Read this today over at Why Homeschool. If you homeschool, maybe you'd be interested in participating in the survey--just two buttons to click!
Why Homeschool: Survey - how many boys and girls do you homeschool?
I just read a sad article at Why Homeschool: Only 19 minutes of free play in Kindergarten.
That just sounds pathetic, doesn't it?? And I especially appreciated the comment by "The Conservative Homeschooler."
Isn't this what it's supposed to be about at that age?
From Kelly:
Hello!
In addition to the Summer Dance Camps being offered in June and July at The Dance Barn (visit http://www.dancebarn.net/classes/ for details), we are also lucky to have Lori Madden of Blue Ridge Irish Music School offering a six week session in Irish Dance. Details are below, please check it out and forward this e-mail to anyone you know who might be interested!
All the best,
Kelly
NEW! At The Dance Barn
Irish Step Dance
Thursdays, 5:00-6:00 p.m.
June 18-July 23
$72/6 week session
Irish Step Dance, Beginner, Ages 7-14, Lori Madden,
Complete beginners will explore the basic building blocks of Irish step and Irish social dance with accompanying technique in a fun and relaxed environment. Emphasis is on building skills while enjoying dancing with others. All beginners learn soft shoe dancing (as opposed to percussive, hard shoe dancing).
Irish dance class wear
Shoes-although there are Irish dance shoes, these are not required for this class. Beginners can dance in bare feet or basic ballet slippers. Shoes should not have heels of any type, soles should be flexible as dancing is done on toes (not on point!)
Clothing-students should wear comfortable and stretchy shorts or pants that allow full flexibility and range of motion for legs without too much excess fabric.
Lori Madden has been providing instruction in Irish Step, Irish Social, Ceili, and Set Dance to children of all ages as well as to adults for ten years through BRIMS. In addition, Lori teaches Irish dance in Lynchburg, Richmond and at the Mountain Road Fiddle Camp in West Virginia. She has performed with the Humorous Abandon Irish dance ensemble at Floyd Fest and the Lake Eden Arts Festival and also in the full length Irish dance productions Drowsy Maggie and Robin Hood. In 2003, Lori served as Irish dance consultant for the Paul Wagner film Angels. Lori is also the director of the Blue Ridge Irish Music School (BRIMS) in Charlottesville www.brimstunes.org
For more information and to register, please call 434-409-9631 or email to lorima@juno.com
Kelly Silliman
The Dance Barn, LLC
8269 Spotswood Trail
Stanardsville, VA 22973
(434) 985-3200
www.dancebarn.net
This is a really nice article written by unschooling dad Jeff. He has such great insight, and what he says can apply to anyone's life: it's not just for unschoolers.
Free Boys: A Dad's Unschooling Journey: "Yield Means To Give Way"
Bananagrams! I saw it at Target a while ago, but since I'm not a huge fan of Scrabble, I just didn't think I'd enjoy this game because it seemed similar. I was soooooo wrong! When we were in TN for a big birthday bash with our tribe of unschoolers, my friend Abbi and I got into a conversation about languages, among other things. Then she mentioned Bananagrams and said I had to try it, at least just one round. What did I have to lose? So Abbi, Laura and I played a round, and I was hooked!
I bought one as soon as we got home and got my husband and daughter hooked on it. Thomas likes to play it also but needs more help with creating the words. It's very different from Scrabble in that you're not restricted to 7 letters at a time, and you are working independently of the other players. You can also play different versions of it, including a couple solitaire games. There is also no scoring, no value to the letters--just a race to use up all your tiles first.
Note: In the video the reporter mentions the price being around $25 but we've found it to be only about $15 at various stores.
Then when my friend Patti came over I made her play it, too. She loves it, and so Emily and I decided she needed to have her own game, so we bought her one.
Then I took the game with me for the kids' first tennis lesson yesterday and lost a tile! I did get Sara to play with me and Patti, though, and Sara's son, and some of the other kids who were waiting for their lesson. The tile had fallen between the boards of the the shelter we were using and the crawl space was more of a poison ivy-claustrophopic heaven than anything else, so we gave up the search.
I called the people at Bananagrams to see if I could get a list of how many tiles there were supposed to be for each letter, so we could see what we were missing. That was this morning. They emailed me right away, Emily and I figured out that it was the A that was missing, and I've emailed the company back. I believe they are going to send the replacement tile free of charge--the woman I spoke with didn't mention needing payment.
So, kudos to the folks at Bananagrams. And you must try this game if you haven't already! It's even on Facebook, so no excuses. :)
I've been mopey since yesterday morning when I saw that all the baby wrens had fledged. But on the very bright side, all five survived. I was expecting one to be the runt, but they all looked good to me whenever I checked in on them.
Researcher Sheds Light on Why Students Don't Like School
Cognitive scientist argues that the mind is designed to avoid thinking.
Posted 04/29/09
"The mind is actually designed to avoid thinking," Willingham said. "Thinking is a slow process; it's effortful and even uncertain. People naturally want to avoid that process, and instead rely on memory, the things we already know how to do and are successful at."
Which is one of the reasons students don't like school. They are forced to think, to accept new challenges, to learn new things, and therefore do the thing their mind most wants to avoid – thinking.
But this is true only up to a point. People also are curious.
"People actually enjoy thinking – when it is at a level that is not too simple, and not excessively difficult," Willingham said. "People like to be challenged. That's why we play games, it's why we read books, why we do many of the things we do. So there's a sweet spot, a level where learning is neither too simplistic to be interesting, nor too difficult to be enjoyable. This is the spot that teachers are always trying to find for their students in the classroom."
This is where creative teaching comes in, using a combination of storytelling that evokes emotion and thought, and exercises that put lessons into context and that build upon previous learning. It's also sustained hard work, Willingham said, that creates thinking skills dependent upon factual knowledge.
"We want to create learning experiences that last," he said.
Well, this gets filed under bizarre things that happen at our house! We bought this scorpion back in September. We were told she was female, but further inspection on our part led us to believe she might be male. Looks like we were wrong. Did you know that a female scorpion's gestation period can last from 2 to 18 months? We didn't.
For reference, the cage is 10 inches across, so the adult is maybe 5 with the tail curled. Babies might be an inch or more in size at this point.
I received this email from Ray:
Just a Horrible FYI :
I'll be doing another Horrible UK Order on May 31, 2009 for Late-June Delivery, with all the gory details at www.horriblebooks.com
Top 6 Horrible Highlights :
1) Everything is 20%-Off, Free Shipping, and No Sales Tax at Scholastic UK, Galore Park Books, or Prufrock Press, including, of course, all of the Horrible Books and Magazines listed at : http://www.horriblebooks.com/horriblebooklist.htm
2) Additional 10%-Off any Order Over $1000, a suggestion by The Great Deb de Tejas.
3) 2009 New Horrible Books : Horrible Geography : Awesome Atlas Jigsaw Book, Horrible Histories : Blitz (Handbook), Horrible Histories : Raiders and Ruins, Horrible Histories : Terrifying Tudors,
4) 1.55 UK Exchange Rate regardless of how much the US$ drops (it's been dropping for awhile now).
5) Horrible Books and Magazines listed in Yellow at: http://www.horriblebooks.com/horriblebooklist.htm are ready for immediate mailing.
6) Galore Park Latin Prep 1, 2, and 3 series listed in Yellow at: http://www.horriblebooks.com/galoreparkbooklist.htm are ready for immediate mailing.
Thanks, and enjoy your Horrible Day!
Ray
--
Horrible Books
www.horriblebooks.com
ray@horriblebooks.com
6574 Edmonton Avenue, San Diego, CA 92122
The books we've ordered in the past have been well-written and very amusing!
We've had toads show up in the window-well before, and we're never sure if we should get them out or not. There doesn't seem to be a way for them to get out--can they jump that high? I think they like the garden gnome. :)
I'm pretty sure we've just got the common American toad here. It says here that they breed in shallow pools, so I might put a shallow container in there for them.
They always seem to be staring at us. But in a non-threatening way. :)
I decided to "decorate" a little bit, so I added a piece of a limb and a couple pieces of bark.
I wanted to help spread the word about this new unschooling conference:
I received the greatest compliment from my son's friend the other day. His mother told me the story later:
Her son had spent the night at our house, and on the way home she asked him what he, Thomas and Emily had done. Part of the conversation went a little like this, "So you had a bonfire and roasted marshmallows, great! What did you have for dinner?" "Marshmallows!" "Hmm, they don't do school , and they have marshmallows for dinner. So staying at Silvia's is like staying with Pippi [Longstocking]?" "Yes! [with his face lighting up]"
I was so tickled when she told me! I didn't realize we still had marshmallows, by the way. And normally we would have had a lovely dinner for a sleep-over, but the kids were having such a great time outside, I kinda let it go. I think they went to the creek earlier in the day and spent surprisingly little time playing video games, which is usually what the boys intend to do, but there's just so much else out there, outside, waiting for them. Usually when Gabe comes to play, the three of them end up walking down to the creek about a 1/2 mile away, and walk up- or down-stream, picking up trash if they find it. The neighbor closest to the creek thanked them one day when she saw them. They bring hand-held radios and will call me sometimes to get picked up--it's all uphill on the way back.
So, more of the story--The kids started a fire in the little fire pit we have in the front yard, and Emily got to use her fire-starting skills (learned at the Living Earth School) to start it without matches. After it got going, somebody foraged through the pantry and found the marshmallows. At some point, I yelled out the door to ask if they were hungry, which of course they weren't, and therefore were not interested in any dinner. I thought to myself at that point, Patti is going to ask Gabe what we had for dinner . . .
Soooo, then they decided they wanted to sleep outside in the tent . . . and proceeded to grab many blankets and pillows to sleep on . . .
On top of the trampoline. I wish I had taken a picture, but it was dark by the time they had things all set up.
They ended up staying out there for about 2 hours before Emily started feeling claustrophobic (in the middle, in a 2-man tent, with the boys rolling toward her), and they all decided it was too warm and stuffy in there anyway. So we heard them come in and find somewhere to sleep. Gabe ended up sleeping on the small couch, and each child was in his or her own bed, and not, surprisingly, on the floor somewhere. Not sure where the dog slept.
Update on William Kamkwamba--the Malawi youth who built a windmill starting at age 15. I first read about him in July 2007. It looks like he's been incredibly busy and successful since then, and he has a book coming out in September! It's called "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind." There is also a YouTube video, about 6 minutes long, called "Moving Windmills," about his story. It's a great video--go watch it!
See the "Evolved Homeschooing" and "Homeschoolers on the Web" rings at the bottom of the page.
