Swimming in Washington, D.C.!

September 27th, 2008, a wonderful thing has happened in Washington, D.C.!! Have you heard?

At the intersection of 10th Street and Constitution Ave., NW in Washington, D.C., is the Smithsonian National Museam of Natural History. On September 27th, they opened up a new exhibition called The Sant Ocean Hall . This hall is dedicated to the Oceans of the Earth and will inspire us all to dive in and learn. Best of all for those who live close or can travel, the Museam is FREE!

Throwing Stones

Have you been watching the news? Wow, the stone throwing is getting started and everyone is angry. I'm not going to go too deep here, as I don't feel this is a 'one side against another side' issue. Well, that's not really quite true. I do feel it's a Fat cat wanting to stay on the high side at the cost of the Lean or Barn cats expense.

What I will say, is I've been watching as many news reports as I can and reading as many articles as I can. There's a sick side of me that's very happy to watch the suits going at each others throats and being reduced to a screaming match. It's sorta like watching the WWE without the interesting costumes.

So who's really at fault? Here's an article I've found from 1999. Interesting as they called this recent situation we are now facing nine years ago.

Here's another interesting read. I can't say I like their call to Socialism at the end to fix the problem, but under the current circumstances, maybe they have a point. I do love their take on our current choices for the next President.

If nothing else, this is going to be an interesting History Lesson in the making. Whether a good or bad one, is yet to be seen.

Have you ever...

wanted to shout from the roof tops then realize that others wouldn't care? That's how I'm feeling today. They say pride comes before the fall which makes me climb back off the roof top and think that maybe I should stay quite. Here's the deal. I've been trying to convince my step-daughter to enroll in early college. See early college is a program that allows high school students to attend college classes at the state's expense. All we would need to pay for are the books. On top of that, the classes count as one credit towards high school and three towards college! This means that an eager student can earn their Associates degree while earning their high school diploma!

The lady at the college said that all a homeschool student needed to do to enroll was to pass the College Placement Test. They are only allowed to take this test three times. She insisted that a student would have had to finish tenth grade and Algebra II to be able to pass. Then she recommended my daughter take the college placement assessment test to see if she is ready. She said that if my daughter had no trouble with the assessment, she would have no trouble with the actual test.

Well last weekend, my step-daughter went to her mother's house and said she would take it there. On Saturday, I was just kidding around with George and asked him if he would like to take it. He said, "Sure." So my ten year old ate breakfast then took the CPT assessment and PASSED!!

No, we are not enrolling him in early college as he's enjoying life the way it is. My daughter passed, too! She's still thinking about if she wants to enroll in early college and I'm still praying that she decides to. I wish I would have been offered this opportunity. I would have loved trimming two years off my college experience. But this is her choice so I shall step back and let her make it.

Math

Hi Everyone!

Fall is here and cooler weather is on it's way. It's time for me to clean out my inbox and share some of the links I've been gathering. I haven't fully researched each site but I have glanced at them to see if they hold some potential. Here are some Math links that you might find of some interest.

The Math Forum an internet Mathamatics Library

SpaceRef.com NASA Educational Materials available for downloads

NASA CONNECT integrating science, technology, engneering, and mathamatics... geared for 6th-8th grade.

We All Use Math from the TV show NUMB3RS (Use discretion)

Here are some fun NASA related Videos about airflow, Algebra and Geometry and such. I love when math can be explained in a fun way.

And last but not least, Cyberchase. This site is loaded with all types of fun learning not just limited to the subject of math.

Have FUN and learn!!

Hoist Yer Jolly Roger!

Arrrgh! Hoist yer Jolly Roger!


It's National Talk like a pirate day!!

Math

 There have been some great discussions going on in some of my homeschooling groups about just how a child learns math.  This is a discussion that is important to me as I still have one more child to educate.  Well, I can’t teach him as I don’t believe you can make anyone learn that which they don’t want to learn so I guess I should rephrase that as one more child to guide or facilitate along his journey. 

   

So what have my homeschooling groups been discussing?  Well, one topic is about the essay Just Do the Math excerpted from Have Fun. Learn Stuff. Grow. Homeschooling and the Curriculum of Love, by David H. Albert .  In this essay David Albert explains how a child can learn math in only eight weeks!  Now you will have to read the article for yourself to gain the full picture, but the basic gist is children learn quickly when they desire to learn.  

     

When my children were young, I remember taking them to the toy store and my spouse giving them a challenge.  He would give them a number amount that they could spend any way that they chose.  The only rule was they could not go over the amount.  If they did, they got nothing.  At some point, as they grew, he added in that tax was included.  Hmmm….  I find it interesting that Mr. Albert suggests this same type of real life math.  Oh.  The kids never failed to spend near the full amount not once going over, lol, better to be a little shy then to go over.

   

Another discussion is going on about simple verse complex math.  It seems that many parents of the gifted child are finding a great deal of trouble and frustration over trying to teach rote math.  The kids hate doing worksheets and multiplication drills. I was surprised I must say, at how many parents besides me, have decided to jump math levels!  It seems that many of these parents found that their children could understand the complex math and enjoyed the complex math before they wanted to bother with the simple math.  But that is what we did before my youngest hit school age. Once he was school age, we became traditional and sent him to school which ended in school at home which became unschooling and back to where we started with him learning in his own way.  Whew. 

  

Here is an excerpt from ‘Anna’ about her child’s journey:

We did the same thing (skipping ahead). Actually it wasn't my idea at all. My son insisted because he only can learn math through higher level conceptual thinking. He would make up little algebraic ways to learn arithmetic. Anything rote stumped him. Higher level stuff...no problem. I wonder how many kids learn in a similar way. If you're right than quite a few.



If I had tried to make him learn math "in order" he would have hated it. So I just let him do what he liked and skip the stuff that annoyed him.



Years later I don't think he is any worse for it. He can do "the annoying stuff' most notably long division and long multiplication problems. He doesn't usually make mistakes and he seems to know his times tables. I did make a point to eventually walk him through long division so he would understand it but the other stuff he picked up mostly from working with algebra.



Its interesting to read opinions on math education. The debate is so impassioned. It never fails to surprise me how invested people get. There are many educators out there that strongly believe that children need hours of drilling basic math in order to ever be mathematically literate.

I love this post!  I have found this so true of how my son is learning and it’s nice to hear that another child was successful in learning this way.

 

Katherine writes:

 

Seriously. Algebra should be part of math instruction from the beginning. Since it's *in there* anyway.

    

We included Algebra in early education.  We just didn’t call it Algebra.  Math is everywhere.  Would you like one cookie or two?  If I gave you three cookies and Dad gave you some cookies so you had five total, how many cookies did Dad give you?  My son learned acceleration and triangulation as practical knowledge when he was little.  He had a use for them so he learned them. 

  

Another interesting article I’ve come upon is The Teaching of Arithmetic I: The Story of an experiment by L. P. Benezet, Superintendent of Schools, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1929.  In this article Mr. Benezet tells of an experiment he conducted and the findings of this experiment.  Mr. Benezet in Part III  writes:

 ‘They saw what we were trying to do and were surprised at the ability to reason and to talk, shown by children whose minds had not been chloroformed by the dull, drab memorizing of tables and combinations.’

 

In this article, arithmetic wasn’t formally taught till seventh grade!  Instead, the teachers concentrated on teaching the children to "read, reason, and recite”.  When I read this, it made me think of some of the reading I’ve done about the Thomas Jefferson approach to education and the Charlotte Mason approach.  I’m not an expert at either of these approaches but from what I’ve gathered, they focus on literature and building up the character through these readings.  By teaching the child to think and reason, the child learns and can apply concepts to more areas of understanding.  Hmmm…That explains quite a bit about how my son is learning.

   

My youngest son’s unschooling math journey:

  

My youngest really didn’t enjoy the repetition system. He felt that once he read it, he had it.  I must say, that seemed to be the case.  My oldest was a firm believer in the repetition system as that’s how she learned.  I was tired of the fussing so I went looking for other ways.  At first, my spouse was adamant that I could unschool everything except math.  So I did what every practical Mom does and I turned that subject over to him!  He wanted it his way, so I let him at it.  That didn’t last long.  In fact, I don’t even think it went two consecutive days!  Being me, I wasn’t going to just ignore the situation so I went to the unschooling groups and learned some more. 

 

The Life of Fred series was suggested and since I love books, I went looking.  The books are suggested for about fifth grade and up so I had time.  I finally bought the complete series last year when my son, by age, would be considered fourth grade.  They sat on the shelf for a period of time after the initial interest and the opening giggles the Story of Fred creates.  Then one day, my son came to me and asked if he could just read them as a novel and skip the problems.  I told him of course!

 

He sat down with the first book and giggled his way through it.  Then he moved on to the next book and while reading that one, he went back on his own, and started re-reading the first one, doing all the equations along the way!  I must add, he got them all right, too!  He has since moved on to the third book ‘Beginning Algebra as serious as it needs to be’.   This book really caught his attention and he ran to me to share what he had just read:

Here in print, was EXACTLY how he was feeling about ‘normal’ math books!  WoW!  This author gets it!  So here I am, with an unschooling ten year old, who loves math!  He always DID love math but those redundant math books would have beaten the love of math out of him.  Do I assign him a certain amount of pages he must cover in a given day?  Absolutely not!  Why would I set limits?  Sure there are some weeks that he doesn’t open up a math book and that’s OK.  There are days he does.  Besides, just how advanced do I need him to be?  If without prodding, he is still learning at an accelerated rate, why would I interfere?  No.  I see my job as always being on the lookout for more interesting things that will continue to enrich his world.    

 

Vicki

Wildlife gets close

Tropical Storms, hurricanes, heavy rains can take their toll on the environment. Sometimes, nature has to evacuate too. A while ago I had posted a picture of a young alligator that lived in our north pond. That was fine. As long as he was there, a bigger one wasn't. Well the latest flooding has filled our fields and the little gator has been pushed from his home. The ponies found him in the pasture looking for a new home and getting too close to ours! A bigger gator has moved into the north pond.

Let's Talk About Sex

Let's talk about sex, Baby! Lol, does that bring back memories... I love that song! And here we are, near eighteen years since that song was released still listening to the news rattle on about teenage pregnancy, abstinence education, yadda, yadda, yadda.

So let's talk about sex. What? You don't believe in sex? Come on....Everybody believes in sex. Whether you choose to participate or not is another question. So why is sex still a taboo topic? Why are there still so many people out there who are scared to talk about it? Talking doesn't transmit disease nor cause babies. Nope! Just the opposite. NOT talking about it keeps the ignorant unknowledgeable which leads to that slippery slope of unwanted pregnancies and STD's. So let's talk about it.

Abstinence. Does it work? How many parents have told their children, "Just don't do it", then learned that their teenager had and is now expecting? Hmmm... (I'm not going to go retrieve the graphs. I'll leave that up to you, if you are so inclined.) Let's just say that there's a lot of people out there who have personal experience or know someone this happened to.

My first 'experience' of teenage pregnancy was when I was fourteen. An acquaintance of mine, who was thirteen, decided she wanted a boyfriend just like her older sister. She wooed my older brother's seventeen year old friend. Well, he only wanted one thing, and of course, protection wasn't his concern. She was pregnant and married before she was fourteen! (Angry fathers with shotguns can be convincing!) This same girl had two more children by the same fella before she was sixteen! She told me she didn't have a driver's license nor a vehicle and he wouldn't drive to the store and pick up her birth control pills.

Well, dear readers, if you've been reading my blog, you can guess my thoughts on that one. (They haven't changed much over the many years since that conversation.)

Want another true life story? When my daughter was a baby, there was this very nice family that came to our business every week. They had two young teenage girls. At some point, they told me of their younger daughter's pregnancy and they were devastated. They didn't even know she had a boyfriend! He would come over after school, sleep with their daughter, then leave before they got home from work. That's when I learned that most insurance companies will pay for the OB/GYN and delivery of their grandchild as long as the mother to be is under seventeen. WOW!

So in answer to the question, "Does abstinence work?" Well, yes! If it is applied. So how do you get teenagers (and others) to apply it?

Education. Personal Morals. If ya can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em.

Education needs to start and be a running dialogue through out a child's life. You just can't wait till the child is near adulthood to address the facts of life. Large families usually have the benefit of the older children seeing all that is involved in tending a younger one and that, all by itself has prevented many, many, young teen girls from venturing near that slippery slope. (Not all.)

Not teaching about birth control and STD's is irresponsible. Even if your children are above ever needing this information, they might have friends that do. By educating your children, you help get correct information out there into their generation and peer group. Besides, the facts of STD's (especially the pictures for a thick headed teen) will tend to scare them into at least using protection if not complete abstinence.

Morals. Teaching morals is extremely important. Having self respect, and a healthy long term view of how you want to live your life will have a great affect on the choices you make. So many people don't think about consequences but consequences do occur. It is wise to think about the out come before there's no turning back.

How you decide to teach your children is your choice. Make it an educated one, please.

Cookie Monster Slayer, Oh My!

Human Body Facts

The human body is a machine that is full of wonder. This collection of human body facts will leave you wondering why in the heck we were designed the way we are.

1... Scientists say the higher your I.Q. The more you dream.

2...The largest cell in the human body is the female egg.

3...The smallest is the male sperm.

4... You use 200 muscles to take one step.

5... The average woman is 5 inches shorter than the average man.

6... Your big toes have two bones each while the rest have three.

7... A pair of human feet contain 250,000 sweat glands.

8... A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball.

9... The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.

10..The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

11.. It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.

12.. The average human dream lasts 2-3 seconds.

13.. Men without hair on their chests are more likely to get cirrhosis of the liver than men with hair.

14.. At the moment of conception, you spent about half an hour as a single cell.

15.. There is about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.

16.. Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water to a boil.

17.. The enamel in your teeth is the hardest substance in your body.

18.. Your teeth start developing (in your gums) 6 months before you are born.

19.. When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, they do the same when you are looking at someone you hate.

20.. Blondes have more hair than dark-haired people.

21... Your thumb is the same length as your nose.

22.. At this very moment, I know full well you are putting this last fact to the test ..now remove your thumb from your nose and pass this on to the friends you think might be interested in comparing their thumbs to their noses as well.

You did it -- I KNOW you did !!!!!

* Copied from email. Unk author.