Twitter “More” Button

Many tweeters don’t care much for the “more” button. I can see how it can be a bit bothersome. If you are like me when you first log on you like to read through everything you miss. There has been times I have clicked on the more button 4 o r 5 times to scan through all the tweets I missed and if I click to see someones profile page – when I click back I have to click the more button 4 or 5 times again to get back to where I was. This can be a bit annoying.

My solution to the more button whoahs – when you want to click on someone’s profile just do a right-click and click to view in new tab or new window. This way you don’t lose where you are!

New Sites!

Please check out my new sites and help spread the word about them.
Homeschool Tees is promoting t-shirts designed by homeschoolers for homeschoolers.  Please help promote this site.  Since I am counting on the homeschool community to spread the word I wanted to create something that would benefit us all.  This is it! I hope!

Group Tees is where you can purchase custom printed t-shirts for any group event. This is a business I started in the local flea market but gave up on it when there wasn’t enough business to keep paying the rental fees.

I used to have a booth set up at the local flea market doing custom printing on items such as t-shirts, license plate, mugs and mousepads but gave it up when business got so slow I couldn’t afford the booth rental.  The equipment has been setting in my room unused since the middle of last year.  I have been racking my brains lately trying to come up with an idea to support myself so I can continue to work from home and homeschool my children.  Well I wrote about all of this on the other site so I won’t make you read it twice but the above links is what I came up with.  Read more on the Homeschool Tees  link.

Mistakes

Did you ever think that your mistakes in life are the key to a successful life? Yes, maybe I would have been better off if I had not made so many mistakes from the beginning but I will never know because I can’t go back. What I do know is that my choices, good and bad, have all led me to where I am now.

Where am I now? For the first time in my life I feel as if I am where I am supposed to be and doing what I am supposed to be doing. Unfortunately for my first set of children I arrived here a bit too late – but – what I am doing now will hopefully positively affect the lives of my future grandchildren. I know it will be good for my children currently still at home.

Oh yes, I didn’t know when to stop having children. I finally put a stop to my growing family but not before I gave birth to five beautiful children – four boys ages 24, 22, 18, and 11, and a gorgeous daughter age 2. In an odd way I feel I was meant to have each and every one of these children. Why – I don’t know but its just a feeling I have and I know God will reveal the reason in due time.

Did I mention I am a single mom? Nope, haven’t always been single. Been in and out of bad relationships and I’m not going to sit here and blame it all on someone else because I made my fair share of mistakes. I am grateful for my mistakes though – like I said they have all led me to where I am now – happy and content with my life. I know longer seek out a husband. I feel as if I have far more important goals in life now and better yet – I know I can do it without a husband. Notice I didn’t say I could do it alone. I am counting on the supportive nature of the homeschool community and the will of God to help me through this. I am not a religious person and the words “my God” may not have the same meaning to me as your God has for you, but I do know, there is a power much stronger than my own which has led me here.

I hope the homeschool community will support me in my journey to continue to homeschool my children. How? By continuing to provide such wonderful advice in your blogs, by helping to spread the word about my sites, by providing an ear to share my joy, and a smile to ease my concerns. There are so many ways the homeschool community can help each other and I have been fortunate to connect with a few great people and hope to continue connecting with more.

One thing I have always missed out on in my past was a support group. Its too long and too personal of a story to tell all but I am glad I am here among other homeschoolers who didn’t exactly know what they were doing either in the beginning.

Thank you!

PMHS – Free Educational Animated Movies

Are you looking for educational material that is entertaining and will capture your child’s attention?  Oh, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg!

BrainPOP for Home Schools  animated educational movies for grades 3 – 12 will entertain and educate at the same time.  BrainPOP offers curriculum-based content in areas such as Science, Math, English, Social Studies, Health, Arts & Music, and Technology.  Millions of children are already watching BrainPOP movies and exchanging messages with the dynamic characters that will lead your child through the activities that include homework help, interactive quizzes, comic strips, and experiments.

BrainPOP Junior is targeted to children in grades K – 3.  Just like BrainPOP, BrainPOP Junior teaches core curriculum topics in a way that is fun and easy to understand while correlating with national standards and testing mandates.

While BrainPOP and BrainPOP Junior are available through a fee based subscription it also provides several FREE animated movies that by themselves are very entertaining and educational.

My son enjoyed BrainPOP so much that we purchased the full subscription.  Homeschool Solo access provides access for one user at a time, while Homeschool access provides access for up to three simultaneous users at one homeschool site.

BrainPOP for Home Schools
Rated A+ By Teachers and Parents
The More You Know The More You Know
www.BrainPOP.com

The Poor Mom’s Homeschool (PMHS) – Math Middle/High School

Anytime you see an article on my site that starts with PMHS (Poor Mom’s Home School) it means that I have found an excellent source that is FREE!

Being a single mom, and more importantly a broke single mom, I am always looking for free resources to teach my children from.  This article is about Math.

From the start we were using sites such as http://www.mathusee.com/ which is a “to purchase” math curriculum but it has free work sheets.  Another site was http://math.com/ which is a good tutorial site.

I wanted to find a good math site that would help us keep up with our state’s standards without having to purchase books.

I found one! http://www.classzone.com/cz/index.htm

Just click on your state and choose a book. 

This site is intended for students who already are using the book but I have spent the day going through the lessons, tutorials, exercises, and other great resources this site has and I am convinced that this site is what we will use for now on for our math.

Another thought on this was all the other sites I was using was a great source of worksheets but none had word problems and the one site I found with word problems didn’t have the answers.

This site http://www.classzone.com/cz/index.htm has it all!

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to teach because the tutorials and lessons are all you need to learn and teach these lessons.

We live in Kansas and I chose the McDougal Littell Math Course 1 because I liked the resources available like Power Point lessons.

The Best of My Research

I have done a LOT of researching before and since my decision to homeschool my son.  I have done more researching than teaching but I guess you have to learn before you can teach.  Of all my research I have found the following to be the best incentive to NOT stress over my decision.  The original author is unknown.

The Bitter Homeschooler’ s Wish List

1 Please stop asking us if it’s legal. If it wasn?t, and it is, it’s insulting to imply that we’re criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2 Learn what the words “socialize” and “socialization” mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you’re talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we’ve got a decent grasp of both concepts.

3 Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4 Don’t assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5 If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a “reality” show, the above goes double.

6 Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You’re probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you’ve ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

7 We don’t look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they’re in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we’re doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

8 Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

9 Stop assuming that if we’re religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10 We didn’t go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

11 Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials! I didn’t have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don’t need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and- spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can’t teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there’s a reason I’m so reluctant to send my child to school.

12 If my kid’s only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he’d learn in school, please understand that you’re calling me an idiot. Don’t act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

13 Stop assuming that because the word “home” is right there in “homeschool, ” we never leave the house. We’re the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it’s crowded and icky.

14 Stop assuming that because the word “school” is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we’re into the “school” side of education, and many of us prefer a more organic approach, we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don’t have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

15 Stop asking, “But what about the Prom?” Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don’t get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I’m one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

16 Don’t ask my kid if she wouldn’t rather go to school unless you don’t mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn’t rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

17 Stop saying, “Oh, I could never homeschool!” Even if you think it’s some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you’re horrified. One of these days, I won’t bother disagreeing with you any more.

18 If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you’re allowed to ask how we’ll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can’t, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn’t possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

19 Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child’s teacher as well as her parent. I don’t see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

20 Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he’s homeschooled. It’s not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.

21 Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she’s homeschooled.

22 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

23 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

24 Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won’t get because they don’t go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

25 Here’s a thought: If you can’t say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

My Son’s First Book

I remember the first time my child received his first book highlighting his own name. When he read his name and realized this truly was “his” book he couldn’t put it down. He carried the book everywhere and read it all the time. I wish I had a picture to share with you all.

I plan on ordering my daughter her first book highlighting her name and I’m sure she will love it just as much. I’ll be ordering mind through the link below. I invite you to do the same.

Why I Homeschool

We (my son and I) had been discussing homeschooling for a while now because lately I have had the desire to travel.  We came to the conclusion that we would wait until I can figure out how to make a living on the road before we try it.  After I received an email from his teacher telling me he is out of ideas on how to get my son to, basically straighten up and conform, I decided it was time to take him out of school.  I had been researching homeschool topics for a few months prior to this incident but I wasn’t sure of how we would proceed.  I’m still not real sure but much has happened to ensure me that I made the right decision for my children. 

We have not been homeschooling for very long – we are still in the “de-schooling” phase.  It took me a while to understand what that meant but after 4 months I am beginning to understand.  Children are born with a natural yearning to learn.  It is becoming my belief that school crushes that yearning with its constant demand to learn and conform to what they feel students should learn. 

Babies are constantly studying their surroundings taking in everything they can see, touch, feel, taste, and hear.  Once they begin to talk they start asking questions… Mommy why is the sky blue, how does the fish breath in the water, and so on.  Then school takes over their every action – telling them what they will learn and when.  I didn’t notice until just recently that once my children entered school – they quit asking the why, when and how questions. 

My 11yo son has been asking the why, when and how questions more in the last month then he has in the last several years.  My mistake has been telling him what my parents always told me – go look it up.  For now on I will be telling him – lets look it up together and find out.  After all – isn’t that the essence of homeschooling?  Learning together as a family.

A Little History 

It seems I have always been a single mom.  Been in and out of relationships that didn’t work for one reason or another.  I’m not perfect and will never claim to be.  One thing I have always tried to do throughout it all was a good mother – or my idea of what I thought society expected of me as a good mother – like… working to pay my bills – even if it meant working two or three jobs leaving my children to take care of each other (if the oldest was old enough) or with strangers (daycare).  The biggest pressure was forcing my children to go to school and do homework.  For some families this works like a well-greased machine but for my family it was more like trying to make wood screws hold together a metal cabinet.  It just didn’t work no matter what I tried.  

I was lucky with my oldest – he loved school all the way through middle school and did very well.  It wasn’t until he went to high school that his grades were dropping.  Fortunately with him his attitude didn’t drop like his grades.  He came to me in his senior year asking me to sign the papers letting him drop out of school and go to the Army.  He took a government and history class in a night school and took his GED for a complete High School Diploma (required by the military) and right after he turned 18 he was off to boot camp.

After boot camp he spent a year in Germany then went to Ft.  Hood where he later deployed to somewhere in Iraq.  He survived Iraq just to be killed by someone not paying attention to where they were going.  I started In Memory of Tim shortly after but I haven’t wrote on the blog for a long time.  I probably will again soon. 

I had two incidents with Tim and school – the first was early on and he needed to go to the bathroom but the teacher ignored his cries to go and he ended up sitting half the day in soiled pants because he was too afraid to say anything. 

The second occasion was when a girl on the school bus stabbed her fingernails into the back of his neck and nobody did anything until I called to complain.  The bus driver merely scolded the girl than blew it off.  If he had done that to a girl he would have been suspended immediately and maybe even charged with harassment.  There is too many double standards not only in school but society but that?s another story. 

In both incidents I became a raving lunatic on the phone with the school – I’m sure you all can paint a pretty good picture in your head of what that looks like.  I knew though that I better handle it on the phone rather than in person or I would probably end up in jail.  Not that I am a violent person but come on… both those incidences were totally avoidable.

I wasn’t so lucky with my second son – in regards to school.  He hated school since kindergarten.  How many kids hate school at kindergarten?  This baffled me for the longest time.  It was a fight almost every morning to get him to go.  Every year I would ask the teachers to test him for a learning disability and every year they would say he was fine.  Around 2nd and 3rd grade he would start complaining about other children picking on him and causing problems.  I didn’t know what to do – so I basically ignored it hoping it would go away.   

This endless routine of fighting him to go to school and fighting him to do his homework only succeeded in tearing a rip in our relationship.  He will tell you that he spent his whole youth being grounded but he was only grounded when I got his reports.  I told him if you put forth the effort by doing your homework and still get bad grades – that is one thing but if you are getting bad grades because you aren’t doing your work then you are grounded.  He did spend a lot of time being grounded but being a single mom and working many nights I wasn’t exactly there to enforce it so he still got away with a lot of stuff.  FYI – this was during late middle school and early high school.   

Right before he turned 16, or maybe it was 17, he wanted me to sign the papers to drop out of school.  We talked about the alternatives and even went to the school councilor to talk about alternative and we agreed that he would go to Job Corps.  So I signed the papers but he wasn’t quite old enough for Job Corps and right before he was he changed his mind because he wasn’t ready to go that far away from home.  I had just started attending classes at the local community college so I asked if he could just get his GED and start taking some basic classes in college.  The college councilor said yes so I talked it over with my son and he agreed.  It didn’t work out and long story short he and I ended up at odds with each other, he moved out at 17 and we really didn’t talk much until after his brother was killed when he was 18.  Now he is 20 and just signed up for auto mechanics at a local technical college.  I am positive he will do well – he is ready now and it was totally his choice! 

The last few years I had been having similar problems with my now 11yo.  He had para?s work with him up until 6th grade.  He did better with the one-on-one attention but he was taking it for granted.  Last year they even rearranged his schedule to where he had less homework and less work altogether.  All this accomplished was making him play-around more.  School was a place for him to play with his friends and that’s all he wanted to do.  Nothing I did or the teachers did was changing this attitude so now we are trying homeschool and I have a good feeling about where we are going.  One thing is for sure – we aren’t fighting anymore!  To me that’s worth anything and everything! 

How I support this decision financially?

Most homeschool moms I have spoke with are married and their husbands have decent jobs so they can afford to stay home with the kiddos.  Unfortunately I am on my own with no support other than my sister who takes the little one once in a while so I can have some free time.  I am starting a daycare in hopes to do before and after school care with elementary age children so I still have the day to dedicate to my own children.  In the summer we will take a lot of activity trips with the daycare kids – which is another reason I am sticking with elementary age children.  

I am constantly looking out for a way to make a living while traveling because it is our desire (my son and I) to travel and see the country.  I have researched other families that live on the road full-time and homeschool their children and provide their kids with an education most kids only read about in books.  I would love to be able to live this lifestyle with my children but I don’t have a husband with a job that he can take to the road as most of these homeschooling on the road mothers do.  Nor do I want one!  I’m hoping this blog will take off and I can earn money from affiliations and what not like other bloggers do.  Problem is I don’t specialize in anything.  I don’t have a “niche”.  I will figure this out as I go and I am just praying for the best.

Will typing be a thing of the past?

Check out the new Apple laptop with a wheel? I watched the video and I don’t think I would buy it even if they sold it for $10 – Yes that is not a typo Ten Dollars and I would still NOT buy it.
Why? Because it took this guy, who professes to buy anything Apple, 45 minutes to write out a simple email. How pathetic! Why would anyone want to take 45 minutes to scroll out an email that shouldn’t take more than two minutes to type out?.

 

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Hello world!

Hello all and welcome.  This is my first attempt at blogging and where it goes from here is anybody’s guess.  I hope you will leave a comment, join my friend’s list or blogroll or whatever – I haven’t figured all this out yet. 

I am looking to connect with other homeschooling moms, especially those who are single and/or living in the Wichita, Ks area.