Not Another Homeschool Blog

I am excited about the new year.  I am always genuinely enthusiastic about  New Year's when the preceding year has been especially dreadful.  Ok, it wasn't all that bad, just financially tight and a bit depressing on a personal and national basis. Between the Election, and mass shootings, I feel affected and drained. So anyway, whenever I have felt this way before, and greeted the new year with open arms, the next year has been fabulous and so I am claiming a fabulous New Year. Here's my problem though. I can't envision a whole year ahead of me. I can only see the next six months because my life will be changing so much halfway through the year. Because my girl is graduating and I have no more children at home, I feel like halfway though the year I will be making a brand new start.  So year 2013.1 I will be working hard to make sure my girl finishes her high school program, successfully and happily.  Then year 2013.2, I will work to make sure she transit...

This Christmas tree is in my foyer.  It's about 15 feet tall and is pre-lit.  A couple days after we put it up we realized that there is a section (upper center) that did not light or is no longer lit. Oh well.  It is our imperfect christmas tree.  There was no way we were going to take everything off and play with each light until it lit up.  We will worry about that next year.   Sometimes everything does not go as planned.  This Christmas, especially, the nation is depressed as a whole, for many reasons.  We are emotionally spent.   I am going to call my tree a poetic representation of that.  But........ We are together.   Everyone can't say that we have our families in our homes right now. All our children Our siblings  and if we are lucky, our parents.   So my foyer tree, the first thing people see when they enter our homes are imperfect.  But our family tree, and our family ro...

It's December and in spite of my best efforts to keep the school year going through winter break, by daughter had gone on strike and so we are done for the first half of the year.  I can thank my son who is home for winter break helped her make that decision. So this is where we are as of right now: College boy.  I've taken to calling him great-big Neanderthal Man.  He has changed.  He seems to be creating distance between himself and his dad.  This makes his dad sad.  I think it's his way of expressing his manhood, but it is still hard for his dad. His relationship with me is fine.  I think he's nicer to me actually.  I can question him about school and such, but when dad chimes in, he shuts down.   Anyway, he did good enough to keep his scholarships.  I am glad with that for first semester.  His dad wants more...  Maybe that's the problem. ... Or maybe his dad should stop "touching him

I can't seem to get off this subject... of the Connecticut school shootings.  So since my heart is stuck there, I thought I would engage you all to think, think, think.. about ways that schools might be made safer. Mine is in this video. (Looking at the video is hard... there is so much pain in my face... but still, it does not compare.) What is your idea?  What do you think we need to do to make schools safer? FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE ahermitt.com

I can give you a laundry list of reasons that I homeschooled. My daughter was being labeled as unteachable, and hyperactive.  My daughter began having night terrors and accidents.  My son had become sullen and withdrawn and while previous schools called him gifted, the one he was in did not.  My son was being bullied.  There were oodles and oodles of issues over just a few short years that were clearly affecting my children.  They were in the first and third grade.   No one so young should be having a hard time in school.  With all of these things going on, I was counseled by other mothers

At the Alamo, 11/1999 Most people who know me in real life would say that I am a "strong person".  I hate that phrase.  Probably because it is not true.  I am more of a 'stiff upper lip' type of person, able to hide my emotions, especially when and I am distraught.  I am not strong at all.  I am sensitive, and repressed. With that said, I am just so mad right now.  I am mad and I am sad. The connecticut school shootings are killing me.  I am over here ugly-crying, brooding, sobbing, and just overall ticked off.  I have so much to say, and can barely phrase my emotions today. I managed to squeeze out abbreviated versions of how I was feeling at Examiner.com today, but there is soooo much more in me that I need to get out. Will mental health professionals in the school prevent future school shootings? Media unfairly pointing to the fact that Adam Lanza was homeschooled I looked at an old family photo of my family taken when my son was in...

I am still in shock over the Connecticut school shootings on Friday. When it first popped up on the news, I actually remember trying to ignore, it, but the that didn't last long.  This news was going to grab my heart and infect my physche.  I was about to be drawn in and transported to a place I did not want to go. I was going to witness and internalize horror, and disbelief along with the rest of the country.  I was going to internalize this and find myself tearing up every 15 minutes, unable to speak.  I was going to seek out my almost grown children, hoping to get same hugs they freely gave at 6 or 7 years old.  They tried, but I knew they could not hug out the pain of a mother in mourning for another, and another, and another. As the details emerge, and the names of the victims are released, I feel like I have reached a point of complete saturation. I can't hear another word. I can't see another picture. My faucet won't turn off. My heart won't stop hurt...

It will keep them safe from any violence they could encounter in the school, but this kind of violence probably happens more outside the school buildings than within. Read: Homeschooling as a knee-jerk reaction to the Connecticut school shooting FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE ahermitt.com

I've noticed some online murmuring about Khan Academy .  The critique is that it is imperfec t and maybe not as ground breaking as we all thought.  Meh. I have loved Khan Academy since the day I found it a few years ago, but as much as I like it, I have had problems with the videos themselves. First, Salman Khan is a quiet speaker.  I have to strain or use earphone to hear most of the videos. Second, there's not always enough background  in a particular subject information to move you forward. Third, as much as homeschoolers would like it to be, for the reason listed directly above, it is not a full homeschool curriculum.  Instead it is a tool best used for review of concepts a student does not understand. For what it is.  It is AWESOME. While I don't love the videos themselves, I do love the format and program that allows a student to test through the levels of math, refresh their skills, and even move ahead. So while it is imperfect.  I...

Someone explain to me how you go into a school and kill children.  Here is my summary of the devastation in Newtown Connecticut.  As of right how, there are still a lot of rumors abound.  The most disturbing of these rumors is that the gunman was the father of a Kindergartener whose intention was to kill his own child (and many others) in retaliation against the other parent.  I don't know if this is true or not. The consensus is that there were two gunmen, one who killed himself and was about 24.  The  other person may have escaped. Hug your kids a little tighter today.  I for one am very glad my very, very big son is home from college today, and my daughter is down the hall from me, safely sprawled across her bed reading.  As for me, my heart is sick and hurting for these innocent souls and their parents. FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE ahermitt.com

I have been asked for a homeschool high school guide a million times, so I spent the day compiling it. You will find it on my curriculum blog or here .  It is a compilation of the last few posts I did subject by subject and free resources all over the net. Enjoy. FREE HOME EDUCATION WEBSITE ahermitt.com

This is the last of a series of blog posts compiling the resources I used for my kids during the high school years.  This last installment covers foreign language and the Arts . Foreign Language: Most states and colleges have a foreign language requirement for high school students. I have to say that this was the hardest subject for my family.  The reason is that I don't speak and foreign language, and couldn't even keep up with my kids' learning.  They ended up being on their own. Here is a brief accounting of what we used. For my son: Spanish 1a : My son took this in a classroom atmosphere using Bob Jones Curriculum and Rosetta Stone.  He was unhappy with his progress, so he insisted that I only award him a half credit for this class and the next year... Spanish 1b .  He used Learner.org and Rosetta Stone again.  He did the first half of the learner.org program which is supposed to cover spanish I.  It's a pretty neat program.

This is part 3 of my curriculum recap series.  Please scroll to the bottom for other subjects.  This installment specifically covers history in the high school years.  Before the high school years, I feel that history should be taught chronologically.  Personally, I prefer that it also be taught chronologically in the high school years as well, but for the college bound student, that is not always possible. To keep things interesting, and for continuity's sake, I always pair my literature choices with the history/social studies unit.  You can find my k-12 language arts plan here. American History: Each of my kids actually did two year of American History.  There is just so much information to cover.  We used Hippocampus.org , and studied Discovery to Civil War the first year and

This is part two of my curriculum recap series.  In it I am attempting to look back at my kids high school years and give lessons learned and what we loved and hated.  Here is a review of my children's science subjects. Neither of my children were very excited about science as they are more artsy people, so we did not go out of our way to do AP courses or take SATII's which science minded kids will want to look into. Environmental Science: My daughter Used Hippocampus for Environmental science.  She used it in conjunction to one of the recommended textbooks on the site, and mostly followed the hippocampus format.  I just mapped

If you have a talented child, who is planning on a future in the theater or visual arts, you need to be keeping all of the programs from all of the shows, performances, and contests they were in. I am using these programs right now to help us compile a resume, but when put together in a book, they are also a portfolio.  Make sure you put a couple of still shots from each show in the portfolio as well. Here is my simple method: 1.  Purchase sheet protectors 2.  Open program to your child's bio (or where they are mentioned if they did tech or other work) and highlight their name. 3.  Put open program in sheet protector so

 I have done my best to list curriculums my kids have used, as they have used them.  Sometimes, though, I have changed curriculum within the first 3 months due to dissatisfaction, and may have left off that information.  For that reason, I am listing everything we used, and liked for the high school years: Algebra:   My son did Algebra in Middle School using T eaching Textbooks .  He got a very good understanding of Algebra and after taking this course was able to go through all following math courses pretty much without any help, so I recommend Teaching Textbooks.  It is very expensive though. My daughter used HippoCampus.org for Algebra, and took over a year to finish the course.  Still, it was free, and she also got a very good understanding of Algebra 1, allowing her to finish Algebra 2 very quickly.   (on hippocampus, she used the course labeled Algebra 1 - 2004 )  They have a new course, Algebra 1, An open Course 2011 that looks pr...

If I compared myself to other homeschoolers, this blog post on 10 ways to make your homeschool run smoothly would make me cry.  In the bloggers defense, she has 5 kids aged 5-15.  If she were not this organized, she's probably be in the fetal position in a corner somewhere.  I recommend you read it as there are some nuggets here that are very useful.   But since I have 2 kids 2 years apart, we've had a more ... organic existence. As we are in our last year of homeschooling, our existence has few rules as they are pretty self managing.  This list is much more for me than for them. 1.  Wake up at a reasonable hour because none of us like to do schoolwork in the evening hours.

In a post recognizing the efforts of homeschoolers that came before us, I saw the phrase "average middle class" homeschooler  and said... FINALLY!  A description that fits our family. My kids are not isolated.  They are not disabled in any discernible way.  We are not uber religious.  They are not particularly brainy.  They are average... or for our area, amongst their peers, and even

Here's a pretty neat vlog done by homeschool brothers who are now in college.  They surveyed a lot of college students about their original thoughts on homeschooling, and also asked homeschoolers questions about confessions that revealed a bit of homeschool weirdness. Every now and then you see a little bit of homeschool oddities coming from my kids in the unique

This is on the news right now.  There was a carbon monoxide emergency  (highest readings the emergency people have EVER detected) at Finch Elementary school.  Most parents found out about it because they noticed helicopters in the neighborhood and walked or drove to the school.  Some kids and teachers were taken to the hospital, the rest were bus on a but and taken to Brown Middle school. Parents were told on the news that they could come and get their kids if they want, but now parents

I'm not naming names since my daughter's application is still in processing, but I think we are dealing with a homeschool hostile college. We know what homeschool friendly looks like because of my son's experiences where he was immediately accepted to several colleges, with only one giving push-back.   My daughter has also heard back from 2 colleges as I keep mentioning;) She has withdrawn one application, and is letting one more go through for giggles and grins.  But this