On My Heart

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light ⁹ (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), ¹⁰ finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. ¹¹ And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. ¹² For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. ¹³ But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. ¹⁴ Therefore He says: 

      “ Awake, you who sleep,
      Arise from the dead,
      And Christ will give you light.”

¹⁵ See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, ¹⁶ redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
¹⁷ Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Ephesians 5:8-17

He has chosen me, equiped me, and walks with me in His calling on my life as wife and mother and homemaker. Yet, this is the area where I need the most refining. I was in darkness but now the light makes all the dust ad cobwebs in my thinking as well as around my house visible. Asleep…for too long. I’ve been sleeping in, going to bed late, napping too long. sometimes I’m just disconnected through busyness, phone or computer.

But, my God is patient and faithful. I am waking to the warm glow of Jesus’  shining His truth on my ways. I forsake all the foolishness and will seek to make the most of my time; morning, noon and night . May the lifetime he has given me bring glory to Him and peace to my Heart and Home.

He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. PRAISE THE LORD!

Psalm 113:9

To be barren is to be fruitless. I want to bear fruit within my family life and as I serve Him outside the home. My prayer is that He show me what is hindering my joyfulness and productivity.I am surrendered to His will and trust he will lead me gently to His truth for my life.  I will focus on the fruit of the spirit which is:

¹⁶So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. ¹⁷For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. ¹⁸But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

 ¹⁹The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

 ²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. ²⁵Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Galatians 5:16-25

love

joy

peace

patience

kindness

goodness

faithfulness

gentleness 

self-control

Homeschooling is good for America and our family!

This article was written in 2001, 8 years ago. At that time I had a newborn baby girl and had my oldest in first grade in public in Miami, Fl. I had taught him to read and we had lots of fun but I believed the lies and succombed to the family pressure that I could homschool and had too much on plate already. I enrolled him in the second semester of Kindergarten and he only did the first semester of 1st grade. His teacher were lovely but the herd of cattle, oops I meant children walking in line form one classroom to another and then to lunch in a cafeteria made me sad. I missed him. His brothers missed him. I was in the car for 30-45 minutes each way morning and afternoon to take him to a good school not the one in our neighborhood. I wa not a happy mommy and wasn’t able to give the best to my kids , home and husband. but what put the icing on the cake for me was an incident of bullying and HOMEWORK. What were they doing all day? When do we get to just relax and play and be a family? There were evenings when it was 10 PM and we were still working on homework! He was tired and cranky and this made it take longer. ENOUGH! I’m taking my boy back and that was that! 

 

The amount of time it took us to drive there and back is the time that it took us to do our school work at home. the younger ones had te benefit of never stepping in a classroom. We love to be together. It has made my kids best friends. We talk around the dinner table. We volunteer together. WE encounter many people from the grocery store to piano lessons and baseball to the museum docent. They behave appropriately and  learn while having fun as a family. They are growing into mature and responsible adults. They do not live by a peer driven standard.  They are normal people that have to deal with peer pressure too.  The difference is that we deal with issues as a family and they are not esposed to things before they have a strong foundation in our christian belief system. It is our responsability not the gov’t or teachers to teach my child.

We make many sacrifices to do this. We don’t go to movies much (as if anything out there were that good anyway). We don’t eat out often (no thanks we rather eat good for you food anyway). We have only one older van (helps with gas prices and currently were graciouslu given a second car, God provides!). We don’t have cable (don’t miss that junk box either). We don’t travel (for now). We don’t ever feel alone. We like each other. And my husband and I will never say on our death bed, “I wish I had spent more time with my family” What a blessing and priveledge to be an important part of these four kids lives. I love being their mom, teacher and friend.

I can see all the benefits to homeschooling in this article but they don’t. They seem to be arguing within themselves trying to deny the clear evidence and benefit to society for the children that coming out of homeschooling and into theirt communities. Why? Because, they have a different worldview on family and gov’t.

 

Our homeschooled children enjoy their childhood, and aren’t little adults! They are polite, articulate children and young adults. Is having a childhood sitting in a classroom for 8 hours (some eat breakfast and lunch in the school cafeteria too) plus the time of transportation to and from the institutional learning facility a childhood. How about those how also stay in aftercare? That is not having a childhood.  

 

It has been discussed a lot lately about the gov’t getting too involved in our freedoms to homeschool. This article confirms it. This time article offers lots of flattery to homeschoolers, riddled with sarcasm to get us to sacrifice our God-given rights and responsibilty. For me it has meant continue strong and stay away from any of their generous offers.

 

I have a lot more to say but this is what comes to mind right now

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

Monday, Aug. 27, 2001

Home Sweet School

By John Cloud And Jodie Morse With Reporting by Steve Barnes/Little Rock, Amy Bonesteel and Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Beau Briese/Cambridge, Deborah Fowler/Houston, Kathie Klarreich/Miami, Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles, Maggie Sieger/Chicago and Rebecca Wi

 

Earlier this month, J.C. Penney learned the hard way just how powerful the home-schooling movement has become. Penney’s had recently started selling a T shirt that wickedly crystallized many people’s assumptions about the movement: HOME SKOOLED, giggles the shirt, which also depicts a trailer home. The folks at Penney’s say they meant no harm–they didn’t even design the T, which had become popular in other stores first. But they yanked it from the shelves Aug. 8 after enraged missives poured in from home-schooling families, some of whom threatened a boycott.

Penney’s should have known better. Over the past decade, the ranks of families home schooling have grown dramatically. According to a new federal report, at least 850,000 students were learning at home in 1999, the most recent year studied; some experts believe the figure is actually twice that. As recently as 1994, the government estimated the number at just 345,000. True, even the largest estimates still put the home schooled at only 4% of the total K-12 population–but that would mean more kids learn at home than attend all the public schools in Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming combined.

While politicians from Washington on down to your school board have been warring over charter schools and vouchers in recent years, home schooling has quietly outpaced both of those more attention-getting reforms (only half a million kids are in charter schools, and just 65,000 receive vouchers). In many ways, in fact, home schooling has become a threat to the very notion of public education. In some school districts, so many parents are pulling their children out to teach them at home that the districts are bleeding millions of dollars in per-pupil funding. Aside from money, the drain of families is eroding something more precious: public confidence in the schools.

Thomas Jefferson and the other early American crusaders for public education believed the schools would help sustain democracy by bringing everyone together to share values and learn a common history. In the little red brick schoolhouse, we would pursue both “democracy in education and education in democracy,” as Stanford historian David Tyack gracefully puts it. Home schooling forsakes all that by defining education not as the pursuit of an entire community but as the work of one family and its chosen circle. Which can be great. Despite some drawbacks, there are signs that home-schooling parents are doing a better job than public schools at teaching their kids. But as the number of kids learning at home grows, we should pause to wonder: Better at teaching them what? Home schooling may turn out better students, but does it create better citizens?

To see how home schooling threatens public schools, look at Maricopa County, Ariz. The county has approximately 7,000 home-schooled students. That’s only 1.4% of school-age kids, but it means $35 million less for the county in per-pupil funding. The state of Florida has 41,128 children (1.7%) learning at home this year, up from 10,039 in the 1991-92 school year; those kids represent a loss of nearly $130 million from school budgets in that state. Of course the schools have fewer children to teach, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t get as much money, but the districts lose much more than cash. “Home schooling is a social threat to public education,” says Chris Lubienski, who teaches at Iowa State University’s college of education. “It is taking some of the most affluent and articulate parents out of the system. These are the parents who know how to get things done with administrators.”

To be sure, many public schools–and their baleful unions and wretched bureaucrats, their rigid rules and we-know-best manner–have done a lot to hurt themselves. But as the most committed parents leave, the schools may falter more, giving the larger community yet another reason to fret over their condition. “A third of our support for schools comes from property taxes,” says Ray Simon, director of the Arkansas department of education. “If a large number of a community’s parents do not fully believe in the school system, it gets more difficult to pass those property taxes. And that directly impacts the schools’ ability to operate.” Says Kellar Noggle, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators: “We still have 440,000 kids in public schools, and some 12,000 [in home schooling] is a small number. But those 12,000 have parents and grandparents. Sure, it erodes public support.”

The thus far steep growth of home schooling does have limits, as it takes a galactic commitment of time and money and patience for a parent to spend all day, every day, relearning algebra (or getting it for the first time) and then teaching it. It’s fair to assume that a majority of parents won’t want to give up those delightfully quiet hours when the kids are at school. The softening economy may also begin to thin the ranks of home schoolers, many of whom are middle-class families that can’t afford private schools; if stay-at-home teaching parents have to take a job, free public school will start to look very inviting.

But for now, home schooling is still growing at about 11% a year, and it’s no longer confined to a conservative fringe that never believed in the idea of public education anyway. “Very different people are entering home schooling than did 20 years back,” says Mitchell Stevens, author of Kingdom of Children, a history of home schooling to be published next month by Princeton University Press. According to the Federal Government, up to three-quarters of the families that home school today say they do so primarily because, like so many of us, they are worried about the quality of their children’s education. A recent report by the state of Florida found that just a quarter of families in that state practice home schooling for religious reasons. The new home schoolers haven’t completely given up on public education, at least not the idea of it. “The problem is that schools have abandoned their mission,” says Luigi Manca, a communications professor at Benedictine University in Lisle, Ill., who home schools his daughter Nora, 17. “They’ve forgotten about educating.”

William Bennett used to be the U.S. Secretary of Education, but today he travels the nation to preach the home-school gospel. “I’m here to talk about the revolution of common sense,” he told a Denver home-schooling conference in June. Working himself up to promote K12, his slick, new, for-profit online school for home schoolers, Bennett even suggested that “maybe we should subcontract all of public education to home schoolers.” It was strange to watch a man once responsible for federal aid to public schools urge people to desert them. Imagine if Colin Powell gave a speech saying we should disband the U.S. Army and assemble local militias.

But many are following. They are folks like Tim and Lisa Dean of Columbia, Md., working parents (he manages technical support for the U.S. Senate; she’s a part-time attorney) who home school Bitsy, 5, and Teddy, 4. Contrary to the old picture of home schoolers, Tim doesn’t leave all the teaching to his wife, and they helped start a home-school support group two years ago that includes parents who are gay and straight; black, white, Asian American and biracial; Democrat and Republican.

The conservative Christians who worked so hard in the 1980s to make home schooling legal in every state are as committed as ever, but more politically moderate Christians have also joined the movement. Susie Capraro, who home schools her son and daughter, used to be part of the Broward County Parent Support Group, the largest home-schooling network in Florida and one founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Although she considers herself a Fundamentalist Christian, Capraro didn’t like group rules that keep non-Christians from leadership roles–or other exclusionary gestures, like the ice skating event that featured only Christian music. “We wanted a place where people could get the support they needed without the religion,” says Capraro, who along with 10 families co-founded Home Educators Lending Parents Support. “[Religion is] not the purpose of our group, but rather to get together for the best education.” Today the three-year-old organization includes more than 150 families representing Evangelicals as well as Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others.

For this story, TIME reporters interviewed more than 70 home-schooling parents around the U.S. to find the new faces of the movement, including a biology professor at Spelman College; a midwife and artist in Canton, Ga.; an attorney and part-time basketball coach in Houston; an Arkansas state legislator; and Leo Damrosch, a Harvard English professor who began home schooling his sons, 10 and 13, in part because “the two writers I’ve studied most intensively for many years, William Blake and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were both geniuses of astounding originality, and neither of them went to school for a single day.”

Many of the home-schooling parents we met were religious, but few were home schooling only to instill values. They had come to their decision after a variety of frustrations. Among them: the Fayetteville, Ga., school with 45 kindergartners in one room; the school administrators in Wheaton, Ill., who were so confused over what to do with Sue McCallum’s boy that they put him in both remedial and gifted classes; the Glendale, Calif., school where Robert Phillipps’ fifth-grader Bill saw too many fistfights.

These parents got fed up in different ways, but what they have in common is a willingness to sacrifice–money, career opportunities, watching soap operas–for their children’s education. Sometimes these sacrifices are small, like giving up a dining room to make a classroom. But consider the Carnells of Columbia, Md., who started home schooling Erin, 6, because a shoulder injury required occupational therapy that would have interfered with school hours. The Carnells decided to keep teaching her at home because they feel they can do a better job than local schools. To teach her math and science in the mornings, Fred, a government cartographer, works the office graveyard shift, which means he and his wife Debbie, a claims adjuster, hardly see each other. The family rarely eats dinner together, and the parents are constantly exhausted. Says Debbie: “I have my schedule down to the hour on an Excel work sheet.”

Erin will doubtless benefit educationally from her parents’ exertions. But imagine what American public education would look like if parents who currently home school flooded their local schools with all that mighty dedication instead. One doesn’t diminish a home-schooling parent’s sacrifice for his child to note that he may also be abdicating some of his responsibilities to his community. “In a home school, a parent can really insulate a child from the vibrant, pluralistic, democratic world,” says Rob Reich, who teaches political science at Stanford. Susanne Allen, 35, a home-schooling mother from Atlanta, claims her children will be “better citizens” because home schooling gives them the opportunity to work together, rather than sitting at individual desks. “They learn to be caring for other people by seeing an older sibling care for them,” she says. But will that make them better citizens or just better siblings?

Then again, if a parent lives in, say, California, where 30 kids pack the average third-grade classroom, who can blame her for home schooling? If it’s a choice between being good to one’s family or good to one’s community, it’s not much of a choice at all. Many, of course, try to be both, but some parents say the schools are too far gone. Amy Langley, who home schools her son and daughter in Decatur, Ga., believes two-income families don’t participate enough to make public schools work. “And too much class time is spent on discipline,” she says.

For all that home-schooling parents give up, what are their kids getting? We know the average SAT score for home schoolers in 2000 was 1100, compared with 1019 for the general population. And a large study by University of Maryland education researcher Lawrence Rudner showed that the average home schooler scored in the 75th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills; the 50th percentile marked the national average. But not all home schoolers take standardized tests, and one suspects the better students are the ones volunteering to do so. It’s also difficult to assess how a child who is home schooled would have done in a traditional school. Because of the paucity of research, no one can say much more than this: home schooling seems to require the same formula for success as parenting, which is to say, it can work when the parents are loving and open-minded and dedicated. As Simon of the Arkansas department of education says, “You’ve got examples of very well-structured home schools and total disasters, just like you do in the public schools.”

Certainly the old suspicion of the academic credentials of home-schooled kids has waned; perhaps three-quarters of universities now have policies for dealing with home-schooled applicants, according to Cafi Cohen, author of The Homeschoolers’ College Admissions Handbook. Today Harvard admissions officers attend home-schooling conferences looking for applicants, and Rice and Stanford admit home schoolers at rates equal to or higher than those for public schoolers. These schools compete for students like L.J. Decker, 17, from Katy, Texas, who scored 1560 on the SAT and was part of a team of home schoolers who won the Toshiba ExploraVision contest for their idea of a futuristic scuba device that would use artificial hemoglobin to convert the oxygen in water into air.

Some colleges, like Kennesaw State University in Georgia, aggressively recruit home schoolers. Justin Tomczak, 22, now a sales associate for Salomon Smith Barney, was one of them. After he arrived at Kennesaw several years ago, he started a group for home-schooled kids, but today home schoolers have become so integrated into campus life that the group has pretty much disbanded. “Back then, [other students] thought we were religious weirdos who couldn’t cope,” he says. “Now the perception is totally different.”

That’s partly because the old canard that home schoolers are hermits has largely been disproven. In fact nearly 1 in 5 takes at least one class in a public or private school, according to the Federal Government. Home schoolers participate in extracurricular activities too. Many of the home-schooling parents interviewed by TIME were just as busy as any parents scheduling baseball practices and ballet classes. Judi Thomas of Marietta, Ga., says her daughter Juliet, 9, “has tap and ballet on Tuesdays; Wednesdays, there’s choir; Thursdays, she has classes with other home schoolers; Fridays, there’s usually a play date or a field trip.”

Home schooling’s successes didn’t come easily, though the practice is actually an old tradition. In the early years of this country, most children were educated at home, either by parents or tutors. Public education started in the middle of the 19th century. When, in the 1960s, a leftist education reformer named John Holt began pushing home schooling as an alternative to conformist public schools, his ideas were seen as fringe. Home schooling was illegal in many states until the 1980s and ’90s, when well-organized evangelical Christians adopted home schooling as a way to escape what they saw as the creeping disorder of the campus.

Today home schoolers run one of the most effective lobbies in Washington, with connections all the way to the White House, where the President recently hosted a reception for home-schooled students. Bush’s Under Secretary for Education Eugene Hickok told TIME that “we cannot blame people for exercising their choices and home schooling until we have some real changes out there.”

Despite its growing acceptance, there are nagging shortcomings to home schooling. If you spend time with home schoolers, you get a sense that some of them have missed out on whole swaths of childhood; the admirable efforts by their parents to ensure their education and safety sometimes seem to have gone too far. In 1992 psychotherapist Larry Shyers did a study while at the University of Florida in which he closely examined the behavior of 35 home schoolers and 35 public schoolers. He found that home schoolers were generally more patient and less competitive. They tended to introduce themselves to one another more; they didn’t fight as much. And the home schoolers were much more prone to exchange addresses and phone numbers. In short, they behaved like miniature adults.

Which is great, unless you believe that kids should be kids before they are adults. John McCallum, 20, of Wheaton, Ill., began learning at home after fourth grade. On the whole, he valued the experience. But if he could change anything about his teen years, he would want more interaction with people his age. “I don’t date, and that’s something I attribute to home schooling,” he says. Or consider Rachel Ahern, 21, of Grand Junction, Colo., who never set foot in a classroom until she went to Harvard at 18. As a child, she socialized with older kids and adults at church and in music classes at a nearby college. “I never once experienced peer pressure,” she says. But is that a good thing? Megan Wallace of Atlanta says if she had gone to high school, “I would have gotten into so much trouble.” One could argue that kids need to get into a certain amount of trouble to learn how to handle temptations and their consequences.

“Home schoolers are often very astute,” says Richard Shaw, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale. “But they often have to learn how to live with others.” Even the new home-schooling parents, who are keenly aware of this problem and try to ensure their children interact with others, sometimes miss the point. Half a dozen families told TIME that the only aspect of school their kids say they miss is riding the bus. So some of them have arranged for their children to have their own private rides on a school bus. But the singular experience of going to school with other kids on the bus–which is at once terrifying and liberating–can’t be mimicked in private.

The same blinkered approach can extend to academics. “I make pretty much all the decisions about what to study,” says Maren McKee, 15, of Naperville, Ill., who left public school after third grade. “I wasn’t interested in math or composition, so I didn’t really do it. I liked to dance.” But now McKee, who is dyslexic, realizes she will need more than dance steps to get into college. “My mom and I are going to spend this whole year on math and learning to write,” she says, perhaps not fully appreciating that both of those skills can take much longer than a year to learn.

Brie Finegold, 22, a graduate of the University of North Texas, says she did fine without the traditional classroom. “I got to do volunteer work at the food bank at my synagogue and apprentice to a dance company when I was a teenager, when others my age were sitting in classrooms,” she says. But volunteering and dancing aren’t necessarily better than chemistry and poetry. The basic function of a liberal education is to expose people to fields they normally wouldn’t investigate. Whether you believe the purpose of education is to shape one’s character in a democracy or to prepare Johnny for his job, neither is accomplished when kids get to study only what they want.

But what if your educational goals are simpler? Skeet Savage, mother of six in Covert, Mich., argues that “graduation isn’t the ultimate goal for my children. Learning is.” There’s a little tributary that runs off the home-schooling river called unschooling that espouses such ideas. About 7% of home schoolers today describe themselves as using no particular curricular plan, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. Not all these people would embrace the term unschooling, which sounds so anti-intellectual, but many of them follow the path of no paths, allowing their children to pursue their own interests.

The idea is that kids learn best when they determine what to study and when. “I tried to bring the classroom into the home but quickly discovered that wasn’t the best way to bring out the strengths in my children,” says Savage, whose children are 15 to 28. Instead, she practices what she calls “natural home schooling,” using real-life projects as teaching opportunities: caring for animals on the family farm, building an addition on the house, designing graphics for the family company (which publishes Christian home-schooling material). Of her three children over 18, none has gone to college.

Of course, unschooling lies at an extreme. Home-schooling families fall along a continuum between copying the traditional classroom and “learning” by building Mommy and Daddy a lovely cedar deck. The success of the venture may depend more on the parents than the kids. If they are like Marilyn and Gene McGinnis of Atlanta, devout Mennonites who nonetheless make a conscious effort to teach their children about other cultures and religions, home schooling can broaden and enrich children’s minds as much as any schooling. Home schooling also works when parents are like the Deckers in Katy, Texas, parents of five, who were humble enough to get help from another home-schooling parent for a child of theirs who was struggling with spelling.

“You have to feel like you’re on a mission,” says Ronnie Palache, who pulled Spencer, 9, from fourth grade in Tarzana, Calif., because the boy was bored and unchallenged but also has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. “I wake up every morning saying two things to myself: ‘I’m on a mission to have Spencer turn out O.K.’ and ‘I have to live outside the box.’”

And even then maybe it’s not enough. Robert Phillipps of Glendale, Calif., began home schooling Bill, 15, and Denise, 11, four years ago. He works hard at it and carefully tracks what his kids are learning. But he can’t provide an art class at home even though Denise likes to sketch, and ice skating three days a week has to count for PE. The kids read great books, but they have no one outside the family with whom to discuss them during class. As Phillipps says, “There is no one to hide behind. What you do is yours.”

But if home schooling is flawed, and our public schools are weathered, some believe there’s a way to improve both by reinvesting home schoolers in their communities and making public schools more nimble. A few school districts are showing the way. In some states, including California and Texas, school districts now allow home-schooled kids to sign up for such offerings as a physics class or the football team. A growing number of districts are opening resource centers where home schoolers come for class once or twice a week. In Orange County, Calif., two school districts have combined two reform ideas by opening charter schools that offer home-schooling programs.

This cooperation is largely motivated by self-interest–many schools can regain at least a percentage of their per-pupil funding by counting home schoolers, who get more options without being fully part of the system. “These programs can win parents back when they see the school is willing to offer alternative forms of education,” says Patricia Lines, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle and one of the foremost experts on home schooling. “There’s something very efficient about [traditional] schooling, and home schooling isn’t exactly efficient.” That’s one reason TIME found so many home schoolers who had formed de facto “schools” that offer science labs and basketball teams.

But this healthy synergy would require both public school administrators and home schoolers to stop being so suspicious one another. That may take years. Too many public school administrators silently agree with what Wayne Johnson, president of the California Teachers Association, says in objecting to any public expenditure on home schoolers: “Putting money into home schooling is throwing money down a rathole. You have no idea if that money is being spent properly or children are benefiting.”

For their part, many home schoolers take the hard line of the movement’s leading advocacy group, the Home School Legal Defense Association. It avoids representing home schoolers who are trying to get access to public school services that their taxes help fund. Many home schoolers feel that exposes the movement to too much government interference. “We are really afraid,” says James Carper, an education historian at the University of South Carolina, who home schools. “When public schools extend the opportunity to become involved, it is inevitably going to compromise our independence.”

But newer apostles of home schooling like William Bennett believe the future holds more cooperation. He says school administrators will work to develop a “Chinese-menu-style education,” for instance, that allows home schoolers to have a math class here and a band course there without buying the whole K-12 puu-puu platter. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether public schools can still play a vital role in communities if they become simply another consumer good pushed by market forces and not a common good that transcends them.

–With reporting by Steve Barnes/Little Rock, Amy Bonesteel and Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Beau Briese/Cambridge, Deborah Fowler/Houston, Kathie Klarreich/Miami, Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles, Maggie Sieger/Chicago and Rebecca Winters/New York

Find this article at:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000631,00.html

Zelda Catnap

 

I awoke yesterday to find Lexie sleeping in the living room snuggled with Zelda. She had a look on her face that said she was biding her time to escape. Seth tried to gently release her without waking Lexie but she moved and Zelda got away. At least from Lexie but not from Seth. We just love her and she can never escape that.

Family Guestbook

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,

for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:2

My hope is to have everyone that stops by our home and stays a while to sign their name and leave a short (or long) message in our guest book. What a priceless possession this will be to open those pages in ten or twenty years and see the handwriting of grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, missionaries, our children’s playmates and cousins.

You can go to town with this. Buy a gorgeous premade guestbook or simple scrapbook and add embellishments and pictures to the pages. I bought a composition notebook. I embellished the cover with varied scrapbbooking supplies. I am going to glue pictures in different places along the book. The pictures and embellishments will add to the fun and give you the visual of that special dinner or birthday party. You may even add cards and postcards that have also visited your family via mail box and bought a smile to your faces. Outline the hands of our new baby nephew. How about a stray cats or lost dog paw print that you took in for a few days. You may even choose to add petals of flowers bought by a friend. The book will become a touch and feel visual feast for you eyes and heart.

I have forgotten to ask some friends to sign our book a few times. Keep it on the coffee table or by your front door or foyer. There is no reason why you can’t write in what they said during their visit, who was visiting and the date. I bought a date stamp. I thought it would give it an old fashioned look. Ask your kids to remind you to give the guests the book and you’ll never forget again. Have family fun with it.

Free Download: Family Guest Book

Now go make some memories!

Here are some ideas for you:

Scrapbook
Composition notebook
Store bought journal
Date stamp
Attach a ribbon with a pen for ease of use
Don’t wait until they are getting in the car
Take pictures
Add thank you cards, birthday cards, postcards or any special note

When your book is full tie a pretty ribbon around it and start another. Have a special dinner and prayer night with your family once a year and REMEMBER and PRAY for your friends and family.

Some beautiful scripture, poetry and quotes to add to your pages:

… there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18: 24

A friend loves at all times… Proverbs 17: 17

No one has greater love [no one has shown stronger affection] than to lay down (give up) his own life for his friends. John 15: 13

No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you
John 15: 15(NKJV)

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are lavish and deceitful.
Proverbs 27: 6

Oil and perfume rejoice the heart; so does the sweetness of a friend’s counsel that comes from the heart. Proverbs 27: 9

As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. Proverbs 27: 17(NKJV)

“A Friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) US poet & essayist.

“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.
Before him I may think aloud.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.”
George Washington (1732 – 1799) US Statesman.

“Should auld aquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min’?”
Robert Burns (1759 – 1796) Scottish poet.

“It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.”
Epicurus (341 – 270 BC) Greek philosopher.

“Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. he whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.”
Samuel Johnston (1709 – 1784) British lexicographer.

“My friends are my estate.”
Emily Dickinson

“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.”
Oscar Wilde

“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.”
William Shakespeare

“Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”
Mother Teresa

“… no man is useless
while he has a friend.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

“A true friend stabs you in the front.”
Oscar Wilde

“Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”
Mark Twain

“The best mirror is an old friend.”
George Herbert

“With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution to my being of happiness, strength and understanding remains to sustain me in an altered world.”
Helen Keller

“What is a friend? A single soul in two bodies.”
Aristotle

“The friendship that can cease has never been real.”
Saint Jerome

“I count myselt in nothing else so happy
As in a soul rememb’ring my good friends.”
William Shakespeare

“I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man’s milk and restorative cordial.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”
Helen Keller

“Ah, how good it feels…the hand of an old friend”
Mary Englebright

” ‘Stay’ is a charming word in a friends vocabulary.”
Louisa Mary Alcott [1832-1888], American writer, reformist

“When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.”
-William Arthur Ward

“Friendship? Yes Please.”
Charles Dickens
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

Oceanogaphy

We began our oceanography summer studies with an illustration of Genesis 1:9-10. It sparked lots of conversation and research in Genesis to verify if the sun was made before or after the seas. A little debate ensued and I as their mom and teacher won becasue they are loving to learn and figured it out on their own.  I must admit, the first three chapters of 20,000 had my head spinning and tongue tied but we will perservere.

To follow along with us subscribe to our blog and check out G-Force Academy page above. Please leave a comment if you are studying along with us or what your family is doing over the summer. As time permits I will add more and provide you with a printable download of our lesson plans.

Happy Schooling!

Monica

To see a larger view of the drawings click on the thumbnail. When done hit the back botton.

Pho Time!

    

  

What an amazing evening we spent with our friend’s the Wilda’s. They have three of the sweetest kids around. I think I carried the baby all night. Oh, how she ministered to my soul with her sweet and easy going spirit. What a happy baby girl! She fell asleep in my arms (I still got the the touch). Today was also her first time ever in a pool.  Alf and I got our baby fix, big time! 

While the kids and dads played in the pool the moms started to making Pho. Pho is a traditional soup from Laos. Making and eating pho is quite an experience. It has a light but flavorful and aromatic broth that is  laced with lemongrass and ginger. You can customize the flavors any way you choose. 

We began by getting a bowl of thick rice noodles. On top of the noodles, you add your herbs and spices. The table was filled with fresh basil, mint, scallions, cilantro, jalapenos, lime wedges, grilled chicken breast, many sauces like  hoison sauce. But, the coolest thing was raw thinly sliced steak. Yep, you read correctly RAW. The kids and I were tripping out! Once we had all of our bowls piled high with the fixins’ then came the hot steamy broth. The steak quickly cooked before our eyes. I thought the kids would freak at all the greens but they enjoyed it. Jet, the dad, taught us interesting things about the Hmong culture.

   Yummo!

One thing is for sure they stuff their guests. We had amazing peanut butter/chocolate brownies made by their oldest son, Elijah. He has the cooking gene. As if that wasn’t enough we had tons of  watermelon, pineapple, and mago all from the farmer’s market at our local weekly flea market. We will be cooking latin food for them in a couple of weeks and then we will be back at thiers for homemade egg rolls. Woohoo! I feel a unit study coming on!

     

    

                                                                  Sister Chickies       

The kids played in the pool and lots of games together and the parents battled each other at Sequence. They were generous hosts in leading us to believe we won by their grace but we kicked butt! What a sweet family fun time. 

 

Thanks Wilda’s! We love you!

Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe

 

Every year that I attend the FPEA Homeschool Convention in Orlando, Florida, I have one prayer; “Lord teach me one thing that will give me vision and focus for the coming school year and bring you glory.” I didn’t attend this year but will I plan to have a weekend away this summer to ask the Lord my yearly question.  After I said my prayer in May 2008 I walked through the glass doors of the magnificent Rosen Shingle Creek Resort Hotel and was met by the hustle and bustle of homeschool families making their way to their seminars of choice.

I attended Jessica Hulcy’s seminar, “An Education for Princes and Nobility”. She is my guru and mentor to many.  I always seek a hug and encouragement from her at her booth. She is so sweet and her eyes and hug always make me feel like it’s gonna be ok. She’s the co-author of Konos and holds online c-op classes at Home School Mentor. She said many things but, the one thing that rang a bell or rather a gong in my head was “ you are not responsible for the full sum of your child’s life!” Huh?! She went on to elaborate by stating that my kids are learning everywhere they go and will continue to learn into high school, college and through all of adult life and I will not be responsible for it. God will. God? Right! Yes, God! He has a plan for them and it does not compare to mine. His plans are better and eternal. What a relief those words brought to my heart. I had been feeling so stretched with one in kindergarten and one getting ready for high school, and this bought me the “aha!” moment I was needing.

The following day I attended Todd Wilson’s seminar, “Lies Homeschool Moms Believe”. He spoke about the standards that we homeschool moms impose on ourselves and to walk in freedom to be who are, because God intended for us to be our kids’ mom flaws and all. Ok, so there’s God’s purpose again, I thought to myself. Slowly the room became quiet, he almost whispered, “Moms, you are not responsible for the entire sum of your kids education”.  WHAT! Did he just say what I think he said?! I thought with eyes bugging out. He proceeded to repeat it. “Moms, you are not responsible for the total sum of your kids education” WHAT! He can hear me? Did he repeat it for me!!!

My fellow homeschool moms this was a boombastic, God in stereo-surround sound moment! How did He manage to get them to say the same thing to me, little ole me. I am so humbled to serve a loving, all knowing, holy, ever-present God. I serve Him through serving my family and if He heard my prayer outside the doors of the convention he will hear yours. He cares for our little homeschools and he has a master plan for our kids and we just need to enjoy them and teach them how to learn and to love to learn, everything else is in HIS capable, loving hands.  With all that said, I recommend wholeheartedly Todd Wilson’s book, Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe. You can visit his website at Family Man Ministries. 

What is God whispering to your homeschool heart as you prepare for your next school year? Leave your thoughts below in the comment box.

Happy Schooling!

Monica

Digital Scrapbooking

These are my first two attempts at digital scrapbooking. It was so much fun and therapeutic. I used Adobe Photoshop and lots of digital freebies. I learned a lot from watching YouTube video tutorials. What do you think?

I will post links tomorrow that will help you begin your digital creations. It’s my son’s turn on the ‘puter!

Smooches!

Summer Homeschool Fun Planning

  

There is nothing like a trip to the beach to get your family excited about summer and a homeschool mom brimming with ideas for a relaxed and fun summer school. We will not be taking any significant breaks other than trips to the beach or pool and the free family summer movies at Regal Cinemas.

As I ponder the summer ahead and get filled with excitement for the fun studies we plan on doing I just had to share and invite you to join us. Inspired by this blog  The Young Florida Naturalists Guide Blog and it’s chapter challenges on nature study in Florida (see book below that I requested from the library) I am going to attempt some of them along with a FREE oceanography study by Christian Cottage Unit Studies. 

I requested the following books from the library to aid in our studies and outings:

 

We plan on “attempting” to visit different places we learn about and keep a notebook. Our hope it to end our studies in September with trips to Lowry Park Zoo and the Florida Aquarium that are included with your Mosi membership with free admission during the month of September. Mosi is also currently showing Imax 3D movie Under the Sea. Visit the website for fun lesson plans, games, video webisodes and behind the scenes footage. I am almost done with my plans for our summer school. Check back this weekend to get some inspiration for fun family learning activities.

 

Happy Schooling!

Monica      

 

The young naturalist’s guide to Florida     
 
Author:  LantzPeggy S. 
PublisherDate:  SarasotaFla. : Pineapple Pressc2006.    -   Edition:  2nd Ed. 
ISBN:  9781561643776    -   Description:  iv195 p. : ill.28 cm.

Sneaky, $-Saving, Easy, and Healthy Breakfast

I love Walmart. They have added more organic and whole foods to their aisles. My kids favorite breakfast is cereal. It’s fast and easy. But with four growing kids it’s not the healthiest choice or the most affordable. When Kashi is on sale I stock up and with those savings I’m able to buy soy or organic milk more often. I have started mixing the cereals with fiber rich whole grain cereals. They last longer and are healthier and more filling. Add some sliced bananas, raisins and or strawberries and you have got a winner boht in your wallet and thier tummies. Try my favorite mix pictured above! Let me know if your family likes it or some of your ideas.

Happy Eating!

The Hulcy’s Homeschool Heart

Dear fellow homeschool friends, 

We all have our favorite homeschool leaders, speakers and authors. My favorite has always been Jessica Hulcy. Even though I do not currently use Konos it adorns my school shelf as a treasured resource and occasional reference. I own her videos, am a member of her yahoo group and attend all of her seminars at convention. Her heart for the Lord is what drew me to her and how that love and passion for HIM is what drove her as a homeschool mom. She is a mom to me and to many others. I am hopeful she will recover completely. I want to remind you all to pray and check her Caring Bridge website that is updated daily, http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jessicahulcy. I subscribed to a daily email. There you will be able to see the heart of God through this Texas homechool family. Below is a recent post by Wade Hulcy her husband. They are our biggest cheerleaders as we homeschool our kids in spite of their current circumstance. Waht a glorious example of God’s faithfulness and their trust in Him and what he has done through in their homeschool journey and still doing through them. You can see pics of the accedent and sign their guestbook. Mr Hulcy has even spoken to the firefighter that hit Jessica and given him such beautiful grace. You will be moved to read the account of the last 9 days of their lives. 

Praying,

Monica

Jessica Hulcy’s Journal

Monday, May 25, 2009 9:31 PM, CDT

 One more tidbit!em to the convention there.  He also substituted for me and gave 6 workshops.  Oh how proud his mother would be of him!  But why am I surprised?  He is an excellent speaker in his own right.  He is a KONOS-Kid through and through!  He was buoyed with prayer like the wings of eagles, and he is a trooper. wonderful posts in the guestbook about him ministering to families in NC only put an exclamation point to the paragraph written for Jordan long ago by his mother.  Regarding our kids being able to pick up the mantel and move forward with it, I am reminded of another time when I handed him the mantel.  went to the first day of PE with him and physically handed that whistle over to Jordan in ceremony.  I told all 50 moms gathered under the tree there, “Not to quit just because the teacher had changed.  The entire essence of the homeschooling movement was at stake.  If we don’t allow the next generation to take the reigns from us, then we have failed miserably at what our goal was in the first place.” Not one quit and Rhett is now teaching the class which has continued for 9 solid years after my departure!!2 Tim 1:9 which says, “[God] who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.’  God has work for each of our children.  We need to make sure they are prepared to go through whatever door the Father calls them to for their life’s work.ing to our beloved friend, Phyllis Phipps, “We don’t have to be PERFECT, but we must be OBEDIENT.

Wade

Apologia’s New Notebooking Journal’s

 

Apologia is now producing notebooking journals that accompany each of the elementary science books. Both Botany and Astronomy are now available. You can see samples on the Apologia website here:

These journals are beautiful spiral bound notebooks that will save you time and money. You won’t have to print and keep up with your child’s notebook pages, buy and maintain page protectors, or purchase and compile binders…everything that makes notebooking time-consuming and labor intensive for mom. Also, your child will adore having their own notebooking journal.

Each of the notebooking journals include:
A daily schedule for those who like to have a plan or would like their children to complete the book on their own
Templates for written narrations, the notebooking activities and experiments
Review Questions
Scripture Copywork, with both print and cursive practice
Reading lists and additional activities, projects, experiments for each lesson
An appendix with beautiful, full-color, lapbook-style Miniature Books
Field Trip Sheets to keep a record field trips
A Final Review with fifty questions the students can answer either orally or in writing to show off all they remember and know at the end of the course.
See the sample pages here:

Botany: https://apologia.securesites.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=128

and

Astronomy: https://apologia.securesites.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=127

Jeannie is giving away four Astronomy Notebooking Journals and four Botany Notebooking Journals to bloggers who post about this on their site. Visit her blog to learn more about this contest: www.jeanniesjournal.com

The contest ends on in one week on May 29th! That way I’ll have the weekend to send them before I go to the Illinois conference.

So blog away!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Easter Sonrise Service 2009-Our Sons’ Baptism

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. 3 John 1:4

This was an Easter to remember for our family. Our two older sons were baptized at our churches sonrise service. Their dad baptized them right in the gulf of Mexico with sun rising in the background. Over one hundred people were baptized! Praise the Lord! My hubby was so overcome with joy and pride that he was moved to tears and then the boys started weeping too. It was one the top moments in their lives and my husband and I got to be there! Lot’s of our friends were there too with us to witness our son’s public declaration as followers of Jesus Christ. My mom and aunt were there too. We went to Denny’s for a big family breakfast celebration. From this Easter on it will be a family memory that we will commemorate with a special celebration that honors our son’s and our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. HE IS RISEN!

Happy 17th Anniversary!

 

Thank you my love, for walking in our Lord’s ways and loving us as Christ loves. You are an amazing friend, husband, teacher, and father.
F.A.A.D.
Monica

Psalm 128
A Song of Ascents.
1 Blessed is every one who fears the LORD,
Who walks in His ways.

2 When you eat the labor of your hands,
You shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.
3 Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
In the very heart of your house,
Your children like olive plants
All around your table.
4 Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
Who fears the LORD.

5 The LORD bless you out of Zion,
And may you see the good of Jerusalem
All the days of your life.
6 Yes, may you see your children’s children.

Peace be upon The Guerras!

A weekend full of family fun!

Dad surprised the kids with breakfast at Denny’s. Yummo, we hadn’t eaten out ina long time. It was great to be waited on. After breakfast we visited our friend and Bible study teacher Debbie. she taught the Freedom Workshop to the teens at homeschool co-op. Mikael just loves her. It hs been wonderful to have my son and brother in Christ walk with me in with the knowledge of the key points from the study. Debbie hosts an annual Arts and Craft Christmas open house every year. There were many artists there exhibiting their jewelry, sculptors, paintings and more. Debbie’s scripture cards done in calligraphy and photography postcards are beautiful. She even had a sketch done by her father for sale. Check out the pictures.

After visiting with Debbie we headed to Pinellas Pioneer Settlement for their Annual Christmas Jamboree. We ran into our very dear friends and old lifegroup leaders the Hendrick’s. They were instrumental in our family’s life as we settled in St. Pete and offered us love, support, and encouragement without reservation. I just love them! There son is quite talented with the facial muscles and their daughter is hanging upside right above Seth in the background.

It was a blast from the past! We visited one of the oldest homes in Pinellas County. They were making pumkin pancakes, bacon and hot chocolate the old fashioned way in an old fashioned kitchen. The icebox is just that, a box that has a big block of ice in it. And the stove cooked with coals. They actually made the pancakes in the oven. The volunteers were very informative and truly enjoying teaching the kids. The kids were able to learn about the evolution of the printshop and had the opporunity to print their names using and old fashioned “doo hicky” printer.

I had a devine appointment with a mother who’s booth I was perusing for jewelry. Her son was killed in and auto accident the previous year and he worked for All Children’s Hospital. His fellow co-workers donated crafts to raise money for a the new facility being built in his honor. The mother’s pain was obvious as she spoke of her son and gratitude for those who donated for their cause. I asked if I could pray with her and she agreed. The poor woman sobbed as I wept and turned out to be a christian and was raising a grandson that was very active. We were able to invite them to Alf’s karate classes and scouts at our church. She was so happy to find a place to take him and I could tell that she felt better. Thank you Jesus for giving her grace to move on. They are Puerto Rican so that was cool too that we were able to talk to the both her and her husband in spanglish. As we walked away I held my kids hands a little tighter and kissed their heads.

After the Christmas Jamboree we went to a park to collect pinecones for crafts and decorations and for a little playtime.

 

 

 

 

We didn’t find many nice pinecones but the kids had a blast and Alf and I were able to sit and enjoy watching them have fun.

 

Gingerbread Decorating Party

What joy to share such special moments with my family and friends. I made my baby girl a cute no sew apron with little gingerbread men all over it. the kids all chipped to set up and clean up. I could never have accomplished this without my kiddos.

We had great weather for our party. It was chilly and breezy. Just the right touch of Florida winter added to the Christmas feel of the party. We had to postpone it for a day due to a cold front that brought with it tons of rain.

It was great fun to plan and host a party with sweet April. We both enjoy doing this kinda stuff and it was a blessing to share in it with other families. The kids and moms all had a blast decorating and I must say the moms got way into it. We ended up blowing the houses up at our friend’s the Geer’s on Christmas Eve (more on that soon)

Have a Sweet Christmas!

Chocolate fountain fun!

Marshmallow, apples, pound cake, strawberries, pineapple will never taste the same after being dipped in warm chocolate.

I love my family dipped in chocolate too!

GINGERBREAD BUILDING

What an ooey, gooey, sticky, yummy, fun mess!

 

 

April and I had a wonderful time planning our gingerbread decorating party. It gave us an opportunity to get together and facilitated a time to for enjoy with our kids and then with our friends to decorate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

After all the boys are long gone my little momma stays working and creating her masterpiece. Granted she was also doing a lot of nibbling too but we had fun finishing off our projects together.
 

 

Lexie’s Sweet Polar Express

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Holiday Ham!