Sometimes when I reveal to people that I homeschool Shorty, I get responses like, “Wow, isn’t that a lot of work for you?” When they find out he has special needs, people often feel the need to inform me that there are special schools for kids with autism that are pretty good and that if I talked to the right people, I could get scholarships, as though they believe I homeschool my child because I am unaware that there are other options and only do so out of sheer desperation (everyone knows Florida’s schools are the pits – that’s a given, and I’ve never had anyone try to convince me otherwise). Or people say that he could get into decent charter schools with “alternative” education methods that might suit him just fine, wouldn’t I like to send him to that? It’d be so much less hassle for me…

Firstly, I’m disturbed at how many people seem to think parenting should be about my convenience, like how I don’t always have time for a hair appointment (the last complaint I made that garnered a comment like that from someone) or that parenting should be about expending the bare minimum effort, vs. what’s best for my child, but that’s another story. I didn’t become a parent to have little or no “hassle.” Having kids is a hassle. Sending them to school? Is a hassle, especially when your child has special needs. It is twelve years of fighting for adequate services, speaking for him during misunderstandings with kids and teachers on a constant basis, handling an assembly line of bullies (children and adults, alas) and, since school is a massive stressor, having to deal with the unique ways in which special needs children deal with massive stress.

There’s also school projects, helping with homework which takes about as long as my homeschooling him does (seriously), the PTA, the stupid No ChildLeft Behind test all the kids have to study for all year long, etc etc etc. Anyone who thinks homeschooling is more effort than sending a child to school probably just has a huge misconception of what homeschooling entails. I assume they envision a traditional classroom at home, with the parent standing in front of a blackboard droning on and on for 8 hours every day like the teacher from Peanuts and the child dutifully sitting at a desk. And oh, my gosh, it is so not! Classrooms are set up like that mostly to allow a teacher better crowd control and give the children a sense of order, not because that’s the normal environment in which little children learn. I don’t know any kid who would sit through that at home without having some kind of breakdown, but my kid has ADHD and autism and it was only recently that I could get him to sit at a table and work on something longer than 10 minutes, so I honestly have no idea how I could pull anything like that off!

The reality is a lot less complicated: My grandma wakes me up around 8 with coffee or tea and we chat for a few minutes over that, then I get dressed. I then work until about 1, wherein Shorty gets up whenever he feels like it, and has breakfast with me and my grandma, for which I schedule a half-hour break. Then Shorty dresses and works on his creative writing and drawing, then does his independent work checklist. This includes a lot of assigned independent reading, his word-of-the-day vocabulary exercise, and some arts and crafts either next to me or with my lovely grandma next door (I think they both like that better, LOL). Then we break for lunch, and then we either go to playdates, run errands, visit the library, or go to doctor’s appointments, which I’ve learned to schedule at this time. Whatever we feel like doing.

We usually get home between 4 and 4:30 and unwind. Around 5 o’clock, we either sit on the floor, curl up on the couch, or sit at the kitchen table, and do math, then handwriting, then grammar and maybe a brief literary discussion of the previous night’s reading. Each of these things takes 10-20 minutes apiece. We then do about 45 minutes of either history or science, except on Friday, where we do notebooking pages for both. Then we break, and at 7:00 we do a brief elective, depending on the day of the week (art appreciation, music appreciation, music theory and/or Shakespeare, logic and/or an art project, and health, in that order, again, each taking 10-20 minutes). Then for half an hour, he reads a book which he’s chosen from a list of children’s literature I make up each year, while I make dinner, then we eat in front of the TV (hey, we have lunch and breakfast at a table, so it’s okay! LOL). I goof off on my laptop while watching TV or while he plays video games next to me. Okay, sometimes I join in and play too. 10PM is his bedtime, then I usually do a little housework, work some more then play around on the Internet until I get tired and conk out, and that’s it. On Sunday nights, I make up the week’s assignments, for him and for me, and print out whatever needs printing for the week. It takes about an hour, if I don’t get distracted and start clicking around the web on all the cool homeschooling links/ blogs/ resources there are out there.

I just can’t imagine sending him to school would be even less work. Right now, my schedule is almost entirely my own. Shorty has a lot more free time than most kids his age. and I spend a lot more time with him than most single moms get to send with their kids. This is a loose schedule – sometimes we have field trips, sometimes we feel like watching a history or science documentary, which Shorty loves, instead of doing schoolwork, sometimes Shorty wants to spend the day making his own board game or recreating something he saw on Mythbusters or something he read about in The Dangerous Book for Boys, sometimes our garden needs a little extra work, sometimes we take a day off because it’s someone’s birthday or whatever. No 2 weeks look the same, but they’re always OURS. The week of Shorty’s birthday in February, he has organized a camping trip to Disney’s Fort Wilderness in Orlando with 8 of his friends for 3 days, including a Monday. The 4 families going could do it because they’re all homeschoolers, too. We have a very tailor-made, low-stress, laid back life that I think we both enjoy.

So, yes, the public schools in my area are embarrassingly bad and the private schools are prohibitively expensive with little advantage over the public schools, but it doesn’t matter. I could live in the best school zone in the country and I would still choose to homeschool. I think it’s the best option and lifestyle for our family. I think that’s what a lot of people don’t understand – choosing an educational method for your child is a lifestyle choice. Whether you send them to charter schools, public schools, private schools, or homeschool them, or some other amalgam, it’s a lifestyle choice every family has to make. Most people choose the default choice of sending their kids to school, either because they don’t know of alternatives, or they truly think it’s the best lifestyle for their family, which I would never judge – everyone knows what’s right for them, ultimately. Still, people sometimes think that I must opt out of this because I have no better option. But I don’t homeschool by default. I homeschool because I love it, and my kid is happy and thriving, and what more could I ask for?

This is from a little homeschooling newsletter I get from Bruce Larson of the Sequoia Ministry, a renown naturalist and conservationist and homeschooling dad. It made me laugh, so I thought I would repost it here.

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While it’s true that Ben Franklin wasn’t happy with Congress’s choice of the Bald Eagle for our national bird, it’s unlikely that he actually “lobbied” on behalf of the turkey. I know that most turkey lovers spin the story differently but my sources, who will remain unnamed, paint a different picture of how this all went down. After Congress had made its decision, Franklin merely suggested that the turkey would have been a better choice than the Bald Eagle. In his eyes the eagle was nothing more than a scrounge and a mooch, and in some ways he was right. Bald Eagles do hunt, but they often scavenge and are more than happy to steal food from any creature it can. Franklin may not have lobbied for the Wild Turkey over the eagle, but I wish he had. Here’s why.

First of all, our national bird should not have “bald” in its name. Believe me, of all people, I’m the last one who will by mean to the follicly-challenged. I feel their pain. But back in Franklin’s day, the United States was a young country. For better or worse, balding is the sign of aging, not of youth. The last thing the brand spanking new USA needed was to align itself with a bald bird. It’s too old school and it sends the wrong message to the rest of the world.

Another problem is that after closer investigation, the Bald Eagle isn’t even bald. Its head is totally covered in white feathers. Claiming to be bald just to impress Congress is clearly fraudulent. It’s like drinking with a fake ID. The Wild Turkey, on the other hand, truly is bald and proud of it. Like Kojak and Mr. Clean, the turkey’s baldness only makes it more self-confident. It struts around with its chest puffed out,ready to take on all comers. It’s the perfect image for a cocky new country.

Speaking of feathers, the Bald Eagle has nothing but a basic color scheme. It has brown feathers and white feathers, and that’s it. Pitiful. The turkey has a large variety of differently colored feathers. Its huge tail can be fanned out to display an assortment of rust, tan and warm brown shading, while its body is some kind of indescribable metallic color. But it’s the head of the turkey that really sets it apart from most other birds. Depending on the mood or attitude, the coloring of the bird’s face can change from white to red to blue (really). How much more patriotic can a bird get? A turkey’s face also has something very important that no eagle has. It has a hunk of skin – called a “snood” – hanging from its forehead.

After the American Revolution, this country was desperate to impress other nations, especially England. Nothing would have impressed the Brits more than knowing that our national bird had its own snood.

In a foot race a turkey would blow an eagle away. While the turkey can run in excess of twenty MPH, the best an eagle can do on land is stumble about. Eagles can’t run and they walk awkwardly as if they are wearing some other bird’s shoes, on the wrong feet. Turkeys are capable of flight speeds that approach fifty-five MPH. Though an eagle may fly over one hundred MPH, it can only hit those speeds in a dive, which means gravity is doing most of the work. It doesn’t get points for that.

Many eagle lovers may say that the eagle’s hunting skills are a sign of bravery and toughness. After all, eagles are capable of catching and eating animals as large as a raccoon, a beaver, or a young deer. So what? Wild Turkeys eat mostly vegetable matter. Take it from me, nothing is tougher or braver than facing three meals of vegetarian food day after day.

When it comes to reproducing, turkeys have it all over eagles. A single mother turkey can easily hatch and raise a dozen or more baby turkeys all by herself. In a good year a Bald Eagle pair will most likely raise only two eaglets. If a third chick should hatch, the big, muscular eagle parents become so overwhelmed that they often let the extra chick starve. Nice, eh?

Let’s not forget about the turkey trot. Has there ever been a dance named after the Bald Eagle? I’ve never heard of the eagle trot, eagle tango, or eagle rumba. Finally, there is talking turkey. When we want to be honest and candid, we talk turkey. Nobody talks eagle.

No, Ben Franklin didn’t lobby for the Wild Turkey to be our national bird, but he should have; it’s a better choice. However, even I have to admit that upon landing on the moon, if instead of saying: “Houston…the Eagle has landed,” Neil Armstrong, had said: “Houston…the Turkey has landed,” it would have lost some of the historical impact. But it would have been funnier.

I may be starving, but I still have my sense of humor. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone,

It’s been very quiet around here. I have a lot of work these days, which is good – it’ll be a decent Christmas, at least – and we’ve just had a lot going on family-wise.  Over the next few weeks, I intend to expand SPH significantly:

• I’m working on fixing the error that is making it impossible to log in to the forums – it’s pretty useless to have them if no one can use them;
• I’m almost done with the link directory. Instead of a list of links like the current one, it is going to be a Yahoo! style link directory that people can add to and vote on;
• I’m going to complete the main homeschooling page with links to some downloadable eBooks about getting started in homeschooling and links to the different methods.
• I’m working on two flow charts – the kind of work-from-home job(s) that work best for your needs, family situation and schedule, and the kind of homeschooling style(s) that may work best for you and your kids;
• My goal for 2009 is to write at least 5 blog posts per week;
• I’m going to add (rather, finish) a photo album of our lapbooks and homeschooling experiences;
• The bookstore will expand significantly, as well, and will be porting to a ChristianBook.com affiliate instead of Amazon.

In addition, I’m giving myself all of January to finish my book about single parent homeschooling, with the goal of editing and self-publishing it on Lulu.com in February/March.  I am also launching a web site right now which I’m really excited about.  And I’m working full-time now, and eBaying quite a lot, and in my spare time I am solving complex mathematical equations and curing cancer… no, I’m lying about those last 2.

We don’t do any schoolwork the week of Thanksgiving. For the first couple of years, I tried to squeeze in some schoolwork Monday through Wednesday, but it was always a bust because usually I had family coming in from out of town (Shorty’s dad usually comes to visit) so things always get a little crazy. Also, I cook the entire meal for everyone, about 5-8 people, each year, since my family is Cuban and clueless in the ways of Thanksgiving. I will transcribe a conversation I had via  IM with my friend IB, who is African-American, about ethnic Thanksgivings, to illustrate:

IB: I’m off to the grocery store in a few >.>
Me: ME TOO. Hold me, I’m scared.
IB: Stay strong, girl.
Me: I am going to a grocery store in Little Havana so you know it will be crazy because my people will be all, “And I totally have to freak out and buy enough rice and beans and green plantains to fry, enough to feed 29572352 people because those are totally traditional Thanksgiving side dishes.”
IB: The one in my neighborhood will be packed because “You know that 12 pounds of greens is not enough, child. Go over there and get me two more bunches…” *me watching as the little girl picks up 5 MORE*
Me: THE PILGRIMS HAD THOSE, YOU KNOW.
IB: OF COURSE.
Me: I tried to convince my family to let me make a goose one year and they looked at me like I had just suggested they have roast puppy for Christmas.
IB: Nah, that wouldn’t fly here either.  Of course, when I offered to make pumpkin pie one year my mom looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What’s wrong with sweet potato?”
Me: When I made a pumpkin pie one year, my mom thought I had lost it, too. She was all, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? THEY’RE ON SALE AT PUBLIX! TWO FOR $6!

So what I’m doing is having Shorty do some fun Thanksgiving arts and crafts.  Here is a great free Thanksgiving activity pack with copywork, place cards (Shorty LOVED doing those – I printed them out on cardstock) and arts and crafts.  There are also tons of really cute Thanksgiving printables and activities here for a wide variety of ages. I’ve printed out a bunch, but who knows how much we’ll actually get done. Anyway, for those of you in areas that celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you have a wonderful and blessed one, and for everyone else, have a great rest-of-the-week! I’ll be back on Friday, with pictures, and hopefully a little progress on the above list. Hopefully.

First: I’ve spent the last hour looking at pictures of women voting in the first Iraqi national election in 2005. Some of the photos have moved me nearly to tears; it’s been a powerful reminder about how I never want to take the privilege of democracy for granted, ever, ever, ever.

Second, I got this fun little widget:

Shorty and I are finishing our presidential election project and then staying up all evening tallying the electoral college votes. Yes, I’m sneaking in a math lesson there, shhh.

I asked him yesterday if he would want to run for president one day, and in his typical quirky sense of humor, he answered, “It seems like it would be a lot of work, but maybe. I want to keep my options open.”

Just a short note to say that I have finally written and published the Work at Home page that’s linked on the home page of this site. Please click here to see it. There are over 100 free resources there with hundreds of legitimate jobs and income sources, but needless to say, it’s neither intended to be exhaustive, nor guaranteed to offer any employment or work to you. I’ve tried to post only resources I myself have used, but as always, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please do feel free to post a comment or shoot me an email in the contact page!

Shorty dressed as a ninja. Here he is striking a pose at our homeschool group’s festivities.

We also did a brief, fun lapbook about the history of Halloween and its customs, which we found here. Shorty found it quite informative, and for the first time ever, he asked me to post its pictures on this blog. LOL. We read Halloween Is… by Gail Gibbons and The Story of Halloween by an author whose name escapes me. The former was cute and brief, if a bit below his reading level, but it gave us good talking points about why we as Christians don’t celebrate/ actively avoid the macabre, morbid aspects of Halloween, though it’s still fun to dress up in silly costumes and eat a lot of candy. (Note: I realize that not everyone will agree with this point of view, and I respect that, but I’ve given it a lot of thought/ prayer and am comfortable with this approach.) The second one had much more detail and went more in-depth about the actual historical aspects of the holiday, and its artwork was noteworthy enough for Shorty to point it out and talk about it.

On Thursday, I overheard him discussing the issue with another child on the playground at our park group, about how Christians didn’t believe in being afraid of death and that we wanted to “keep things positive. ” Not a perfect explanation, but one that suits my little ray of sunshine quite well. The other child accepted his point of view without much fuss and they kept right on playing their game of ninja/pirate/cowboy/whatever that they had going on, so it was nice to see that kind of interfaith interaction taking place.

The books also gave us the opportunity to discuss superstitions and how they’re usually borne out of ignorance – fear of bats, spiders and black cats, for example, which Shorty doesn’t fear at all – he loves all animals! So I felt like it was a good, productive, if brief, unit study. Anyway, onto the pictures!

Front cover.

The little graphic had witches and ghosts, so we discussed briefly how there is no such thing as ghosts and our specific beliefs on the afterlife, as well as why Christians do not practice fortune-telling or witchcraft. (We do love bats and pumpkins though!) Each little flap had a bulleted list of traditions. Shorty thinks spiders are fascinating thanks to the book we read this year in Animals and Their World, called The Tarantula in My Purse, as well as having a year-long love affair with Charlotte’s Web a year ago, so he insisted on putting it right on the front cover. I love the fact that these things are so demystified for him.

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Having only been lapbooking for a few months, I can honestly say that this lapbook, unit study and notebooking project was the most ambitious undertaking Shorty has done yet. It is a double lapbook, which means we glued two lapbooks together. Since this was a “Lap-N-Note” project, I also had extensive notebooking and art pages that I didn’t know what to do with, so I came up with a solution to
how to keep it all together. I’m very pleased with how it worked out.

For this Lap-N-Note, I used three blue manila folders, some clear packing take, three brass fasteners, and a little duct tape at the end. For content, we read all the materials for WinterPromise’s Animals And Their World Arctic Tundra unit, which had a corresponding literature selection of Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard Atwater, which was SO great that Shorty asked me to look it up on Amazon to see if it had a sequel (it doesn’t, alas).

For the contents of the lapbook and notebook, we used the animal notebooking pages from WinterPromise, as well as selections from the Polar Animals lapbook and the Mr. Popper’s Penguins Unit Study on Homeschoolshare.com. It took us approximately six weeks to complete.

Enjoy!

Front Cover

You may notice it has a three-hole punched line of duct tape on the left-hand side. Like most of my best ideas, I got this from the Internet, though I don’t remember where. You stick duct tape along a very thin line of the edge, then fold it over onto a thin strip of the back edge, then three-hole punch it. Voila! I can keep these in a binder instead of all over the place!

Front cover with the mini-books open.

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