Catching up

I am now a little more caught up than I was on recording homeschool hours. That may not be saying much, but I did spend almost an hour and a half today doing nothing but entering information in to several Excel spreadsheets.

I have now thoroughly and officially documented the academic activities of three children up through October 3 (of this year!), which puts me a mere two months behind.  However, instead of thinking of myself as being two months behind, I prefer to tell myself that I only have to record sixty more days’ worth to be current!  It’s all in how you choose to look at it, right?

A carrot for non-fiction

I have been trying for eons to interest Andrew in reading anything besides Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Astro Boy.  When all else failed – and I really did try everything – I gave in and began assigning him books to read.  I truly hated to do this, as I never gave any of the Big Three any reading assignments, and I always assumed that what worked well for them would work well for him.  I’ve had a firm conviction that kids – all kids – will read interesting things because they are interesting, and they’ll learn something in the process.  But no.

So for the past four months, Andrew has been dutifully reading the various picture books I have assigned, but he never seems to learn or remember anything from any of them.  This has been quite discouraging to Yours Truly, who, after successfully avoiding the school-at-home mentality for lo, these 12 or so years, daily resents having to “stoop” to it now.

But today, my brain must’ve stormed, because I came up with an idea that seems to have some potential.  I had in a pile on my desk several books Andrew had read in recent days, but which we hadn’t had time to discuss.  Before I took them back to the library tomorrow night, I wanted to make sure that A) he really had read them thoroughly, and B) he remembered SOMETHING out of each one.

I told him to write in his copy book today’s date and the title and author of the first book.  It happened to be about the skeletal system.  Then I asked him to look through the book and quiz me by asking me three questions that he thought would be important or interesting.  I would try to answer them, and then he would write those three facts in his copy book.

We covered four books thusly, and he said, “This is really fun.”  Wow.  Now we both know that adults have 206 bones; that Johnny Appleseed walked through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana; that the Washington Monument stood unfinished for 25 years; and that Americans consume over a million pound of popcorn each year.

By the way, I missed three of those questions (and a bunch of other ones, too), but I am thrilled for Andrew to point out my many areas of ignorance, if it motivates him to learn.

What? No first place?

In skimming through our local high school’s website – and yes, this would be the high school that we fund, but don’t use – I found the following very sad bit of trivia.

“At the Branson High School commencement, rather than to recognize a valedictorian or salutatorian, beginning with the class of 1992 the school will recognize graduating students who have completed at least one (1) semester at Branson High School and have maintained a cumulative G.P.A. of 10.00 or better on an 11.00 point scale. Students will be recognized alphabetically as “Graduating With High Honors.”"

I happen to think that this just stinks!  For one thing, I have no idea what on earth an 11.00 point scale is.  When I was in school, battles were won and lost on a field of fours.   A’s were 4, B’s were 3, C’s were 2, and below that who cared?  Now, there were a very few classes that were 5-point A’s (and 4-point B’s, etc.),  and in fact, my choice to take physics (a 4-point A), rather than elementary functions (a 5-point A) kept me from being valedictorian.  I made that choice knowing full well it would cost me the top spot, and I have no regrets.  I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. George’s outstanding physics class, and when all was said and done, I ended up 3rd out of 416 – which wasn’t too shabby, if I do say so myself.  And I do say so.

But back to my rant. . . I think it’s terrible that Branson High School has had no valedictorian for the past 17 years!!!  It’s the same mindset that meant the little guys at Andrew’s joke of a Level 4 gymnastics meet in January all received trophies, even though most of them couldn’t turn a somersault without a coach whispering step-by-step instructions in their ears, while Andrew did his full Level 4 floor routine, uncoached and with only one mistake.  However, in today’s American society, you can’t have one person be the best, because then someone else wouldn’t be the best, and he might feel bad, which would be entirely unacceptable.

Instead, we must all be treated equally, or at least be made to feel like we all performed equally.  And people wonder why our nation is in the mess it’s in!  How on earth can our kids compete globally when the rest of the world functions on the basis of achievement and not on the basis of self-esteem?  Try taking our pablum-mindset to the Asian countries whose students consistently knock our American students’ socks off in math and science – and to which so many formerly U.S. jobs are now out-sourced.

Tell it to the families I’ve met in other nations, whose sons and daughters spend up to 12 hours a day, six days a week at school (not to mention four hours of homework each night, even during summer break) in order to hopefully achieve high enough test scores to gain admission to a top-notch university and be chosen for a well-paying job.  For at least 20% of the world, one’s ability to come out on top of the academic heap may literally mean the difference between life as a professional and life as a street-sweeper.

I say bring back the valedictorian and let him or her make a grand speech.  May all the underclassmen listen with envy and think, “Wow.  Look at him (or her) go.  If I work hard enough and score well enough, maybe when I’m a senior, I’LL be up there speaking, and this program will have MY name in gold letters at the top of the list.”  It surely motivated me.

Let me make myself perfectly clear:  Two thumbs down to the Branson High School administration.  This valedictorian realm is one in which I’m not the least bit ashamed to say, “give me back those good old days.”

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NOTE:  My dad read the above post and sent it on to his friend, Charlie.  Charlie replied to both Dad and me, and with his permission, I am adding his reply below, including Dad’s explanatory comments in red.

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Al,

That was great. Please give Patty my compliments. Of course, I agree with her 100%; and in fact am probably much more inclined that way than even she tends to be. My AAU athletes (Charlie coached AAU basketball teams for many years) didn’t understand that “equality” mindset (at least not in athletics). They didn’t want low performers on the basketball court with them, for it hurt their Team (and therefore them). I wonder if these same idiots at Branson think it is wrong to name an All-State football team?

Jeff left me behind in our HHH bicycle race last weekend (the HHH is a 100 mile bicycle race held every year in Wichita Falls TX in late August – can you say “stinking hot” – and Jeff is a friend who rides with Charlie) because he was faster. No whining from me. He deserves to be recognized as being better. That’s easy for me to admit. Have I ever told you my story about playing racquetball against the 12 year old girl (when I was a 35 year old league champion)? Oh, it was UGLY. She beat me 21-0! Ha! (Charlie still plays a very competitive game of racquetball at age 59 and loves to beat the socks off younger players) I don’t have much patience with folks who want to build false/phony self esteem.

The literal meaning of “No Child Left Behind” has to really be “No Child Gets Ahead”; for if one is ahead, then another one MUST be behind. The harsh truth of life is that someone must lose (be inferior at) each competitive contest. That is just part of being a member of human society. If everyone was average, there would be no excellence. We would all be drones.

It is interesting that liberals who tend to celebrate the natural order of things in the animal world, which concept also includes evolution and/or natural selection, are against those same ideas (the strong survive and/or prosper, the weak suffer) among humans. We ought to celebrate the opportunity to recognize the winners and weed out the losers.

Sheridan High School (where Jason (one of Charlie’s sons) attended) seemed to be good in many ways; but I think they also adopted some form of that ridiculous policy used in Branson. Jason’s wife Kristin was Valedictorian–at least she had the highest grades in their relatively large high school class; but I recall that in the ceremonies she was grouped and honored with several other “high achievers”; because we wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by making them second place. It wasn’t fair to Kristin. She had earned EXCLUSIVE #1 billing by her PERFORMANCE.

Fortunately, at least our Pulaski County School District (Charlie is one of 7 members of the Pulaski County School Board) does that particular thing right (for now).  Camille (Charlie and Mary’s daughter) got what she earned.  The girl who finished second to Camille was very smart, worked very hard, and never made a “B”; so we  think her family felt a little bit cheated when Camille beat her for top honors. Tough.  “Mary” (name changed) took only 5 “AP” courses her senior year, while Camille took six.  Mary chose to take College Algebra instead of AP Calculus, by her choice losing the extra point value for Calculus. That “easy load” was Mary’s choice. Camille determined early that she wanted to WIN the GPA contest and took the necessary steps. It would have been wrong not to reward those efforts. In contrast, Kristin was cheated.

When Jason was young, a baseball team (the Royals) one year older than his team got kicked-out of the league because they practiced too much (about 5 days a week). They were too good. It made the other kids feel bad. Well, the Royals later won two national AAU championships; and many of their players (years later) got free college educations playing baseball. It wasn’t bad for them, was it? Later my basketball teams were criticized for beating our opponents so badly, with scores like 80-40. The charge was: “You take all of the fun out the game!” My standard reply was: “It (80-40) sure is fun for MY kids!” Ha!

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CHARLIE’S ADDITIONAL EXPLANATION: OUR AAU BASKETBALL TEAMS WON MORE THAN A DOZEN STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS. IT BECAME AN “ORGANIZATION” RATHER THAN ONE TEAM (ALTHOUGH ALL IN ONE AGE LEVEL); AND IN THREE DIFFERENT YEARS OUR TEAMS FINISHED BOTH FIRST AND SECOND IN THE STATE. WE WON ONE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP AND FINISHED HIGH AT NATIONALS IN 4 DIFFERENT YEARS. OUR ATHLETES CAME FROM ALL OVER ARKANSAS, WITH TWO (7′-4″ AND 6′-7″) EVEN FROM OKLAHOMA. MOST OF THE ATHLETES GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL IN 2001; AND MANY PLAYED MULTIPLE SPORTS.WE BECAME THE DOMINATE TEAM IN ARKANSAS (IN THAT AGE GROUP), ALMOST A MONOPOLY.

61 OF THEM PLAYED COLLEGE SPORTS IN EITHER FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL, BASEBALL, TRACK, OR TENNIS. SEVERAL BECAME PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL PLAYERS (MINOR LEAGUES), AND 4 LATER PLAYED IN THE NFL. JASON WAS A D-1 WIDE RECEIVER AND MADE THE ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICAN TEAM, FOR WHICH YOU MUST BE A GREAT PLAYER PLUS A GREAT STUDENT. HE WAS THE SUN BELT CONFERENCE MALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR IN 2005. THE POINT: JASON LEARNED HOW TO COMPETE WITH THE BEST THROUGH PLAYING 3 DIFFERENT AAU SPORTS (BASKETBALL, BASEBALL, TRACK) AT MORE THAN 20 NATIONAL TOURNAMENTS. AAU COMPETITION WORKED WELL FOR HIM! ON THE OTHER HAND, TWO OF HIS FORMER TEAMMATES WERE DEAD BY AGE 25 IN DIFFERENT DRUG/GANG RELATED ASSASINATIONS. BOTH WERE CUT FROM MY TEAM AT YOUNGER AGES (9TH GRADE) FOR “POOR BEHAVIOR”. LIFE IS NOT ALWAYS A PLEASANT STROLL THROUGH THE PARK. WE MUST HAVE THE “GUTS” TO DISCIPLINE THE LOSERS SO THAT THE WINNERS CAN EXCEL AND PROSPER.

THIS AGAIN ILLUSTRATES THE POINT: EVEN AMONG THE “ELITE”, THERE ARE WINNERS AND LOSERS; AND ALWAYS WILL BE. THAT’S A HARSH FACT OF COMPETITION AND OF LIFE.

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In all seriousness, Patty’s Branson example is only one tip of a huge problem with humanity. We are NOT all created equal, at least insofar as ability to achieve worldly standards and goals. Furthermore, the ones without the inherent ability and/or without the work ethic will usually be jealous of those who CAN AND DO achieve. The “losers” will NOT be able to admit their own shortcomings and will feel that they “deserve” an equal outcome; so they will try to “equalize” the achievers. Perhaps the biggest issue in public education today is the conflict between “Equality” (meaning true Equal Opportunity) vs. “Equity” (forced Equal Outcome). Most sophisticated educators (proud of their modern outlook) lean strongly toward the latter.  It is a huge national flaw.

America is in love with sports, which I think is generally OK. But what we conservatives need to do is to use the example of competitive sports, which America idolizes, to carry over into the more important philosophies and areas of life. We celebrate the “winners” in sport and completely agree with cutting the losers from the team. Few sports fans think that a slow, lazy, overweight kid should get to start on their beloved high school football team. Now we need to make people see that those same accepted philosophies and concepts should apply in other areas of life, too. That’s why I think sports are important.

I’ll probably write more about this later; but now I’ve got work to do.

Thanks for sending this to us.

Charlie

The joys of Post-It notes

In our house, we tend to call them sticky notes, because I am usually too frugal to pay brand name Post-It prices.  I have them in several colors and two sizes, and because I go through so very many of them and I like to grab them with one hand, I even invested in a couple of nifty “pop-up” dispensers.  The big one (for the standard sized sticky notes) sits on my desk, and the smaller one (for those lovely miniature sticky notes) is hermetically sealed to the front of my top right desk drawer.  The desk is metal, and no, I wouldn’t have mounted an adhesive-backed dispenser to a wood desk.  At least I don’t think I would have.  But then again, I do have maps under plastic duct-taped to my dining room table. . .

Anyway, I have now added sticky notes  to my relatively short list of essential homeschooling supplies.  This is a second (male) generation development.  With the girls, I said things like, “Do your academics,” and they did.  With the boys, I have learned that such statements accomplish nothing.  It took me a few years to realize that, but then sometimes I am just incredibly dense.  When mere words failed to suffice, I developed checklists that clearly stated what was to be done.  They may be works of organizational genius, but I’ve noticed that they don’t work too well, either.

BUT, now that I’m almost done being 48, I have finally hit on the ultimate solution:  put a sticky note with the day’s assignment inside each book that each man-child will be using in a given day.  In addition to single-handedly keeping the Staples (“That was easy”) corporation solvent, this has actually been working quite well for quite some time, and tomorrow we will be able to tell whether the momentum will carry into a third day.

By the way, here’s the original list.

* Pencils (I happen to like Ticonderoga Tri-Writes)

* A pencil sharpener (preferably electric)

* A never-ending supply of single subject spiral notebooks

* A library card (or six)

I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that we buy simply for homeschooling purposes.  We do have computers with internet, masking tape, sharpie markers, and index cards, but those are all just normal tools of the living trade, whether or not one’s family homeschools.  We also own a heck of a lot of books (more than 2100 cataloged at latest count), ALL of which purchases have been neatly categorized by Yours Truly in Quicken as “Education,” but then, I collect books by default and would have done so (albeit in admittedly smaller quantities) even if the kids weren’t homeschooled.

So, yep.  I think that’s it.  Oh!  I almost forgot two more:

*  An undying passion to see each of your kids achieve his or her potential + a maniacal willingness to do almost anything to see that come to pass

*  A large dose of bulldog-like determination, so that one will (in the words of Winston Churchill) “never give up.”

And when a homeschooling mom adds into the mix sticky notes in two sizes and at least two colors, she can’t help but succeed!

Lesson plans

In my new role as official teacher, I am finding that I need to spend a few hours every Saturday planning all Andrew’s upcoming academics, reviewing and printing Jessica and Josiah’s old checklists, preparing all three kids’ new checklists, and recording homeschool hours.  It’s sometimes overwhelming and always more time-consuming than what I think it should be.  A few thoughts come to mind:

1.  For the first time in 12 years, I am actually current on recording homeschool hours.  It’s still no fun, but being caught up is admittedly a satisfying kind of feeling.

2.  How DID those one-room-schoolhouse ladies ever manage to do what they did?

3.  And for that matter, how do today’s real teachers keep THEIR sanity?  I am doing all this prep, execution, and follow-up for only one child, and it takes hours.  They have to do it for 30.  Does that mountain of work depress them?

4.  Andrew does seem to be getting more done and learning more.  I think those are both good things, so hopefully the effort is worth what it costs.

Educational gap

It is a well-known fact that homeschooling moms tend to worry about gaps in their children’s education.  I actually haven’t been too concerned about those, figuring that 1) in general, our children will be able to learn what they need to know when they need to know it, and 2) I’m pretty good at finding resources to teach them those things they’re NEVER likely to investigate on their own.

Imagine my horror then, when I found a huge and glaring gap in all three of our older children’s education.  Oh, I know what you’re thinking.  “You know homeschoolers, they never learn the essentials of group behavior like raising their hands before speaking, requesting permission to go to the bathroom, or walking in single file lines. “  Sorry; it’s even worse than that.

Josiah needed to apply for a passport, and Jessica filled out the form for him.  Trust me, the US Department of State appreciated that.  The form was neat and legible.  We took the necessary paperwork, birth certificate, parental ID,  and two forms of payment to the C of O post office and delivered it to postmaster “Kim,” for her review.  She scanned the form that I was preparing to sign in her presence on behalf of my minor son (sounds like maybe I have a major son hiding somewhere), handed it to me, and said, “When you sign this, you are stating that everything on this form is true and correct.”

My dad always taught me to read EVERYTHING before I sign, so I did.  I skimmed through all Josiah’s identifying blurb and said, “Well, it’s not.  This form says his place of birth was North Little Rock, Arkansas, but he was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.  I know.  I was there that day.”

(I guess Josiah had not read over the form, because he didn’t say anything about where he was born.  Of course, he doesn’t remember that event as clearly as I do.)

Kim:  That’s okay.  It won’t matter.  It says Little Rock, so you can sign it.

Me:  Well, I don’t think so.  I mean, they are two different cities.

Kim:  It’s fine.  It’ll go through just fine.

“Yeah, right,” I thought.  We’re on a bit of time deadline here, as Josiah has to submit his application for a passport, wait “four to six weeks” for the passport to arrive at our house, and then mail it off to a different place to apply for a visa. That involves another two-week (or so) wait.  The plan is for him to leave the country in about eight weeks, and he won’t want to buy a ticket till he has the visa’d passport in hand, so we really didn’t need ANYTHING to slow down the process – including some clerk at the State Department comparing his passport application (birthplace:  NLR, AR) to his birth certificate (birthplace:  LR, AR) and kicking it out.

We ended up re-doing the paperwork, going back the next day, paying an extra $100 to expedite the process, and Kim now assures us Josiah should have his passport in hand the first week of June.

BUT I did come home and ask Jessica jokingly where she’d been born.  (All three big kids were born in the same hospital; I think even in the same delivery room.)  Without even a moment’s hesitation, she replied, “Baptist Hospital in North Little Rock.”  Geez.  TWO of my kids didn’t know where they came from.  I asked Katie that evening.  “North Little Rock, Arkansas.”

So, as a homeschooling mom, I am zero for three in autobiographical information category.

I’ve given considerable thought to teaching them the US capitals, and the times tables, and how to write a check, and of means times, and not to launder red shirts with white underwear, and never end a sentence with a preposition, and don’t spend what you don’t have, and even distance equals rate times time; but I guess it never occurred to me to tell them where they were born.

I wonder what other critical gaps exist in their education. . .?

The fifth time around

I am helping a fifth person learn to read!

With Katie, I spent a few days teaching her the short vowel sounds and then told her that if you added an ‘e’ to the end of a short vowel word, it made the vowel sound long.  With that information, she taught herself to read her first book, “What’s Different,” a big colorful DK-ish picture book.  My investment in her literacy:  a couple hours all told.

For Jessica, I followed the same plan with the short and long vowels and then taught her a few key consonant blends.  We practiced sounding out words for a few minutes a day over a month or so, and she proved to me that she was able to read.  Having achieved that skill, she then adamantly refused to read anything at all for almost a year.  You’d have to have known Jessica as a youngster; if it wasn’t her idea, it wasn’t happening.  Then, one day when she was seven, I found her reading in her bedroom.  Now she not only reads books, she writes them!

Teaching Josiah to read gave me gray hairs.   He desperately wanted to read and begged me to teach him.  We tried at age five (his insistence), but it was hopeless.  We tried again at six, and it was even worse.  At age seven, we began tackling Alpha-Phonics, and it was an agonizing year of frustration for both of us.  He couldn’t seem to hear to the different sounds, and he absolutely could NOT remember ANY of it from one day to the next.  Aaarrrggghhh!   Josiah was later diagnosed with dyslexia and an auditory processing disorder, which explained WHY it was so hard for him to learn to read, but which didn’t make that his learning process any smoother.  We just kept slogging along through Alpha Phonics until we both thought we’d lose our minds.  I was DETERMINED to give him a strong phonics foundation, depsite his learning disabilities, and all that work eventually paid off.  It was  “Calvin and Hobbes” that finally pushed him to fluent reading at age eight-and-a-half, and for the next five years, he read aloud to me every school day.  Now he’s a voracious reader, praise God!

Andrew worked like crazy to teach himself to read at age four.  He managed (in extremely slow motion) to get through “Are you My Mother?” at which point I decided to take him through Alpha-Phonics.  He moved through it quite quickly and reads very well.

Now I have my fifth student, E, a 51-year-old man at our church.  He only went through the 6th grade and in his words “failed every grade.”  He can read a bit, but it’s mostly guesswork.  He does know the alphabet, but he was never taught phonics, so the concept that letters stand for SOUNDS is completely foreign to him.  He also has a really hard time hearing or imitating consonant sounds. (Will this be Josiah all over again?!?!?)  He’s lived his whole life functionally illiterate and had accepted the “fact” that he’d never be able to read well.  His wife reads necessary information to him.

I have suspected he couldn’t read since the day I met him and his wife several years ago, but a few weeks ago, when I saw them across the way at church on a Wednesday night, I felt strongly that I was supposed to offer to help him – if he wanted help.  However, I didn’t know him well, and I wasn’t sure how to talk with him about it.  Golly, what do you say?  “Um, I suspect you can’t read and I think God wants me to offer to help you learn?” That’s kind of hard to work into a conversation!

I went home that night without saying anything, but the next morning I happened to be in the van at 11:00 AM.  That’s when Focus on the Family comes on the radio, we can’t pick up that station at our house.  The only place I can hear that station is in the van, and since I am NEVER in the van at 11:00 AM, I hadn’t listened to Focus on the Family in over a year.  That morning, I flipped it on, and here’s what I heard:  Some man was on there, and he was talking about education and reading and how he hadn’t learned to read till he was in his 40s and a lady volunteered to teach him. Now, I can be a little slow on the uptake, but it was as if God had knocked me upside the head with a two by four!  A WHOLE 30-MINUTE PROGRAM on adult illiteracy in America THE VERY DAY after I had felt I was supposed to offer to help E?  Good night alive!  This was obvious even to me!

I was so sure of it that I ordered a new copy of Alpha-Phonics, because I’d given our old one away once Andrew was reading.  I’d surely never need that book again.  With some money thus invested, I got up my nerve to talk to his wife, who confirmed my suspicions, and then I called E.  He was guarded, not because he didn’t want to learn to read better, but because he didn’t think it was possible.  He said he was lazy when it came to school stuff; although he semed to be the type who would be a very hard worker at his job.    I told him I knew I could help him learn to read better (how could ANYBODY be more challenging to teach than Josiah?), but that I totally respected him and was not pressuring him.  If he wanted help, I’d be glad to help.  If not, that was fine, too.

We agreed to meet for thirty minutes before church this evening, and he worked very hard and made great progress.  He understood that we were going to go “back to first grade” and build a solid phonics foundation, and he was fine with that, so we did a lot of short ‘a’ work and sounded out words like dad, man, Sam, and tax.  He recognized tax and said we’d just paid that.  = )  He’s good to meet again next week.

I am cautiously optimistic.  My main challenge right now is to come up with creative ways to help him hear, say, and remember the consonant sounds.  We used the old Campbell’s soup commercial (“Mmm, mmm, good”) for ‘m,’ but if anyone has great ideas for any of the others, please do share.

What Jessica said

Jessica sent me this last month, and I keep meaning to add to it and then post it.  However, since I haven’t added to it yet, I’m just going to post it and give her credit for it.  Maybe I should give homeschool hours for it!

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You know you’re a homeschooler IF:

- you go to bed at night with your science text book under the sheets next to you
- when your feet are cold, you sit on the edge of the bathtub with your bare feet in the hot water reading about 1956
- you take catnaps in between subjects
- you watch a calculus lecture while eating lunch
- playing pool counts as academic credit
- when asked when you’re going to graduate, you reply with, “I don’t know.”
- same response as above when asked what grade you’re in
- your family has six library cards with a capacity of fifty books each and at least three cards are near maxed out at all times
- spring break only happens if Mom feels like it
- schoolwork begins at 6:30 A.M. and is intermittently continued till about 9:00 P.M.
- the roads are covered with ice and you’re doing schoolwork
- you do schoolwork on the 4th of July, New Year’s Day, and Christmas Eve, but you have off on your birthday

Chemistry is evil

Or so says Josiah.  He has been challenged in this course, and I think it’s largely because his math skills are not at the level he needs in order to do the work easily.  Then again, there’s always that pesky matter of significant figures – something I myself have a hard time understanding.  We call them sig figs for short, and we all (Jessica, Josiah, and I) hate them.

Now I am faced with a real dilemma on Josiah’s grades.  Since I lost all his school records for the past year and a half, I either need to guess at what his scores for were for the first nine chemistry modules, or have him retake the tests.  I think he would totally freak out if I asked him to do that, BUT he would probably make higher scores than he did the first time around.

Decisions, decisions. . .

Heard concerning Rosetta Stone Chinese:

(in a frustrated tone, complete with hand gestures), “The ONLY new thing I learned in this WHOLE lesson was how to say “Hindu Temple!!!”

Sigh. I guess if she were able to study Chinese in a classroom setting, maybe it would be a bit more conversational. Thankfully, there aren’t a lot of drawbacks to homeschooling.