(Florida) Sunshine State Standards

Another great resource from one of the mailing lists I belong to.  Sunshine State Standards is a site where you can check to see if your curriculum is covering the things that Florida says that you need.  Now, I’m not saying that you need to follow this, I certainly don’t.  However, if you’re considering putting a homeschooled child back into public school, this might prove to be very useful in making sure that your child has those basics covered.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

My store has just about been cleared out! Thank you so much for all of your orders in the past month! You know what this means? It means that I can spend more money on more components and wire and beads and pearls and crystals and drops, so that I can make more jewelry. I just love that! So keep an eye out for some brand new designs. I’ve started to go in a couple of new directions and I hope you like them!
Again thank you for your purchases and for your interest.
Love,
Christine

H.R. 2343: Education Begins at Home Act

Read in its entirety here.

I do love the name of this bill - I mean, who couldn’t get behind education beginning at home?  That’s what homeschooling is all about, isn’t it?  Well yes it is, but this bill should have been called: “H.R. 2343: We’re coming into your house and there’s nothing you can do to stop us”.

I first learned of this bill through a homeschool mailing list.  It was sent through with a pre-written blurb calling for homeschoolers to rise up, or something like that.  It was an HSLDA alert and while I do always read them, I hardly ever feel the panic that I believe they intend for me to feel.  Their views are a little too preachy, churchy, hell-fire and brimstone for this particular homeschooler, but I do appreciate the information.

Anyway.  Here’s the thing;  I believe that we need less government intervention in our lives, not more.  These home visit programs that are referred to throughout the bill are a slippery slope. While it’s stated that they are voluntary, I think it’s a safe assumption that opting out once you’re in is not going to be so simple.  Also, even with the bill stating that they are voluntary, things like this have a way of getting too big, too fast and what looks like good intention turns into the long arm of the law telling you that child has developmental delays, or ADHD when in fact, it may just be the child’s own learning timetable (think math and reading readiness).  I’m not speaking from a place of ignorance, I witnessed this with my own child in the private school we attended.  Pulling him from that school and homeschooling with the “trial by fire” method was the only thing that allowed my son the room to grow into the fabulously wonderful, book reading, math problem solving 13 year old that he is today.  Mandatory home visits might have put him on some government worker’s time table instead of his own.

Oh, and its projected starting cost? $190 million.  Unnecessary, unwelcome, wasteful, government spending.

Susan’s post at Blissfully Domestic is superb.  She says it better than I could.  Go read her take.

Rockin’ Into the Night

When I was 14, there was this older boy who liked me. You know, liked me liked me. I thought he was pretty cute and he knew some really good friends of mine, very well. They had all been kids together in Far Rockaway and then most of them moved to Oceanside (where I lived), but Alan still lived in Far Rockaway. I met Alan through these friends and he had this hot, blue, 1970 442. I, as troubled as I was, liked dating older boys (he was 18!!), and I liked to drive really, really fast. Also, he was from Queens - that’s totally like New York City and I was very impressed. So when Alan called me and told me had tickets to a concert and that he’d like to take me to the concert and dinner, I was all in. I had never heard of the band and it was in the Calderone theater, which at that point was a pretty run down, small venue in a not so nice neighborhood. I was all over it. I tried to control myself and sound composed when I told Alan that the evening he was planning for me “sounds cool”. I have no idea where we went for dinner, but when we got to the theater it was still light out and the neighborhood was rough. There were bikes parked up and down the block and Alan maneuvered his car into a space between two big hogs. We walked into the theater and it was filled with the toughest looking bunch of guys I had ever seen. They had long hair, and braided beards and tatoos everywhere. We were, by far the youngest people there and I wasn’t sure that we were going to make it out of there in one piece. Here I was, this five foot, two inch, 14 year old with too much makeup, smoking Newport 100s and thinking who the hell I was and my escort for the evening was a cute, little Jewish boy from Far Rockaway who thought he was James Dean. Of course, there wasn’t a chance in hell that I was going to let Alan know how nervous I was and he certainly wasn’t going to suggest to me that we might be in over our heads, so we found our seats and started to look around.

There were more empty seats then there were occupied and the lights were still up high, so I was really able to take in where the exits were and how far I was from them. Back then smoking in public places was not only allowed, it was encouraged and in places like this it was almost required, so I thought that if I got into trouble I could burn someone with my cigarette while I ran screaming from the building. Yeah, I didn’t really think things through back then.

I settled into my seat and started to press my shoe against the floor just to hear the sucking noise that it made when I tried to lift it from the sticky mess that was the floor. Classy joint this Calderone. Alan went to get us two beers (yes, I was 14 - it was a different world people) and I was left all by myself in this sea of bikers. I truly don’t remember any other women being there. I’m sure there were, but they weren’t sitting by me. As I started to worry that my date had been dragged off, the guy sitting in front of me turned around and looked directly at me. This man was the scariest person I had ever seen. He was holding a big rebel flag and while I knew what it was to some extent, I had no idea why anyone would carry such a thing. I assumed the band was from the South and left it at that. He had straggly hair and an even more straggly beard, was wearing a T-shirt and a black leather vest. He had rings on almost all of his fingers and tattoos on even more of them. Skulls and earrings and rubber bands in his pony tail and when he had stared at me for too long not to acknowledge him, I said, “Hi”.
“Well, haaay” he said in a really thick drawl and smiled. When he smiled the skin around his eyes got all crinkly and he reminded me of Santa Claus. That thought was so absurd that I almost laughed out loud. “Have you ever seen ‘em before?” he asked.
“Um, no I’ve never actually heard of them.”
“Well, y’all are in for a treat.” I swear to God, this was the first time I’d ever heard anyone seriously use the world “y’all” and something about it seemed so warm that I relaxed a little.

By that time Alan was making his way to our seats with the beer. My new biker friend shook Alan’s hand and I really don’t remember if we ever exchanged names - but a couple of minutes later, biker guy passed us back a bottle of Southern Comfort and in the interest of diplomacy and peace between the North and South, we gladly shared in his bottle. (Again, It was a different time). The lights lowered and the band came out and started to play. Maybe it was the warmth of Southern Comfort in my belly, or the stale beer going straight to my head, but this was the best band ever. We danced and shouted and sang along to songs we didn’t even know. We had communion with these biker people and they were our tribe. It was a great night and the songs kept running through my head and I hoped and hoped that I’d hear this band again.

A week later I heard the single on the radio. It was “Rockin’ Into the Night” and the band was .38 Special. I’ve been a big fan ever since and even saw them a couple of more times over the years. I dated Alan for a while and stayed friends after that, although we’ve lost touch now.

Tonight I was flipping through the DVR and saw that I had a new Crossroads recorded. It was .38 Special and Trace Adkins. I settled in to watch it and all these memories came flooding back. You know what the funny thing is? .38 Special comes from Jacksonville and they play Ocala once a year or so. I think I’m going to go see them and relive some of my misspent youth. I love them Wildeyed Southern Boys, I really do. And Trace ain’t bad either.

Back To (non) School

I don’t know about you, but as my children get older we get busier and busier.  I truly don’t know how people do it when the parents both have traditional jobs and the children go to traditional schools.  The extra-curricular activities would just about break me if I were in that situation.
As it is, we put horse back riding on hold for the summer (it’s just too hot in Florida for that right now) and we’ve really just been going to guitar lessons once a week.   Also, this summer we moved into a new home and the move really ate up a bunch of our time, not to mention resources!  So here we are, back at the first week in September, and even though we’ve been doing a lightened schedule with math and reading, it’s time to get back into the swing of things.  As usual, we have Math-U-See on tap and I’ve invested in a writing curriculum called Excellence in Writing that has come highly recommended.  It’s a bit pricey, but I’ve heard such fabulous things about it that I decided to give it a try.  I’ll keep you posted.  Travis, the 13 year old is continuing with “Elements of Literature” and I’ve decided to try a little something different with History and Science.  I’m going to let them pick a topic, or a person, or a theory, then we’re going to log into our trusty library interface and research books that pertain to the topic.  They’re going to read the books and report back to me, either with a report (oral or written) or a presentation of some sort.  I’m not exactly sure how this will unfold and I’m sure that I’ll change the rules now and again.  Topics must be approved my Mom.  And as with every new thing that we try, I reserve the right to completely change my mind.  It’s sort of un-schooling meets Charlotte Mason.  Yeah, we’re weird, I know. Our maiden voyage into this idea is biography.  Haley has picked Claude Monet and Travis has chosen Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Let the games begin.

Next Page »