America: The Story of Us - Part One

Last night, I watched the movie America: The Story of Us part one. Part one told us the story of the Revolutionary War. It told me many things I already knew and just as many that I didn't.

I never knew that one of the main reasons America won the Revolutionary War was because we gathered sharpshooters to hide in the bushes and trees and shoot the British as the hiked to a battlefield. The British were used to fighting on battle fields and they were surprised when a bullet came out of the bushes and killed one of their many Indian guides. The job of the sharpshooters was to kill all the Indian guides and the British leaders. The British needed the guides because they didn't know the area compared to the sharpshooters who knew it very well. The sharpshooters had killed all the guides and all the British leaders but one. The leader of the sharpshooters chose a man named Tim Murphy, an Irish man, to shoot the last British leader. He shot three bullets: the first missed, the second skinned his horse, and the third "hit home." The sharpshooters shot the British and about a half of them died under no leadership, that's double how many Americans died in the Battle of Lexington.

One of the reasons the Revolutionary War started was because mobs of angry prostitutes roamed the streets on May 5th, 1770. They gathered because they had lost their jobs and blamed the British gathered on King Street in Boston.  The hundreds of protesters faced off against the eight armed red-coats who were told not to fire. Edward Garrick, a 17-year old wig maker's apprentice "lights the fuse." He is hit in the head with a red-coat's gun. This is how wars start. British Private Hugh Montgomery is hit with a club. Edward Garrick was the first to be shot. African-American Crispus Attucks dies instantly. When the smoke clears, four more are dead.

I would love to tell you more about the movie, but I don't want to ruin it for you. To watch it, go to the History Channel.

Leif Ericson and The Great Golden Age

Think back to your family history. A long time ago, did one of your ancestors live in a different country? Or maybe a whole other continent? If so, how did you get here? This is a question that's been running on from generation to generation. Now we have the answer thanks to the explorers: people who dedicate themselves to finding the answer and discovering new places, finding new civilizations and food, and making a new, livable place for people out of their over-crowded cities.

Many people have heard of explorers. I know I learned about my first explorer in Kindergarten. It was Christopher Columbus. However, we're going farther back, to the time of the Vikings. In fact, the explorer we'll be focusing on was a Viking. His name was Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red.

I had never heard about Leif Ericson until I got into this class at Eagleridge called The Golden Age of Exploration. In this class, we play games and do group projects to help us learn about the explorers. The project I am working on presently is were you create a report on one of the early explorers. We were told to make a group of two so I grouped up with my friend Katie who I did my last project with, mapping out were Ferdinand Magellan and his crew would stop to get food and what food they got there. We chose to learn about Leif Ericson. Since the class is only an hour long, and we were going nowhere from reading a book, we agreed to search our facts at home and combine our facts together the next time we met.

Over the past few days, I have collected lots of facts on Leif Ericson. I took my collected facts and turned them into a four-paged fact paper. Some of the things I've learned are:

• Leif Ericson was a Norse explorer thought to be the first to land in North America
• He was born around 970 C.E. in Iceland, son of Eric the Red
• Leif's mother, Thjodhild, had three sons, Leif, Thorvald, and Thorstein, and a daughter, Freydis
• The main sources of Icelandic legends are the Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of Greenlanders
• Leif Ericson died in about 1020 C.E.
  

I also learned many other things, but then this blog would become a book if I added them all and I don't want sore fingers. This is one of the great things about homeschooling is that if you find an interesting subject, you have plenty of time to research it. If you would like to learn more about Leif Ericson go to: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Leif_Ericson
I got all my facts on Leif Ericson on this website.

Creepy Coincidence

Earlier this month, we saw the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. The play was exactly the same as the original version except this version takes place in America after the Civil War. The costumes and set design were made to look like America during the Civil War of 1861-1865. The director of the play made these changes to help better understand how these wars do more damage than good. Before we saw the play, my mom printed off a study packet from Southwest Shakespeare Co.. The study packet contained a lot of interesting information about the play, including a section about the similarities between Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln. It turns out that both of them were assassinated by men whose first names started with J and last names started with B: Junius Brutus and John Wilkes Booth. Both of these assassins had a conspiracy of 8 men helping them. Also, both Caesar and Lincoln were assassinated when they were 56 years old, both men were Republicans in a country that did not like the thought of being ruled by a king, both were killed in theaters (Lincoln in Ford's theater and Caesar in Pompey's theater), both were assassinated after a civil war, and both had premonitions of their deaths. I think it was a good play, although I don't think the guy who played Cassius was ever told to say it not spray it.;)

Checklist to Start Homeschooling: First I Shall......

Well, there are many things to do before you actually start doing the schooling part of homeschooling. For some people it's buying the supplies or becoming an official homeschooler, getting a place to do the homeschooling, or, like us, pulling the kids out of school. I don't quite remember which came first for us, being pulled out of school or becoming an official homeschooler. For us, I think, they happened at the same time. It's quite simple to become a homeschooler. All you have to do is print out a form, sign it, then turn it in to the county courthouse. So we did just that. Yay! We're now official homeschoolers! Now we need to get our supplies. I was thinking we would take a long trip to one of those cool teacher supply stores that are jam-packed with stickers, (yay!) but we don't only use teacher supply stores. Instead, my mom decided to buy off the internet. Sure, now we don't have to go to a jam-packed (with people) store but I didn't get my stickers. Did my mom get everything we needed off the internet? Of course not! You can't get everything off the internet! We get a good amount of the stuff we need from places like Wal-Mart at back to school time (including my stickers.) "But what did you need?" you're probably thinking. Here's a list to answer that question, if you asked it:                                                                                         

Math books - Life of Fred by Stanley F. Schmidt, PhD                                                 

Writing books- Writing Strands by Dave Marks

Science books- McWizKid Science by Larry D. McClellan

History books and movie- What Your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grader needs to know and various movies and TV shows from the History Channel

Play tickets- for various plays at various theaters                                                       
                                                                                                                               

Homeschooling classes- at various places                                                                 

Notebooks- one of my personal favorites

Journals- another of my personal favorites

Folders- to hold our many reports and subjects

Pencils- another favorite

Glue sticks- to glue things together of course
                                                                                                                                
Tape- to tape things together                                                                                     

Paper- pretty essential

Colored paper- a colored version of paper

Colored pencils- our colored pencils are erasable and come from Crayola

Crayons- not erasable, but still from Crayola

Computers- I'm pretty sure mine's not from Crayola (I'm on Frankenstein, Patrick's on Lydonstein - we all have our own computers that my dad put together)
                                                                                                                                
Markers- not erasable, but washable..... from Crayola                                             

Printers- they have nothing to do with Crayola

Rulers- from various places, maybe even some from Crayola!!!

Good books- from the book store...... not Crayola

Printable learning materials- from our computer to, oh, I don't know, our printer (not Crayola, or at least I don't think)

Helpful computer games- now tell me, where would you find helpful computer games?
                                                                                                                                
Stickers :)- yet another personal favorite

and most importantly,
Pajamas (I'll explain in "My Life in the PJ Club")- um, the type I like.

Once you have all these things you are ready to become a homeschooler, sort of.





                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                   











                                                                                                                                

Eagleridge: What is It?

Mondays and Wednesdays are not the same old wake up at ten and take your time through math, writing, and music.


On Wednesdays, we wake up at 7:00, get dressed, have breakfast, and then head to Eagleridge via my best friend Devin's mom. Eagleridge is pretty much just a school for homeschoolers. It's all the ordinary classes (except math) just without homework, and you can choose which days you go. Once we get there at 8:30 AM, Rebecca goes off to some class I don't know of and I go to Physical Education. There, we usually do fitness then move on to the lesson (the sport were working on) and then move on to Science. Every month we work on a different type of science. This month we've been working on the physics of flight. My next class is Student Council. This year I ran for treasurer, lost, found an organization for our Christmas toy drive, was home sick the day we decided on a different organization, seconded the motion to make cards to sell for a fundraiser, tried to make a motion to do crazy hair day again this year, failed unanimously,and my idea for the school dance was the chosen. After that, my next class is Yearbook. In there, we are currently making houses on Google Sketch Up because there is not much else to do, but all we did was made pages for the yearbook. (I made the student council page.) Next, we have lunch. After 30 minutes of recess, we have Composition, Computers, and finally, Art. School ends at 3:30 PM on Wednesdays.


On Mondays, I wake up at 6:30 AM, get dressed, and then again get picked up by Devin's mom. The day starts at 8:00 AM with Medieval History were we are currently writing business letters to the teacher about applying to NASA to go back in time to retrieve lost history. My next class is Compass Learning Math which is an online math program. Next, I have Chess Club where we learn strategies and play chess. After Chess Club, I have Sports Math in which we are currently doing fantasy football. Next I have lunch. After lunch, I have Pre-Algebra. In here it is a lot like school just made easier by the best teacher in the world. Next, I have Physical Education which is just like on Wednesdays. After that I have Microsoft Office in which we do different projects using Microsoft Office. Finally, I play clarinet in Band, my last class of the day. School ends at 4:30 PM on Mondays.


One of the most frequently asked questions is if I miss anything from when I used to be in school. My answer to that is Eagleridge has all the stuff that I might miss from school!

The Do-It-Yourself Education

I'm always amazed at the things people are willing to take on by themselves. For example: changing your own oil on your car. Why do people do this themselves? I can drive to my local oil change place and be out in about 15 minutes for less than $25. Doing this at home would require driving to the auto parts supply store (and the gas cost to get there), looking up the right parts in the book, purchasing the parts and the oil, driving home, getting the appropriate buckets for draining the oil, jacking the car up to do the draining, having the right tools on hand to remove the filter, researching how this particular filter is removed, doing the work, and then comes the big pickle: ridding yourself of the dirty oil. Yet I know people who do this procedure without question. Another favorite: remodeling your own house. I know scads of people without employment in the construction field that take on enormous home repair jobs while maintaining employment in another field. This is accepted practice. We have mega-stores like The Home Depot and Lowe's dedicated to people's desire to "do-it-yourself." Yet my desire to educate my own children while maintaining employment as a registered nurse does not warrant this level of acceptance. It's a two-part problem for me where the general public questions my do-it-yourself school, and the homeschooling community questions my working and homeschooling together.

I want to address whether or not parents have the ability to homeschool their own children. Since this is a blog, as opposed to to a research study, I will draw from my own life experiences. One of the first jobs I had in college was at the campus tutoring center. I was recommended as a tutor by my algebra teacher because I had done well in that class. When I went to the interview with the director of the tutoring center, she asked me what other classes I could tutor. Hmmm . . . I didn't really feel I was qualified to tutor anything! I ended up tutoring College Algebra and every math below that), English, ESL, German, and Psychology -- quite a cross-section! Was I an expert in all those disciplines? No. Yet I began to have people requesting me as a tutor. Later on, I branched out and took a job with a private tutoring agency that paid me more money. The clients at this agency were kids ages kindergarten through 12th grade at many different schools in San Francisco and San Mateo counties. Could I have possibly known what was going on with all those different kids in all those classes? No way! But I was busy every afternoon from 4:00-6:00PM when every parent wants a tutor. I did so well with this agency that I finally had enough clients on my own, and I was able to branch out and make some serious money. No one ever questioned my credentials with tutoring all these kids. My success was purely because I listened to the kids, analyzed their problems, and made adjustments so that they began to do better after I started working with them. Yet, homeschooling parents are put through the wringer about whether or not they possess the right credentials to teach their own kids that they know so well.

In my circle of friends, I know almost as many teachers as I do nurses. Teachers, and of course there are exceptions, can be the worst critics of homeschooling parents. I once had a teacher say to me, "I resent the fact that parents think they can do the job that I spent five years in college learning to do." As a nurse I cannot imagine saying to a patient, "You gave yourself your own pill at home? Do you know how much pharmacology I had to take in college to learn how to give you that pill? You're not qualified!" Really, do we have to be experts to figure out most things in life? When I precept new nurses at the hospital, the very first thing we do together is go to the pyxis (the computerized lockbox for drugs) and click on a program called Lexi-comp that will show you everything you need to know about all kinds of drugs: side effects, interactions, how long to infuse an IV drip, what to mix it with, etc. I use this program on a daily basis! Sure, we may have learned it, but we forget stuff and "accepted practice" changes. "Use your resources" -- that's what I tell my nurses and that's what I tell my kids. If a parent is motivated enough to remove his/her child from school, the likelihood is probably high that said parent is motivated enough to educate that child. Don't we learn things based on how meaningful they are to us?

I have to draw on my own life again because the only "D" I ever remember earning in school was my AP United States History class. I had just moved to Germany and was touring castles and cathedrals so why was everyone so surprised that I wasn't interested in writing in-depth papers about the Sugar and Stamp Acts? I'm not suggesting that as American citizens we should forgo learning American history, but I was more motivated to learn European history while in Europe. As a side note, that grade was weighted and history still remains one of my favorite subjects, but I think this is a good example of how people learn things based on their desire -- whether that be a child's desire to learn or a parent's desire to learn how to homeschool. That same year of school, I was made to finish a fourth year of Spanish because why would I want to learn German when I was living in a country where . . . oh I don't know . . . everyone spoke German? How is it that teenagers inevitably end up passing drivers' ed when the rest of their classes may be suffering? Could it be that they have a burning desire to drive?

Which also brings me to the question: how do adults learn things when they are no longer in school? Does the machine shut down? Don't people read the newspaper, watch the news, or research things in Wikipedia? Learning is lifelong. We put far too much sanctity in the walls of the schoolhouse.

An Ordinary School Day

One of the advantages to homeschooling is that there is no set time you need to finish it, but you can go at your own pace. We usually start math around 10-10:30, and end around noon. We then have lunch, and begin work on writing. We then end around 1:00 and move on to another activity like geography, science, or history. We do this selected subject until about 2:00 and then move on to practicing our instruments. While Rebecca's practicing piano, I'm practicing clarinet or guitar, and when I'm practicing piano, Rebecca's practicing flute. This lasts until about 3:00 when we consider our self done and then have free time for the rest of the day. Rebecca usually spends that time writing books and short stories, while I usually spend my time reading or playing on the computer.

Although this is what an ordinary day of homeschooling is like, we almost always have some sort of Shakespeare play or science center homeschool class at least once a month. Most of the science center classes revolved around physics, like the Cat-A-Pult class where you were literally flinging a rubber cat trying to hit a target using a makeshift catapult, but there was a chemistry class, a robotics class, and a scientific method class. Along with all these classes, at home, I also made an illustrated, wall sized, periodic table, and recently, I built a guitar fuzz distortion pedal with my dad. I would say that the science activities I'm doing at home now are much more fun and advanced than when I was in school. When I was in second grade, I made a science fair project for the school science fair on how icicles are made. I enjoyed this, but the only other student participant was a fifth-grader who had done a project on how if you run a magnet over sand, little black particles will appear. After about three minutes of walking around the "science fair" we left the display board there and came back for it later.