your lives on the line every day for us and I want you to know that I am deeply moved by your service.

Thank a veteran today!

Importance of a Loosely Planned High School

2009-07-02T16:03:00.004-04:00

We unschooled but that does not mean I had no plan at all. Both of my kids were headed to college so I knew what would be expected. They would need a couple of math classes, two years of foreign language, at least two lab sciences, some history (or social studies), 4 years of English (or Language Arts, now). The Florida Sunshine State Standards also include economics and US government. Some universities require more math or more sciences but in a nutshell, this is what we needed to aim towards. The kids also needed to prepare for the SAT or ACT for college admissions.

English was easy because I have a degree in English so I LOVE it. I love reading and the kids both love reading. Writing was a little more difficult for my son since he is, basically, lazy and never wanted to write anything. After much cajoling, and telling him the evaluator would not "pass" him if he didn't, he wrote a really good paper pertaining to a certain gun used during WWII. What can I say, he's a boy. That paper was GOOD! Holy cow when did he learn to write like that? Obviously reading a lot for pleasure helped.

Lab sciences can be a problem for the home schooler but my kids did most of that through dual enrollment at the community college. We did do an earth science "course" at home by watching videos about volcanoes, earthquakes, weather, plate tectonics and rocks/erosion. There's a lot of information out there in books and on video to set up a really comprehensive "course" on earth science.

Math. Oh math. Yes, math was a pain in the butt! My son was a natural at math, still is, but has a lot of Catholic School baggage surrounding math. Sigh. My daughter decided not to do anymore math no matter how much I begged. Know what? They each decided on a college major, after taking quite a few basic college classes, and each one had/has a math-related major! My daughter was finance and my son economics. Weird! Unschooling works! You just have to let them choose and the rest will come along naturally.

Foreign language was handled differently by each of my kids. My daughter took American Sign Language at the community college and her university accepted it as a foreign language both for entrance and for the major. My son went to a tutor for German (thanks Silke!) for a couple of years working through a regular text book. Tutors are great! Also, dual enrollment at the community college is an option as long as you give enough time.

History is a snap! DVD's of History Channel shows or other instructional DVDs are great for this! Don't discount regular old books and even some historical fiction as long as it is based on historical fact. Pick a time period and go for it! My kids did a lot on Ancient Egypt. We even mummified a Cornish Game Hen. Umm, yuck. Interesting experiement but I did not consider the umm, "drainage" factor, or lack thereof. MOST of the game hen was mummified though and the people who now own our house will get a big surprise if they ever dig up one of our gardens! Nothing like a mummified game hen complete with canopic jars, amulets and a decorated shoe box sarcophagus. My son also spent a couple of years learning about WWII. Yes it was because of a computer game he was into at the time, but he sure learned a lot! There is a great video (DVD) series called "A Century of Warfare" that I know the Orange County, Florida library owns, all about the 20th century wars including WWI and II, Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War back in the 1990's.

US Government was covered at our house during one of the presidential elections since it was a good time to go over it. Economics was sadly absent from our home school. ooops. Anyway both kids took economics in college and my son is even an economics major so I am not losing any sleep over it.

Dual enrollment was a great great program for both high school and college "credits." ALL of the classes taken during dual enrollment are college classes with the end result being college credits that the state universities will take as transfer. Pretty good stuff!

Next up: Planning for college or how to get the most for the least amount of money!

Back to Home Schooling

2009-07-01T15:17:00.002-04:00

After a few well-placed and well-timed (IMO) political posts, I am now off the topic until some other boneheaded idea surfaces. ( can you say national healthcare?)

Back on the home education front!

We did not begin with home schooling. Both of my kids attended Catholic school where we were able to actually PAY MONEY for the school abuse! How lucky for us! Once I was no longer afraid to home school my kids, (why oh why was I afraid?) my kids actually came to me and asked! My daughter was 13 and had just finished 7th grade and my son was 10 finishing 4th. We started out with a loose set of curricula and we made special time for "school" etc. After a couple of weeks my son said to me, "I thought it would be more fun." I'm sure the noise you all heard in September of 1998 was my large bubble bursting! During this time I became very involved with the AOL home schooling chat community. Oh how I do miss so many of my old Homefront Hall buddies! We have a chat on Friday nights through the A to Z homeschool website here:

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/extras/A2Zchat.htm

But it is just not the same. Some nights the AOL chat room would have 20 people in there all talking about home schooling and asking questions. The good old days! Some of the chat hosts were really great to me, actually all of them were, and I did receive the virtual smack upside the head for being so uptight about it. Everyone said, "relax!" It took me a little while but I did relax and turned towards unschooling. My kids obviously did just fine as they are both quite well educated. Go me! LOL Frankly it was not ME, it was the kids themselves deciding that they did not want to be uneducated. Nothing like chatting in IM or in a computer game to make a kid brush up on his spelling so he didn't look dumb. And who says the computer is not educational!?

Books Every American Should Read

2009-06-30T15:28:00.003-04:00

OK I will admit it. I am a book geek. What can I say, I have a degree in English which can really open monetary doors let me tell ya! (uh huh, sure. A BS Degree in English plus a LOT of experience in something else will help)

Here is my list of "Important Books" in no particular order:

Brave New World - Aldus Huxley
This shows how the government controls people through........ pleasure. That's right, sex & drugs type of pleasure. Hmm do we see any correlations to today? Yeah, maybe.

1984 - George Orwell
This shows how the government controls people through fear, intimidation and pain. Which is worse you may ask? Control through fear or control through pleasure? Either way, of course, there is control.

Animal Farm - George Orwell
A great book to start kids out right. :) Basically how "all animals are created equal. But some are more equal than others." Very interesting.

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Of course this one is really hitting home RIGHT NOW! If you hear people talking about "going Galt" then you know how relevant this book is today!

I know not everyone is political. I know many people would prefer to watch American Idol or some other nice easy TV show and pretend that "The Government" is something that just happens and we have no control over it. This country was built through participation in our government! Our lack of participation (paying attention to what the politicians want to do, voting on record rather than looks or charisma) has brought us to this point. We get the government we deserve I suppose. What isn't fair is that "I" vote based on record and ideas and I am being punished by a bunch of vacuous followers who have not looked into anything prior to voting! This goes beyond party lines and I am not picking on any particular political party. Voting based on political party is ridiculous as well. Our politicians have turned "politician" into a career choice! This was not intended when our country first began. "Serving the country" in politics is exactly what it sounds like. You are voted in, you do your duty for the allotted years, then you GET OUT. Our system was not designed for career politicians who have NEVER held any other previous job. Look at the candidates for ALL positions and see if any of them have had some sort of private sector job. The ones who have at least have some idea of the "outside world."

OK rant over! Read the books and YOU decide where we are as a country! (other than broke)