wow!

Are you freaking kidding me?!

A friend the other day sent me this link.  I'll give you a few minutes to read it, vomit, and then come back.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ok, so did you remember to brush your teeth after puking? 

Let's first cover what is obviously disturbing about this article.  a)  The government, through the public schools in this instance, feels it has the right to spy on us.  b)  The government feels it doesn't need to follow the law (LOL!)  c) The government feels we, parents, are incapable of parenting our own children. d) we now have a new way for perverts with in the schools to violate children

Now let me push that disturbance just a little further.  There was a little detail about that story that really struck me.   The confidence that the government has that we are willing to comply to their heinous and illegal behavior.  What? you say, they didn't tell the parents they were going to have remote access, they lied.  Ah, yes BUT, when a child was found doing something the school officials didn't like they had no problem confessing where their evidence came from.  Did they not think that the parents would be angry?  Did the government really think that it could invade our privacy, our children and all they would have to say is that it's for our own good?  I say yes they did or they would have found another source of evidence against that child.

Well, I can comfort myself with the fact that I'm not actually paranoid.   

Microscope fun

 

This afternoon we finally hooked up the microscope Em got for Christmas a couple years ago to our computer.  I was playing around and it is so cool.  I can take images and save them to the computer, email them, what not.  I can even take a video, although haven't gotten into that yet.  I'm thinking this summer that will be really neat when we can get some pond water to look at.  I'm still getting used to focusing and not looking through the actual lens, but it's nice that everyone can see the object at once.  I've included the first image I took, but it isn't very good.  I did not have the camera tightened down so it's a bit blurry.  I was more concerned with how to do it at the time.  Plus I don't even know what it is of, lol!  The one frustrating thing about this microscope is that it only came with a couple slides and they aren't labeled.  I've looked into purchasing some more.  I really like the looks of this set.  It has bunny taste buds!  (I know disturbing, but so cool!) 

Patience is a virtue best served with tears.

Today my patience was well rewarded with a healthy helping of tears of joy!  One year and eleven months ago, to the day, we started homeschooling officially by pulling our daughter out of ps.  At that time she HATED math.  Let's be fair, she hated all things related to "school."  Math was by far the most hated however.  Over several months and several approaches to teaching her math I too came to hate math.  I had already given in to the unschooling method for reading and writing, I just couldn't let go of those damn math work sheets. Eventually I gave up.  And a couple months ago the clouds began to break up.  I could see numbers floating around my daughters 8 yo brain.  Then today, in our second real lesson following the new curriculum the sun began to shine on the world of math.  After what had to be at least 30 minutes of full math immersion I announced that they could quit for the day while I started dinner, or they could continue on their own and I would return.  My daughter jumped up and stated "I want to do more, I love math!"  

Looking back for a moment.

Well, hard to believe but we are approaching the two year anniversary of our decision to homeschool.  I'm not really sure if it's hard to believe because it went fast, or it felt like a lifetime, lol.  It somehow feels like both simultaneously.  So here we are nearly two years under our belts and on the brink of change.  For the past couple of years we've tried a couple of approaches to education.  We started out with a very school at home style and found quickly that a more unschooling approach was a better fit.  In all of this my task has been to write and implement the curriculum.  A major task, especially in the face of all the other chaos that took place over the past couple years.  At this time we've come to the realization that this needs to change, while still educating the kids in a style that is natural to our children.  The solution, we are hoping, is in a prepackaged curriculum called Oak Meadow <http://www.oakmeadow.com/>.  The plan is to have Oak Meadow serve as a backbone to the kids education, and free me up to concentrate more of my energy on the actual teaching end of things.  (it will also allow me to have time to do things for me so I don't go nuts, hahahaha)  I've ordered everything we need to get started, and I'm looking forward to it arriving on my doorstep in the next couple weeks.
Note:  This was originally part of an email sent out to update my family.  It was written less then a month ago and I thought it would be a good lead up to where we are at now.  Cheers~Carri