Any other homeschoolers on here?

[cluckster]

Hi! just found this site and joined! Its great!
i am an Unschool mom of 13 years. all 5 babies. 4 who are on their own.
1 with BA, 1 in college, 1 homesteading, 1 working and 1 at home.
Has anyone seen Nims Island? thats us! Gives a terrific view of "Unschooling".
anyway we are in MI, southern transplants from way back.
tried all manners of structured curriculum. gave it up and did it our way. i unschooled as married, single working mom, EMT/Firefighter, now remarried to my best friend.
currently farm wife and still doing EMS/Fire but as volunteer.

now the "question"..
i had several guineas last year, only 2 left and am getting eggs from them that are slightly green color. they are in pen with some chicks and ducks and a geese or 2. i get the eggs every day so i am pretty sure they are guineas eggs.
how do i sex these guineas? i've had birds for years but can't actually remember any guineas i had that laid. i just get them for bugs and comic effect.
any help here?
this is a great site!

 

[cluckster]

i should also add here that it was sis that got me started unschooling. she lives in a very large city in florida, has 8 kids. half are grown on their own. 1 done with college and married and is youth pastor. 2 in college. 1 just graduated from marine boot camp, he got GED, took a year of community college and went in. rest are teens and little ones at home.
good site: "peace and carrots farm".

one thing i have seen is that professional certificate/diploma programs are cheaper, quicker, more individually suited and make more money than college. just my 2 cents.

 

[Chirpy]

Ckuckster - I suggest you ask your question in a separate thread so more people will see it. Label it question on Guineas and that'll get the right people's attention. As far as sexing them I've heard (don't have my own yet) that the female makes a two syllable sound (something like "buckwheat" and the male makes a one syllable sound.

We have Home Schooled for 11 years. Our oldest graduates in May and has been accepted to a college that had 24,000 freshmen applicants for next fall ... of those only 120 were accepted into the Aerospace Engineering Department!! He was one of them! Yes, we're very proud of him.

We are also pretty much eclectic in our books but use a lot of Abeka. Here in Colorado our laws state that we have to school for four hours a day and 172 days a year. We are part of a Home School support group that has close to 200 families.

 

[airmom1c05]

My son will be 25 this August, and he was homeschooled from 1st through 5th and 7th through 12th grade. He attended a Presbyterian Christian school in the 6th grade so we could experience a graduation ceremony.

We used ABEKA. In 5th grade I could afford the ABEKA video curriculum, and our school day hours decreased from 8 hours a day to 6 1/2 including homework! He is very intelligent, but I'm still waiting and praying for his WISDOM to appear! LOL! I had hoped he would attend Pensacola Christian College, but he joined the Air Force instead. He has served in the Air Force for the past 6+ years and has been quite successful at his job there at Travis AFB in California. Now that he is getting out, he doesn't know what he wants to do, but sadly, he is not coming home to Mississippi.

I am confident that he will do well in whatever he decides to pursue, and I have no regrets having homeschooled.

 

[LeeLeesFarm]

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Hooray For Homeschooling !!!

It saved my children's lives.

I live in California AND I homeschool two children ..... shhhhh ..... don't tell the Governor !!!

I rescued my son from 6th grade, after two yrs of abusive students AND abusive teachers, and let him "detox" with unschooling for almost two years.

Within 6 mos I saw his beautiful, confident, happy attitude return.

Both my kids went thru 6th grade in public, then pulled and homeschooled for 7th - 12th.

Just graduated my son (who is now 18) .... he started taking classes at the local JR College when he was 15 yrs old and has finished his AA and will attend a California State school in the FALL as a JUNIOR for his final 2 yrs of a BS in Computer Science and Technology.


My now 15 yr old girl is also attending the local JR College to get a head-start on her degree as well.


I say all this, to promote the benefits of homeschooling.

I LOVE that I am sooooo bonded with my children.....they spent every day of their last few yrs WITH ME

and not with peers who hate adults.


Blessings on all you moms ..... if you feel like running and screaming from the home somedays, relax, close the books, and play some games or bake!! Who cares if you miss a day or three or ..... You are still ahead of the game with your one-on-one tutoring given to your children.


Love,
Lee

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[S n M Poultry]

I am in independant study. I like it much more than high school. and i get to spend alot more time with my babies(Chickens that is)

 

[cjeanean]

I'm trying to homeschool my 5 yr old son (I was homeschooled, and public school can't hold a candle to the home!!!) but I'm having some issues with him. I know boys tend to learn a bit slower/differently than girls, but he's just not into it. I wish I had the Sing, Spell, Read, & write 1st edition, cause this new edition just isn't the same!!!! Any suggestions???

 

[BirdBrain]

Cjeanean,
My son was not interested in learning to read at age 5, however, we kept trying this and that and something finally stuck. He is now an avid reader. My other 2 are a different story. They are both dyslexic. My daughter was sort of a stealth dyslexic and really could read pretty well and had a huge vocabulary. She was a guesser and was at the point where she couldn't hold every thing in her head anymore. She also couldn't spell to save her life. The little guy would like to read, but it is not top priority and he needs daily work.

Here is what I would do. Make sure he knows what ALL the most common sounds are. Like, soft vowels sounds and then add the most common consennants (I am sure I spelled that wrong) like "c" makes the same sound as "k". At this point don't go into the fact that sometimes "c" says /s/. I have a deck of alphabet cards that I play a game with him. I turn each one over one by one and he tries to tell me the sound before I count to 5 (in my head ofcourse). If he doesn't say the sound right, I tell him what the sound is and keep the card. Next, you can make cards that have words with a CVC pattern like "cat, fun, big, jet, bed, cot, "etc. cover up all but the first sound. Ask him to tell you that sound (not letter name). Then uncover the next letter and have him say the second sound alone and then the 2 sounds together. Repeat with the last sound. Pretty soon he will realize that he is reading real words. After he has a handle on that, you can try some spelling stuff with him. Say a word like "fun" and ask him what is the first sound he hears in that word, and so on through the word. Spelling is a very different ball game than reading. In spelling, he has to reproduce what he hears as apposed to producing a sound that he is looking at.

We took our daughter to intensive reading sessions at the Texas Reading Institute plus work at home. The made a huge difference for her. After a year, they told me she was where she needed to be...to continue doing the spelling program they gave us and that they really didn't have anything else to offer. She was ecstatic. TRI has lots of out of state students and they do remote monitoring using voice recorders and we send in a same weekly of our sessions at home.

Try not to make reading a bigger issue than it is. Try to have fun with it and not let him see your concern or that may start to inhibit his growth in this area.

I hope some of this may have helped and I wish you the best.

 

[MandyH]

I have been reading this post but waited to reply. I have a dd that will be 3 in June. I have been discussing homeschooling her with hubby and some other family members and they all make me feel stupid for even suggesting it. I would love her to be here with me until like 7th grade when all the sports and extra curricular activities really start but my family says she needs to be in a classroom with friends. She is an only child and does need friends and playmates that we do not have around here but I have already taught her so much at age 2 I think she could start kindergarden now. How do I research the GOOD methods of homeschooling and the pros and cons and licensure etc. I don't want to damage her in the long run for something I wanted and the time will be here before I am ready to send her to school.

 

[DuckyBoys]

Quote:
Oh I am right there with you - we used Saxon for a few years and I am so not into changing math curriculums, BUT - I have decided to switch to teaching textbooks next year as well. I was put off by the price but with the Saxon books and the DIVE CD, it was only like 40 bucks more. Why not get the better program right!

For Spanish: Rosetta Stone I-II; then Glencoe Arte y Vida (level 4)

Again, I am splurging on RS as well - he wants Japanese - very into Anime so I guess that's why.

Vocabulary from Classical Roots B-E

We used this program for years with my daughter. It was a challenge for her but we finished through level D.

All good choices I think!