schools – Page 7 – Home's Cool!

We Told Them so Many Times!

Posted on January 18, 2011August 11, 2014 by Katharine

Continued from yesterday:

They think you and I do not know when our children should come home. That’s what it’s about. Yes, Arkansas legislators are wasting time and money arguing with parents about whether or not we know anything, where we want our children to be all day, whether or not the idea of being at home is harmful to children.

A new piece of legislation, rebounding off a similar piece instigated in the past by David Cook, manages to insinuate that if the child wants to exit the school during a time of illness, stress, or danger, then the home must be bad, antagonistic, even hazardous. How insulting to all homeschoolers! How insulting to all parent, to all homes!

And if it should happen that the home is truly bad, they say, then we need more new laws to enlist the help of the public schools to protect the child from the home situation.

That is a lie.

Arkansas law already provides protection for such children, in that it provides the Department of Human Services (DHS). And the law, by providing mandated reporters, even provides that educators play a part in this protection.

Educators argue that the DHS never does anything, so, they do not want to call on them.

No, they do not want to call DHS. They want to be DHS. They want to be judge, jury, and jailer for any child who, in their opinion comes from an inappropriate home, regardless of—and by that I mean: completely disregarding—the inappropriateness of conditions inside the jail.

The teachers’ opinion, their judgment that the home is invalid, they tell us, finds its basis in innuendo and gossip from in-laws, only, and not in any type of home case study. Oh, and in the desire to homeschool.

Think for a moment! Forget homeschooling. Would YOU want your child’s future based on what your in-laws say about you? ME NEITHER!

But let’s back up a bit here. Do teachers actually want to do anything about the home situation, based upon fact, or upon existing laws? No, they are quite happy to leave things alone, quite happy to forget the home situation after 3:00 p.m., as long as they have that child (and I must add, the accompanying tax moneys) for a few hours.

Never mind where the bus takes the child afterward.

People who have qualms about allowing children to be in bad homes should become social workers, not teachers. Social service personnel who have qualms about entering or overseeing bad homes would make better teachers.

Or maybe, what we really need is law-abiding people who would mind—I mean, truly pay attention to—their own business, in both professions.

And, maybe, just maybe, if teachers, as mandated reporters, were upholding their end of the law, their students would not be so prone to breaking it. Now wouldn’t that make a difference!

Arkansas does not need one more law to give anyone any more power over our homes, our children’s homes, or our grandchildren’s homes. What Arkansas needs are effective penalties for dealing with public servants who refuse to obey the already-existing laws.

Any presumed problems this proposal might pretend to address would better find solution in complete reformation of public schools and complete reformation of the Department of Human Services.

Please forward this to everyone you know who lives in Arkansas.

Home School, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers

Fifty-eight Thousand on THE WALL

Posted on January 6, 2011November 18, 2016 by Katharine

Just finished a good book by SQ. Rushnell containing a moving story about the Vietnam War and the damage it caused. It mentions the memorial, the 500-foot long black wall. It tells of visitors moved to tears by the more than 58,000 unlived lives and living heartaches represented there.

You could say they died to protect us. It would be a fair statement even if many disagreed.

You cannot say that about some others who have died. The aborted ones have no memorial to speak of. Oh, sometimes we display a few wooden crosses to make a statement, a temporary protest. When we put the crosses away later, we prove it is not a memorial.

But if a similar black wall existed for these dead babies, it would have to be at least a thousand times longer than the one memorializing the war dead.

Three million people visit the Vietnam War Memorial each year. At that rate, if the aborted ones had lived to visit the Wall, it would take them about 17 years.

To buy one rose for each MILLION would cost about $250.

To educate them, the public schools would garner about $550 billion.

Per year.

That’s where their money goes.

Pray.

Believe it or not!, Home School, Homemaking, Husbands

I Haven’t Made My Bed, Yet…

Posted on December 17, 2010December 30, 2014 by Katharine

…No, my bed sits all a-jumble.

However, on a different topic, I found the most amazing thing while I was waiting for the bedding to make itself. 😉

I was just checking regular emails and discovered some news. In New York City, if you are very rich, you can get Special special education from the public schools. If you are poor, you cannot, no matter your need.

According to news writer Juan Gonzalez, if you can afford to sue the schools there, you can make them pay for the education your child really needs, as opposed to what the public schools there provide.

Just thought you’d like to know.

In the meantime, have you had snow yet?

If you are buried in snow, you might not be interested in this, but if you sit at the window longing for the first few flakes, take a look at this page, and watch it snowing all over the world, as they call it. Fun.

And remember: In Alaska, Home’s Cooler! 😉

Home School, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Womanhood

Attitude? Awareness? Vision? How Can a Tutor Know?

Posted on December 9, 2010May 20, 2016 by Katharine

I used to tutor.

Once, a young mother came to me for help with her first-grader daughter. The girl had been in a private school and was producing perfect work, daily, but on the following days, she seemingly knew nothing from the day before. Everyone was puzzled. The mom had heard about home schooling, found my phone number on a poster, and thought I’d know something the girl’s teachers did not.

Scary scenario!

However, I’d recently received a copy of a learning styles test a friend had written, and thought that with it, and with private tutoring, perhaps I could discover something an overworked teacher had missed.

The child was sweet, bright, and eager. This was going to be fun. I gave the mom a copy of the test to fill out at home, since she probably knew her daughter better than anyone else. I began carefully disguised check-ups of the girl’s reading and math skills.

She was a puzzling bundle. She could know something one moment, then know nothing the next. We read from an early reader, and she would do very well after I told her almost every word. I wondered—was she guessing? Memorizing?

The learning style test had come back showing her to be a visual learner. She ought to love reading.

I turned to the back of the reader, and showed her vocabulary lists placed there for the teacher. I pointed to a word from our day’s reading, and asked her what it was. That’s when everything became clear.

“Oh, Ms Kathy! I could never read that word; it’s too little for me to see it.”

Dear me. A visual learner who cannot see. Of course. She was, indeed bright enough to memorize each day’s lesson, but had inadvertently missed learning to read.

That day, she and I made huge yarn letters together, one per page of construction paper, and did copy work on the board with letters one foot tall. Immediately she knew what was going on and began making enormous progress.

When her mom came to pick her up that day, I asked her if either she or her husband had vision problems. She said they both had trouble seeing much of anything, that their vision was corrected with contacts of a strong prescription.

I told her, “I think your little girl cannot see. I think that is the basis of the problem, plus missing out on the foundations of reading readiness.”

We both had tears in our eyes that day, and eventually the girl received her first pair of glasses. I lost that tutoring job soon afterward, but the joy of helping such a needy one, so quickly, was compensation enough for me.

Home School, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Homeschool–The Original Tradition

Posted on November 18, 2010March 1, 2011 by Katharine

One of my favorite defining statements about homeschooling is, “All children homeschool, all the time.” This has always been true, as I hope to show.

God gives children to His human creation in order to bless us, His Word says. He also blesses these children by giving them parents, because they could never survive without us. How unlike a newborn calf they are! No child can stand up and fetch his own nourishment a few moments after being born. No, we must carry them around, sometimes for more than a year, before they can walk like a newborn calf.

From the day our children are born, we begin preparing them to stand on their own, though. To quote one educator, Dr. D. R. Howard, “Education is preparation for life.” What our children learn from us largely determines what type of life they receive. We can train them to receive blessings or curses.

It may be confusing to think of the children who attend the world’s schools as “homeschoolers”, and by definition, they certainly are not that. Nevertheless, their parents are schooling them, training them, about life, preparing them for some sort of future, just by relegating their education to the world. Their very abdication of their God-given role of authority over their children teaches the children something about the importance of God, of family, and of children.

Of course, we need not think too much about that because our children are at home. Still, we should think about what we are teaching them. How do we parents homeschool all our children at all times? For the next few days, let’s consider their needs according to their ages and learn how capitalizing upon these needs gives rise to well-rounded adults and neglecting them leads to harm.

Although what will follow are generalities, regarding a child’s age, maybe it will help us think as they think, and show some mercy toward them.

Stick with us for the next few days for an overview of homeschooling the pre-schooler, from infancy, onward!