One of the reasons we homeschool...

...is because we don't want our kids to be the guinea pigs for Planned Parenthood's social experiment in order to shepherd in a new era of promiscuity for the sake of more abortions to fill their coffers.

Be warned, resistance to this agenda will only be tolerated for so long. If we as a nation continue along this path, it will come to the point that those who teach that sex is sacred and must be reserved for marriage will be seen as unfit to teach that to their kids. It must be stopped now.

H/T Subvet
and also here.

I guess we know where his priorities lie...

Yesterday morning, Wifey was in the bathroom when I heard a blood-curdling scream. Running to find out what was wrong, expecting to find her in a contorted position beneath the sink, I found her instead flailing her hands about her, running out of the room. In a high-pitched shriek, she promptly informed me that there was a wasp over the toilet. Frac, who will be five next week, overheard this and must have come to the conclusion that it was necessary for us all to evacuate the house, for he immediately ran to the pile of VHS tapes we just acquired from Fr. Tito's rummage sale, and scooped them up, proclaiming loudly, "I'll save the movies!"

It's a good thing his baby sister has learned to walk for herself.

I'm in love with my son's Kindergarten teacher...

...and she has her own new blog! She's really smart, really wonderful, really beautiful, and, well, I could go on. But instead of letting me blather on about her, you should check her out yourself.

Alright, this is awkward...

A friend whose daughter is at the Franciscan University of Steubenville sent this to me. If you have had no ties with the school, you'll probably think this is an anti-recruitment video. If you have any friends who have gone there, you'll get the joke. It's an exaggeration, but not much of one.



Thanks, Mary!

A friend sent me this

Response to the Washington Post

Homeschoolers Say No to Mandatory State Testing

Ian Slatter
Director of Media Relations

August 25, 2009

“Homeschooling is the sleeping giant of the American education system,” is the opening line of a recent article by Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews.

He’s right.

He’s also right when he says, “All surveys of home-schooled students so far indicate they have higher achievement rates on average than regular students,” and when he dismisses the claim that homeschoolers might not be properly socialized by saying, “Homeschoolers go outside often and get just as big a dose of pain and joy and ignorance and wisdom as regular school kids.”

Where Mathews goes wrong is his support for a recommendation by Robert Kunzman, an associate professor at the Indiana University School of Education whose new book Write These Laws On Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling, calls for all homeschoolers to be subjected to regular, compulsory, standardized state testing.

To be fair to Mathews, it seems that his desire is to defuse what he sees as a gathering movement within the public school establishment to regulate homeschoolers.

He reports that his contacts are becoming nervous about the fact that homeschoolers are nearing 4% of the school-aged population and growing at 9% per year.

“Some public school educators I know are uneasy about this. They don’t know home-schooling families well. They worry those kids are being ill-served by well-meaning but inexperienced parents. There is potential for more battles over regulating home-schooling.”

In effect, Mathews gives homeschoolers a gentle and timely reminder that we must be ever vigilant to defend our right to homeschool.

As Mathews correctly notes, HSLDA has been at the forefront of reducing regulations on homeschoolers, but he fails to mention why so many state legislatures have agreed with our view.

The crucial missing detail from Mathew’s article is that the homeschool academic surveys he alludes to show that the level of state regulation has no impact on the results of homeschooled students. Consider the most recent study of homeschool students’ test scores conducted by the National Home Education Research Institute, and commissioned by HSLDA. Homeschoolers in low regulation states scored on average in the 87th percentile and those from high regulation states (which require some form of testing) also scored in the 87th percentile.

The question HSLDA regularly puts before state legislatures is, “If government regulation does not improve the results of homeschoolers, why is it necessary?” The obvious conclusion based on the research is that government regulation of homeschoolers is a waste of taxpayers’ money and parents’ time.

Regrettably, many homeschoolers have known for some time that the success of the movement might provoke greater scrutiny. And the success of homeschooling cannot be denied. We continue to grow in numbers, and homeschooled children continue to significantly out-perform public school students—by 37 percentile points in the latest homeschool academic achievement study. This academic success is achieved at a fraction of the cost (average public school student—$10,000 per child per year—average homeschooler—$500 per child per year). No wonder we’ve drawn the attention of the education establishment.

Public school officials are accountable to taxpayers, and taxpayers may begin to ask, especially in an economy that’s struggling, questions like, “Why are my property taxes so high when homeschoolers are getting much better results for a fraction of the cost?”

The response brewing within the education establishment appears to be to try to make homeschoolers more like public school students by subjecting them to state-mandated testing. It’s not a strategy that will work.

Today, homeschoolers can be found in all walks of life and all political persuasions. We are a diverse movement with a variety of opinions. There’s one issue, however, that unites almost all homeschoolers—opposition to mandated state tests.

The reason is simple—once the state chooses the test, you have to “teach to the test”, and consequently your curriculum will have been chosen for you by the government. This is an intolerable intrusion and one that would radically alter homeschooling.

Freedom and flexibility are the hallmarks of homeschooling. Once they are removed and the state is allowed to regulate the curriculum through testing, then homeschooling will be changed beyond all recognition.

One of the main reasons homeschooling is so successful is because parents are able to design an education program for the individual child. Homeschooling parents can allow their children to advance rapidly in areas where they are strong and spend more time on areas where a child may be weak. Trying to advance at a state-mandated even pace through all subjects just isn’t feasible for homeschoolers.

There’s also the nagging question of what the state will do if a child fails one of its tests. Does that mean the child would be forced into public school?

The state has a legitimate interest in the upbringing and education of children by parents only when the state has evidence that the children are being harmed. It has no right to impose its education views on parents who choose to educate their children outside the state system.

HSLDA hopes that state legislatures will continue on their path of lifting restrictions on homeschooling and that the homeschool movement will continue to grow and thrive without state interference. But Jay Mathews has done the homeschool community a service by reminding us that people within the public education establishment are thinking about ways to regulate our education choices.

Every homeschooler should be ready and willing to actively oppose any attempt to impose a state mandated testing regime.

We have been warned.

A short but great vacation

Last month the family and I went to Canada for my dad's side's family reunion. (I'll post that separately.) We made a mini-vacation out of it and spent some time in Maine visiting my best friend since childhood who moved up to Middletown, County Nowhere some years back. Here are some pics:After about six hours, we're all sick of being in the van, especially when baby-girl starts crying.

After a sumptuous dinner at the TGIChiliRubySteakhouse, Fric, Frac and Fred pile into their PJ's and the backseat cinema showing of Shrek on the teeny-tiny screen.

Mom and the boys on the bridge over Bad Little Falls.
(Note the vice-grip she has on two hands at once!)

Some of Bad Little Falls

Goofballs

Somebody has a great sense of humor.

My friend lives pretty close to Lubec, home of the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, at the easternmost point in the U.S.
By the way, the clapper on that bell is still attached. And it is LOUD.

Oh, big surprise, it was foggy. Visibility was about fifty feet over the water.

Our host and Fred.

Yes, it was July.

At the crossing of Calais, ME/St. Stephen, NB.
Don't let the name fool you.

I want one.

Jasper Beach is one of the two places in the world with a smooth stone-only beach.
(And in case you're wondering, yeah, we came home with about fifty pounds of rocks.)

Um, why are you taking my picture? The water's that way.

My sweetie-pie baby-girl.

Quick story: We realized on the way home that Frac's stuffed puppy dog (which goes with him everywhere) went missing. After looking everywhere in the van and at my friend's house, we decided to go back to the seafood shack we had eaten at on the way up a few days before. I asked the guy at the counter if he had seen it. No, being a dog lover he would have remembered a stuffed dog. Oh, well, thanks anyway. Then Fric peeks behind the giant ice cream cone and finds the puppy dog where Frac had tucked him away four days earlier!

Homeschooling Diplomacy

I write this post both to ask the question and also in the hopes that in writing it, I'll be more sure of my own grasp on the big picture.

To get to it, for those of you who are homeschooling your kids, how do you discuss it with family and friends? And the corollary to that is, how do you explain it to your kids?

The reason I am asking is because up till now, our boys didn't even realize that we were doing something different. But they're now at the age to make the distinction and have latched on to the idea that fascinates them most: riding the big yellow bus, like their cousins do, and going to a school building with other kids taught by a teacher that's not Mom.

My wife and I have to deal delicately with this because we know why we're homeschooling: it's more efficient, better for the kids in terms of focus and attention, individual pace, family schedule, plus the ability for my wife and I to act as the filters for our children that we are called to be. But how do we explain this to a five year old without a.) giving him the impression that he's missing out on something fantastic, b.) running the risk that he looks down his nose at other kids who do go to school or c.)getting the impression that schools and everything associated with them are to be avoided?

How did any of you handle this discussion?