We are back!

It has been 5 months since our last blog post, and it was a Wordless Wednesday post at that. We have had a lot going on during that time.

• I went to visit my mother in Lame Deer, Montana. I was alone with my mom for 10 days and it was a wonderful time.
  
• We had a death in the family. My father-in-law and our children's grandfather, Jack, passed away unexpectedly the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
  
• We spent 3 weeks in the Philadelphia area to help my mother-in-law and to do some hands-on history in the area.
• Google adsense dropped our blogs~That was very discouraging and probably the reason it took so long to get back to blogging.
• We have been traveling to Tallahassee regularly since January and have been in Tallahassee full-time since February 28. We are staying in a 2 bedroom hotel suite. We go home May 1, finally!
• We registered with Victory Christian School. We are now homeschooling under their covering.
• We have been wasting time playing farmville. (blushing)
  

We look forward to get back into blogging. We enjoyed sharing with you.

Wordless Wednesday

How do you homeschool when you are sick?

Help! I'm sick and I have to HOMESCHOOL?

How does the homeschooling parent handle education while ill?
When the kids were younger, it was simple for us. We did not allow TV unless someone was sick. So when I was sick, they were allowed to watch educational TV.
I even had a chart of what type of subject they were learning from each program. (It eased my guilt somewhat!)

• Math-Cyberchase
• Science-Magic School Bus, Zobomafoo, Beakman's World, Stanley, The Wonder Pets, Brink, How It's made, Bill Nye:The Science Guy, and a variety of programs on The Science Channel
  
• History-Liberty's Kids, and a variety of programs on The History Channel
  
• Language Arts-Between the Lions, Reading Rainbow, Super Why, Word Girl, Word World
  
• Social Studies-Arthur (I know, I know! That one is a real stretch!)

We are always stocked up with plenty of books from the library and with lots of craft supplies, so they also would read books and build things.


What do your kids do when you are sick?

Next: How a Homeschool Parent Deals with Chronic Illness.

Homeschool and Sushi

My love for good cuisine has been the catalyst for many articles over the years. I am an unabashed lover of the food that I enjoyed in my childhood (think Spaghettios and Cap’n Crunch). Does anything made by Franco American count as “good cuisine”? I would argue in the affirmative. Anyway, since the start of this blog I’ve been trying to think how I can tie food and homeschooling together. I am sure that I am not the only home school dad that loves to share food with his kids so hopefully other guys can relate.

As I mentioned in my previous post No Such Thing as a “One-Size Fits All” Curriculum I believe that home education starts from the moment our children enter this world and should be a thing we just do as we go about our daily lives. While not every moment is a “teachable moment,” it is amazing how many moments in a day can be. From my kids’ earliest years we have had a Saturday morning pancake ritual which included the making of the breakfast dish and the eating of the same while watching Gerbert, Gospel Bill or Davey & Goliath. While the years have changed the routine in some ways, the memories of those mornings live on (as do variations on the theme).

Teaching kids how to measure out flour, milk and crack an egg without getting pieces of shell into the batter are all simple skills that they can master at an early age. Depending on maturity pouring pancake batter into a hot pan and flipping a pancake are all abilities our kids can master. We all know that chemistry is involved in the baking process but do we talk about it? Why do those bubbles form on the top of a pancake? Why does a pancake taste bad if it is cooked too long (i.e. burned)? All of these little things are practical, real-life questions and answers that will help our kids to no end. Who knows, with enough encouragement we may be laying the foundation for developing the next Bobby Flay or Rachael Ray.

By now you are probably wondering where sushi fits into all of this. As a kid I had no clue what sushi was. When I did learn what it was I wanted no part of it. It was not until I was an adult that I even ventured to try sushi; to my surprise, I was delighted by this delicacy.

As a parent I wanted to make sure my kids had exposure to sushi. Whether or not they enjoyed it did not matter, the key thing was that they would try it. All did. Poet at Heart likes so-called “veggie” sushi while Animal Lover has come to love all types of sushi whether it be nigiri or sashimi. My little boy, The Energizer, has tried it and does not like. I give him credit for giving it a shot.

Sushi is even more than just a food, however. It is an opportunity to learn. We watch Unwrapped and The Secret Life of… on the Food Network all the time. Both the Travel Channel and the Discovery Channel also have good shows regarding food, history and preparation. The kids have seen how the fish are caught and how sushi grade fish are inspected at a higher level than regular fish. I’ve taken them to a local sushi market so they can see sushi being prepared by a sushi chef. My wife even purchased a sushi kit and taught the kids how to make sushi at home.

We were all very impressed when Poet at Heart found a recipe for "candy sushi" in Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals for Kids and created the awesome plate shown below. Made of marshmallows, puffed rice, various sweets and fruit roll-ups (in lieu of the nori) she single-handedly made sushi that even The Energizer would eat.

Of course one does not have to like sushi to get the kids involved with food. Homemade pizza, homemade pasta or just plain barbecuing on the grill all afford opportunities for us to share with our children our own experiences with food as well as teaching them basic cooking skills. Whether we are explaining why pizza dough rises or how fire can heat the inside of a chicken breast we are filling curious minds with useful information that they will one day apply. There will come a time when our children will flip pancakes in their own kitchens and we won’t be there to help them. Lets grab the chance to teach them now so they will be prepared for that day when they are on their own, perhaps teaching their own kids why bubbles form on the top of pancakes as they cook. (or why sushi grade fish is different than the fish you buy at Wal-mart).

NOTE: In case you have never heard of Gerbert, Gospel Bill or Davey & Goliath, feel free to whip up a batch of pancakes and watch the videos below. I guarantee the flapjacks will taste even better because of them.

No Such Thing as a “One-Size Fits All” Curriculum

When we decided to become home school parents, before the birth of our first child, I did not have a clue about how challenging it would ultimately become. I’ve always thought it is the responsibility of parents to teach their kids from the day they are born as much as they can about how the world around them works and how best to live in it. Why else do we read stories to our kids at bedtime or play number games with their fingers and toes when they are still babies? The same can be said about teaching them safety skills (i.e. don’t touch hot stoves, etc.) and other skills needed to get through every day life as they continue to grow. And, of course, aren’t our conversations peppered with facts and figures about important people and events that have shaped our lives and those of our family?

There does come a point in time in a homeschooling family’s educational process that one realizes that we need more than just our own experiences and abilities to give our children a well rounded education. This fact hit me hard when my wife and I went to our first “curriculum fair”. Boy, what an overwhelming (and dare I say wallet-draining?) experience that was!

Entering this great hall and seeing rows upon rows of publishers hawking their wares was astounding to me. I never knew so many companies printed so many books, pamphlets, magazines, maps, print-outs, handouts, videos, cassettes, newspapers, bookmarks, toys, learning puppets, and every other conceivable device known to modern educators. I knew not where to begin and almost turned and ran screaming from the room.

Before I went to the fair I had the preconceived notion that my daughter was going to learn her academics through a single curriculum (i.e. Alpha Omega, Rod & Staff, A Beka, or some other trusted company that gives you lesson books for every subject under the sun). My plan was to purchase the entire package and that is what she was going to learn from. No ifs, ands or buts. I did not want her lessons to be culled from a hodgepodge of books that come in different shapes and sizes and do not look nice on the bookshelf when stacked together. At this point I had no clue about learning styles and the host of other things that help decide what is the most appropriate curriculum for any given child.

I think what first brought this thinking to a screeching halt was the price of every single box of new curriculum I saw. Now, don’t misunderstand me, home school parents make great sacrifices to give their kids the opportunity to be homeschooled. We’ve been a single-income family for over 16 years because of our decision to home school and have to do without a lot of things two-income families can enjoy. Thus, every dollar counts. So, when I saw the prices of some of these packages I began to sweat. Of course I wanted the best for my daughter, but my wife pointed out that what would happen if our little darling was not able to learn things the way this particular curriculum lays things out. As I wiped my brow and perused the almost endless options laid out in this “fair,” I quickly decided that perhaps buying the whole kit-and-caboodle at one time wasn’t such a cool idea after all.

“Perhaps we could just try one of these math books first and see if this works,” my wife suggested, sensing my reluctance to remove my wallet from my back pocket.

“That makes sense,” I agreed enthusiastically.

“ And we can try one of these grammar books over here and one of these history books over on that table…” she continued and before I knew it we had a load of books all of different shapes and sizes loaded up and ready to take home and put to use.

Having three kids has taught me that there is no “one-size-fits-all” curriculum for homeschoolers. My two daughters have different learning styles than each other. My son has his own way of taking in information as well. What works for one doesn’t always work for another. I have to admit it has taken me 16 years to come to grips with this understanding, even though I occasionally stray and wish that we did have the entire curriculum from one or another publisher. After all, they would look so much nicer on the book shelf than does the hodge-podge of books, all of different shapes and sizes that are stacked together right now.

Never Forget

NEVER FORGET the victims and heroes of the terrorist attacks on our wonderful country September 11, 2001. TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED and NINETY THREE innocent people were murdered by Al-Qaeda terrorists that day. 3,251 children lost a parent. Untold numbers lost a friend or loved one.
Never forget why we are at war. The terrorists are still fighting. They CANNOT WIN!

Pray for the families and friends left behind and for our country.