10-1-2009 - 4w5d and Homeschool Ideas

My mood while writing this blog: fine

I don't even feel pregnant. I have had NO symptoms at all today. No cramps, no sick feeling, no nothing. If this is what the rest of the pregnancy is going to be like then bring it on. I can handle this. I keep taking pregnancy tests just to make sure that I'm not just mistaken and they are quite clear that I am pregnant. When I told my best friend, she didn't even believe me, she thought I was joking around and I almost thought so too! This is so weird and surreal being pregnant. I'm almost past my first month already.

This morning I woke up and watched an infomercial about this program called Your Baby Can Read and these little babies that weren't even a year old were reading cards and new words and responding appropriately and they thought it was a game! They were having fun. So I looked it up on the website www.yourbabycanread.com and the package is like $200 and I'm thinking it may very well be worth it. I think I'm going to get it once the baby comes and use it to keep her occupied while I am working. The company also puts out foreign language videos so your baby can learn French, German, Italian, or Spanish at an early age. I think I'm going with German and Spanish and then I'll continue with the Rosetta Stone program for homeschoolers. I've also been researching other programs for homescholing and I really like what people say about the McGuffey Eclectic Readers which are what the kids in the 1800s used out on the Western Frontier pioneer days and people are saying a lot of great things about them. Another program is the Ray's Arithmetic series from the same era as well as the Spencerian Handwriting sereies. The other Program that I was thinking about using as a guideline was the "What Your ?th Grader Needs to Know" and they have them for First through Sixth grades. I tend to think of grades rather loosly. If my kid is seven and wants to move on to the next grade, then why not, or the opposite, if they want to stay in a grade for a few extra months, then why not? I don't think grades should be tied with a child's age but with ability and knowledge. When I was five I was well aware of what exponents were and knew how to use them so why did I have to sit through school that was so boring? This is why I want to homeschool my kids. I don't think my kids would do well in school, not because the won't understand, but because they might get bored. I also don't want my kids subjected to No Child Left Behind (Thank You GW) which is rediculous.

I don't think that public school is good for kids. A lot of people think that homeschooled kids are not well socialized, well I say that public school kids are not well socialized. I don't think it's natural for that many kids to be grouped together without their parents present. It just spells trouble. I think that it dehumanized kids and dulls them to other demographics. It is very common for public school kids to be poorly socialized because the only people they have contact with are kids of the exact same age as them and that, to me, is not well socialized. Anyway, that's my soapbox for the socialization argument against homeschooling.

Another argument I have for homeschooling is that in public school, kids spend more than half their time waiting for something: class to begin, class to end, others to finish thier work, people to say the right answer, waiting in line, you name it, they are usually not doing any constructive work for more than a couple of minutes per class. If I had my kid at home and closely monitored him, he would be done with his studies before lunch!

One thing that I'm worried about is the sciences for high school. When I was in high school we had state of the art labs and disected different animals and did chemical experiments, etc. How am I going to do this at home? I was thinking that we could do something with the local community college and do dual credit like the public schools do. Well, I guess that's a long way off yet.

I was going to use the Saxon math series for high school math, the Cambridge Latin series for classical Latin, and then just find some really good text books for science, and for English I figured I would use a text book series and supplement with the library. I'm a little concerned about making the transcripts but I will take care of that when the time comes...

Anyway, I think parents who homeschool are great! If you are considering homeschooling, do the research, it's the best thing you can do for your kids.