Homeschooling In Lakeland

Cold, inside and out

2010-01-04T11:56:00.006-05:00

We are all bundled up today, in blankets, sweat suits and cuddled with warm doggies whether we want to or not. Our heat went out Saturday, taking all the power to the house with it. I was home alone, working on the computer, when I heard a loud bang and the power crashed. I thought it was probably the transformer outside due to the cold weather and demands of all the heaters in the neighborhood. I went to look out the backdoor and smelled smoke. Turns out the breaker for the heater blew and was burning, inside the house. Fortunately, the box is right at the back door so I could see and smell right away it was the issue. I shut all the breakers and called my hubby to get his advice. Once I realized it had burnt and was done, I calmed down. I had been having visions of having to toss my photo albums and dogs outside and wondering what else I should grab if there was a fire inside the wall.

When he and the girls got home he called the electrician he uses on his property. They were able to get out a few hours later and restore the power. Our heat however, is still out. Our breaker box and breakers are original, 31 years old, and very hard to find. They will be trying to find a replacement today or else we'll have to replace the whole setup. I don't care which, but I hope it is soon!

The highs since then and for most of this week won't make it out of the mid 50's and are hitting low 30's-high 20's. That is darn cold for central Florida. We've all been keeping bundled up and it hasn't been terrible, but I can totally respect the idea of a Snuggie now! It truly is difficult to manage a keyboard/mouse when under a blanket. It's 45 out right now at 12:30, feels like 40. It's 57 right now inside. While I'm mostly toasty from the mobile fuzzy heat sources that follow me around, my toes and fingers aren't even a bit warm.

Somewhat related to this, my computer monitor is dead. A few weeks ago we'd noticed that if the monitor was off for more than the time it took to reboot, it was slow to turn back on. After being off for several hours while the power was down, it won't come back up. I'll be taking it apart later to see if the capacitors can be replaced. That may sound like I know what I'm doing, but I totally don't. It's not under warranty anymore and would likely be more expensive to have serviced than it would cost to replace, so it won't hurt if I tinker with it. Fortunately, I set up my computer to connect to our big screen in the other room a few weeks ago, so I can still access my computer without having to drag and old CRT out of a closet.

My SIL asked several families about homeschooling via email, she plans to start homeschooling her oldest next school year. I'm afraid I went overboard with giving her information, the email reply was very long. I hope she takes it in the spirit given, sharing all the info I can, not telling her what I think she should do. We've been at this so long, I have lots of opinions on what I think works and doesn't work, at least for my family.

Tori starts College Composition I this Wed at Polk State-dual enrolled. She starts American Govt through FLVS next week. This is supposed to be her last week in American History through FLVS, but a glitch has kept her from working in the class since last week, so it may be a week longer than expected. Evie will start M/J Comprehensive Science 2 in two weeks and we just requested World Cultures to start at the same time. We are waiting to do Welcome calls with the teachers for both of those classes. We'll be skipping HomeschoolPE this week due to the cold, and it is cancelled next week. We've only been out twice or maybe three times this year due to weather, illness and scheduling problems. We have a Lighthouse field trip to Crystal Springs and archery Thursday afternoon. I need to get with my co-op buddy to plan for art co-op, and hopefully will see the electrician soon!

Here are a few pictures to end this longish post...

The girls asked me to give Bubba a mohawk while I was getting ready to groom him. Our dogs are Bichons but we keep them in a home done puppy cut, which means cut short except the head. It's $35 to get them groomed, so I just do it myself with clippers. We don't brush them as often as we should, so Bubba had several mats around his mouth. I just trimmed it all down, but left the mohawk.

Phil and the girls love to play with face paint. I don't, it really irritates my skin, plus I'm not such a playful person. Good thing he loves the silly stuff.
Does he look tough?

Is that a mer*man* or maybe a genie ready to grant wishes?

Almost 3 months gone, a lot can change in that time, but it hasn't...

2009-12-16T09:29:00.007-05:00

It turns out that I'm a blogger/twitter drop out and I don't know why that happened. I was going along just fine almost a year ago, but then the posts started getting further apart until it's now been almost three months again. Oh well, better late than never, right?

The girls are still sleeping right now at 11am, though from the sounds of creaking beds, I think they'll be up soon. Evie got up about an hour ago. I think this is one of the less respected benefits of homeschooling. My growing girls can get all the sleep they need most of the time, often 12 hours plus a night. We have days where we have to get out early (before 10 is early for me) for field trips, classes, etc. but we don't have a set wake up time otherwise. I really think this is a huge help for the girls, growing is hard work for bodies. I can remember having to be at the bus stop at 6:30 or earlier each morning and getting home from school at nearly 3pm. I still had chores to do, homework to complete, and most of the time a job to work. I'd go to bed at midnight if I was lucky and have to be up and out of the house 6 1/2 hours later. No wonder teens tend to be sullen and disagreeable, I know I'm a cranky shrew when I haven't had enough sleep.

Not a lot has changed in the past few months wrt. schoolwork, it's mostly the same. Tori finished Intermediate Algebra at PSC (dual enrolled) and will start College Composition I (also dual enrolled) in a couple of weeks after the holiday break. She will be finishing World History and American History through FLVS at about the same time. She'll immediately start American Government with FLVS which will be her last high school class. Evie is nearly finished with Art 2-D and selected M/J Science (7th grade level) to take through FLVS next. Beth and Lili are both halfway through their current FLVS classes, Geometry and Earth/Space Science for Beth, Earth Space Science and Spanish II for Lili.

We've attended (and hosted) many field trips with Lighthouse, our homeschool group over the past few months. We've toured a phosphate plant, attended the Orlando Philharmonic, participated in a personal and internet safety seminar with the Polk County Sheriff's Office, had an astronomy class at Florida Southern College, helped make cards and pack food boxes at VISTE (Volunteers in Service To the Elderly), participated in a SIDNE demo with the Polk County Sheriff's Office/Lakeland Police Department, played at a Thanksgiving social, visited Homeland Heritage Park and the Polk County Historical Museum, toured USF and have a Kid's Cook/Get To Know You Social to attend tomorrow.

The girls are still writing for The Beam, the monthly kids newsletter for our homeschool group. Tori is editing this year, she was Editor last year as well. We attend homeschool PE class every other Tuesday morning, alternating weeks when we have archery practice. We also have our art co-op which meets about every other week and Jr and Plus Lit Clubs meeting alternating months. We had a small family reunion or large family get-together with my husband's family, including his Grandmom who I adore. She has the best personality, never a negative word and so cheerful. My parents and one of my nieces and her boyfriend were here for Thanksgiving dinner.

I've been teaching a personal economics class to about 15 kids, including my own. It's going not so great. I am running the class through a website and youtube videos I create so it can be done virtually and when each student has time. Our schedule was full enough that I didn't feel we could add another co-op, and to have such a large group would have been difficult to coordinate. Unfortunately, it can be hard to motivate the kids when they don't have a set deadline for completing work, and since I am using a free Google site for the class, I have to work within it's confines which has proven confusing and difficult at times, for me and the students. The material I've come up with works well, the actual practice does not. I let the students know I was going to take time off during the holidays to try and improve the usability, I hope I can find a solution.

I rarely remember to bring the camera, but the girls grab it some of the time. Here are a few photos from the past months. Ugh, just noticed the date has been reset on the camera, all of the pictures from the beginning of December are dated January 2008. I don't know if I can fix that...

Phil's Grandmom, the girls Great Grandmom!

November 2008 - She's ready to rock!

November 2009 - Looks like she got a tan and her hair went white

Phil - for his fantasy football team... I don't get it either, but he is having fun.

Alissa (my niece) can be three places at once! (click to enlarge)

Typical cold day in Florida, one in sweats and a sweater-no jacket, the other in shorts and a warm jacket.

The kids ready for the Homeland Heritage Tour

Polk County Historical Museum Bartow, FL I think this is a beautiful shot!

A crab found in our pool one day, in the house the next. We think a bird may have dropped it in since the nearest lake is about a mile away.

An update of epic proportions

2009-09-26T15:15:00.003-04:00

It’s been 3 months since I’ve posted anything, so it’s long past time for an update. I’ll try to keep future posts a little shorter.

Let’s see what happened this summer. My mom went in for emergency double bypass heart surgery, it went very well. She just got the all clear from her cardiologist and doesn’t have to go back for another year.

My dad went to the hospital after my mom and I nagged him to go get treatment for what seemed to be kidney stones. Good thing he listened and went in, the pain he was feeling was actually a blood clot in his right lung. He is also doing very well. He will be taking blood thinners for the next 6 months, but fine otherwise.

The girls have been trucking along in their schoolwork and have moved on to a few new classes. Tori is now taking Intermediate Algebra at Polk State College. For FLVS, she just started the second semesters of her World and American history classes. Beth has moved on from Algebra I to Geometry. She’s feeling more confident in her math skills now. She finished Language Arts 3 (8th grade English) and is now taking Earth/Space Science. Lili has just finished Personal Fitness and is also taking Earth/Space Science, with a different teacher. She will finish Spanish I in just a couple of weeks and will move on to Spanish II. Evie took and just completed her first FLVS class- Keyboarding and started in Art 2D this week.

We’ve had a gopher tortoise adopt us. We don’t know how he got into our yard, possibly through a hole under the shed. He travels through the yard, eating weeds, dog poop and the occasional flower. He’s really curious and bangs his shell on our doors to the screen room. If we open the door to look at him, he walks right in. He does laps through the house then walks back to the doors to be let out. We haven’t named him and don’t feed him. We try not to interfere unless he decides he wants to stay in the house for longer than we think he needs to, in that case we just take him back out to the back yard. He isn’t scared of the dogs and they aren’t interested in him, they mostly ignore each other. If the dogs come too close or walk by too fast, he will bang his shell on the ground and hiss. It’s pretty cool to watch him trek around, he’s really fast and his back legs look like elephant feet.

Videos of the tortoise
When we first discovered him in the yard.

A couple weeks later.

Our extracurricular events have started again. PE started last week, though we won’t start until October 6th, waiting for temps to drop a little more. We just had our second Lighthouse Teachers’ Meeting this week. This is the large field trip planning and sign up meeting held once a month. The year is off to a great start with lots of fun field trips planned. We’ve already been to a field trip to the art museum and had a pool social today. I hung out with the moms in the shade and still got sunburnt. We had the first Jr Lit Club meeting last month and will have the first Lit Club meeting next week. Evie still participates in the Jr group; it is for kids in 3rd through 5th grade. The other girls are in Lit Club, the group I lead, which is for 6th grade and up. Phil is off with the girls today and tomorrow, so I’ll be working on the personal economics class I will be teaching-virtually-to a group of the older kids in our homeschool group.

A few pictures from the teachers's meeting and pool social.

Evie is a little strange
a lot of the time.

Lili looks a little overheated.

Beth and Tori don't play chess.

Evie's first diving board jump.

Evie's first jump from Melissa B on Vimeo.

Lili walks on water.

Homeschooling through the Summer

2009-07-09T12:26:00.005-04:00

My children and I compromised on their interest in extra-curricular activities and my expectations on educational accomplishment about two years ago and came up with a plan. The plan works really well for us. We aren't tied to the house, as many people ignorant of what homeschooling is, would believe. We get a regular break from book and computer work and have plenty of time to spend with friends, but our plan won't allow the girls to fall behind in what I expect of them in their studies. This is what we do.

I think extra curricular opportunities are just as important as typical sit down with a book (or computer) schoolwork to developing a well rounded student. With four daughters who share my level of social time needs and the plethora of activities available, we had to put in place a plan. We'd found ourselves struggling to get to the bookwork because we were out of the house so often. We decided that during the typical public school year, when most of our out of the house activities are scheduled, we'd do schoolwork only 3 days a week. Those three days are usually, but not always Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The girls can generally complete their schoolwork by lunchtime, leaving the afternoons free for chores, reading and whatever else may come up that can or needs to be done at home. With the level of work expected in their FLVS classes, they had to learn to manage their time. It wasn't always a smooth flow, but most of the time, the three days a week was plenty.

We'd use the other two days for field trips, 4H activities, living arts, library trips, Homeschool PE, co-op class and so on. The weekends are used to rest and recuperate, play as much as possible and for catch up on during the week stuff that overflowed. PE always happens on Tuesday mornings. We usually plan to have our co-op class on Tuesday afternoons. Field trips with our homeschool group, Lighthouse Homeschoolers, almost always happen on Thursday mornings. We'd often use Thursday afternoons for errands and library trips. 4H events generally fall on Tuesdays or Thursdays as well. Living arts events can be any day of the week, so we'd just alter the plan as necessary when had an event to attend.

This picture is a snapshot of our extra-curricular events only calendar for last November. (You can double click to see a readable image.)

This one is the same month, with Tori's schoolwork calendar included.

During the summer, we *do school* 5 days a week. We live in Central Florida, where summer afternoons regularly approach 100 degrees. Afternoon thunderstorms can be expected to a degree that you can almost use thunder at 3pm as an alarm clock. If you want to play outside before or after the heat of the day, you need to wear a chemical shield to ward off the mosquitoes. If you want to play outside during the day, if you are or aren't in the pool, you need a chemical shield of sunscreen. So, it works out well for us to enjoy the a/c, swim when the weather allows, play inside in the afternoons and *do school* every morning. It never made sense to me, to take such a long break from one school year to the next. You lose so many skills and much momentum when schoolwork is shelved for nearly 3 months.

Here you can see a snapshot of Tori's schoolwork schedule during this month.

I hadn't really put much thought into comparing this plan to the amount of schoolwork done by families that follow a typical school schedule, with a week in the fall, two in the winter, one in the spring, and two and a half months off during the summer. I overheard the girls discussing the number of days of schoolwork they do with a neighbor who is on summer break from public school. My girls weren't complaining, but I think they thought they were doing a lot more work. So, I pulled up the public school schedule, and our calendar from last August until the end of this month, and compared. I counted the 3 days a week we do from the beginning of September through the beginning of May, and the 5 days a week for the remainder of the summer. I left out the three weeks of vacation we usually take, spread throughout the year. I knew the public schools must allow for 180 days of instruction by law, but made a listing of their days to match ours to be scertain. Sure enough, it was 180 days. We totalled 179 days. I was a little surprised it worked out so close, but glad to realize that the plan we'd come up with on a whim was such a neat match.

Oh my, I have a lot to say...

2009-07-01T14:09:00.002-04:00

It's been awhile since I've posted and a lot has been happening around here. I broke my left pointer finger about a month ago, a fracture of the distal phalanx I believe. It's uncomfirmed due to my not wanting to pay for a doctor visit and xray when the only thing that would be done is a splint. I just picked one up at Walgreens and put it on myself. It should have been healed by now, but stupidly... I'd take the splint off each morning to shower and would test my finger by bending it. Common sense should tell me that bending it while trying to heal it wouldn't work. Common sense wasn't hanging around for the first three weeks, so I'm still in the splint. I'm getting much better at typing without using that finger.

My mom was to visit my little sister in Washington the middle of last month. She mentioned she was having some pressure in her chest to her doctor at a regular check up before the trip. Her doctor told her to skip the trip and get her heart checked out by a cardiologist. Good advice it turns out, she had one artery 100% blocked (the one nicknamed "The Widowmaker"), another was 80% blocked. As she was meeting with the cardiac surgeon to plan for double bypass surgery, it seemed she started having a heart attack there in the doctor's office. She was transported a block from the Watson Clinic offices to the hospital by ambulance and gave us all the fright of our lives. I had to call my sisters to share the news, one lives near Seattle, another near Atlanta and the other in Japan. I know it could have been worse, but those were very hard calls to make. She had the bypass surgery the next morning. It turns out she didn't have a heart attack, as there was no damage to the heart muscle. She likely had an anxiety attack which can mimic a heart attack. Her surgery went perfectly and she was home 5 days later. She's chafing at the diabetic/low cholesterol/low sodium diet, but is doing very well otherwise. She'd had no symptoms other than some slight chest pressure as warning. She was very, very lucky.

My body decided to celebrate my mom's homecoming with a mild but still very painful outbreak of shingles. Lovely. Stress doesn't make me cry (usually) or yell (hardly ever), it gives me headaches and deep nerve pain. The rash is gone and the pain is starting to fade. It's a very unpleasant feeling to put it mildly. Feels like getting stabbed with hot knitting needles at the rash location and then as the rash fades it feels more like having a hot iron pushed against the skin. At least the pain is localized so I can identify the issue quickly. I'm getting used to it. This is at least my fifth outbreak in as many years.

The girls are all still doing very well in their classes. Tori just signed up to dual enroll in an Intermediate Algebra class at PSC and is chugging along through American History and World History. Beth is almost finished with Language Arts 3 and Algebra I, and will soon start Earth Space Science and Geometry. Lili and Evie still have awhile to go in their FLVS classes. All of the girls continue to do their homeschool assignments daily until late August when we will switch back to 3 days a week.

I've been enjoying the frequent rains as it will help keep the a/c bill lower, but it creates a jungle effect in the yard. Everything is a beautiful shade of green. I was out with the dogs yesterday, trying to get them to do their thing. They didn't want to walk through the tall wet grass. I checked out the turtle pond in our screened porch while I stayed dry. We have another infestation of black widow spiders. This time they brought along their cousins, the brown widows. Great. We'll be emptying the screen room and dismantling the pond while we deal with them. It's pretty disgusting and dangerous too. Black widows will defend their webs, so they are likely to bite, they are venomous as I think everyone knows. The brown widows are meeker and will not defend their webs, but if they do bite, the venom is much more toxic.

I installed a webcam on my computer yesterday and was able to talk with my sister in Japan via Skype. It's free and we can see each other. How great is that! We can only talk for brief periods as they are 13 hours ahead. We'll have to make a chart of the hours that will work so the kids can call their cousins whenever they like without anyone being woken in the middle of the night.

That's the past month in a nutshell. Back to laundry and grocery list making.

Some photos, I can't point out...

2009-06-12T10:04:00.002-04:00

I broke my left pointer finger, I don't know how or when, but there you have it. So, it's a little weird to type. I'm usually up there about 75 words per minute, now I'm playing a slow game of half hunt and peck, half spell check. So, in lieu of my usual wordiness, a few somewhat randomly selected photos from the files.

Daisy pushed the cushions off the couch and tore into and rolled in a bag of confetti. Feb-2007

Four girls on a log. Sweatpants, sandals and shorts in late January, that's Florida! Jan 2007

Beth found a black marker, it was a Sharpie, she was 4 yrs old. May 2000

Lili loves bowling. Sept 2005

Tori before and after donating her hair to Locks of Love June 2006

Evie looking like a demented Elmo. July 2003

Bubba says, "Talk to the paw" June 2004

Look, it's the moon!

2009-05-31T12:43:00.000-04:00

Seeing the moon may not seem all that remarkable, but I was able to see it up close for the first time this weekend. We borrowed a telescope from a friend last month and have been trying to use it ever since. Friday night was the first time we had any success.

We were invited to participate in a public stargazing event in Pasco County. It was a long drive, but so worth it. The constant rains the last several weeks made viewing impossible. Friday night there were some clouds when we first arrived, but as the event started, the skies cleared and stayed clear. We were instructed on how to get the finder scope and the viewer scope aligned. Without doing so, it's really hard to find anything in the sky. Once that was done, it was all fun! We were able to check out the moon and see the craters and smooth areas, mountains and valleys. It really is amazing to see the Moon close up with your own eyes. It kept sliding out of view, but we were able to make small adjustments to get it back quickly most of the time. Phil is much better than I am, I kept moving the telescope in the wrong direction and would lose the view. The telescope we were using was giving us a 45x view, 45 times the size we can see with our eyes. Here a couple of photos I took with our regular camera. (You can click on any of the photos to see a larger version)

Straight out of camera:

With camera zoomed in a bit:

You can see from the first two photos that a regular camera doesn't show the size of the moon the same as your eyes would see it. That is interesting enough on it's own. But, if I zoomed in much it would get too wiggly to be anything but a blur. My camera is a point and shoot digital, and I couldn't find a way to reduce the shutter speed to cut down on the amount of light, so the close up photo isn't anywhere near as clear as the view through the telescope with your eyes, but is about the right size.

Photo taken through viewfinder:

As the sky got darker, we were able to shift a little and get a view of Saturn. The telescope we are using is considered a beginner level. We could see Saturn, and could tell there were rings, but the rings looked more like little bursts of light shooting from the top and the bottom of the planet. We looked through more powerful telescopes set up around us and could clearly see the rings and 3 of Saturn's moons. It was so beautiful. It was also a little like looking a picture since the image appears flat, but with the thrill of knowing it isn't a picture at all. Saturn is 862,389,000 miles from earth as of today, which means what you are seeing with your eyes happened 77 minutes ago. I wonder if there is a difference when you are viewing with a telescope. Are you seeing light that hasn't reached Earth yet, or are you just seeing it closer? Hmmmm...

Here are some photos of Saturn. The first is as my camera saw it when pointed at the sky. Can you even tell there is a dot of light in that photo?

This second photo is through the viewerscope, and does not replicate what we saw well due to movement.

You can't see much there, partially due to the light issue with the camera that I had with the moon. The distance of Saturn also causes problems. The farther something is from earth, the faster it will move out of view in the telescope. Earth's rotation is constant of course, but distance makes things smaller, which makes them appear to move more quickly and be harder to find.

I'll share more as we learn.

Summer Schoolin'

2009-05-22T12:44:00.000-04:00

We have always "done school" straight through the summer. We live in central Florida where summer days are guaranteed to be hot, humid and bug filled. So far it hasn't been so hot, but has been rainy. I think today is the 11th straight day of heavy rains. Our yard is looking quite lush where it isn't looking dead.

This photo is from our pool deck several years ago, check the temp! No, of course it isn't accurate, but it was hot enough to cause it to fail.

It has never made sense to me to take a long break over the summer months. I understand the reason for this arrangement for public schools. Schools began this way when our country was younger and many children helped their families in the maintenance of their farms or more modest family gardens. Summer is harvest time, the children were needed as farmhands. This has long since not been the typical family arrangement, but public schools stick with what has or hasn't worked for the duration. As a homeschool family, we can and will do what works for us.

For our family, summer is a break from the extra curricular. There is a saying often seen on homeschool t-shirts and bumper stickers, "How can it be called homeschooling if we are always in the car?" During the public school year, we are just as likely to not be home while we are schooling as we are to be sitting here in the house "doing school". We are in a very active homeschool support group, Lighthouse Homeschoolers, attending field trips on average once a week. We participate in the large group Lakeland Homeschool PE, a physical education coop that meets in the soccer fields of a public park once per week. We are in a small homeschool art co-op that meets once a week. We have been in both small and large 4H groups that have monthly meetings and weekly cooperative topical classes. We also attend a performing arts event about once a month, a group social about once a month and hit the library and/or park at least once a week. We had to make a plan a couple of years ago that we would only do school work 3 days a week. This both relieved the stress of feeling we were skipping school when attending all these extra curriculars, and helped us keep on track with the schooling we were doing. All of these events we'd attend follow the public school schedule, in part due to the availability of venues when less crowded, in part due to the summer heat, and in part due to those families that do like to take summers off.

By schooling during the summer, we are able to really focus our time on academics. We do school in the morning and swim in the afternoons every day, weather permitting. If we were to take the summer off, I'm afraid our children would suffer the effects of lazy brains or loss of skills when late August rolls around. I believe we'd also be fighting against a lack of motivation if we were to take so much time out of an academic plan. By doing schoolwork through the summer, we are able to really focus on a class giving trouble, or just take it easy and roll through the work at a quicker pace.

This is the schooling that is going on here now. Tori is in her Sociology class twice a week for 1.5 hours at PCC, soon to be renamed Polk State College. This is her first dual enrolled class. She is really enjoying this class, but finds it is quite easy so far, it's mostly discussion of the news. She is taking American History-Conspiracy Code through FLVS.
This class is a typical American History class set in the format of a video game. In the game, the bad guys are changing historical facts, she has to find the correct information before it gets changed. Its a cute premise and an interesting way to teach the class. We expect her to be placed a World History class soon, also through FLVS. She is working in the last book of Wordly Wise 3000 and doing Bible study each day.

Beth is in the second half of both Algebra I and M/J Language Arts 3 through FLVS. She is sailing through Language Arts, loving that class. I've been working with her on Algebra each day. She gets it faster than I do, and is doing well with the extra attention, but is clearly not a math girl. She is also doing Bible study and Wordly Wise. Beth is working the last lesson of Book 5, the first edition. In the new - 2nd edition, she'd be finishing book 8, 8th grade level.

Lili is taking Spanish I through FLVS, and is almost finished with the first semester. I goofed and thought I'd signed her up for Spanish I before this class, but it was actually M/J Spanish. Oops. So, for this semester's work, it's basically been a repeat of last year's Spanish. The second semester should be mostly new learning, so I think it will be more interesting for her. She is also just about to finish M/J Math 2, and will move on to Algebra I next. Math seems to come quite easy for her, so I don't think she'll have any trouble. Lili is also working in Wordly Wise Book 5, first edition and doing Bible study. She's just started Book 5 in Wordly Wise.

Evie has just been activated in her first FLVS class, Keyboarding. She will start in the class on Monday. Evie is working on Bible study and is about halfway through Wordly Wise Book 2, first edition. She does Math U See, Delta level which is almost complete. She will move on to Epsilon next.

I couldn't figure out how we could make the computer arrangement in our house work with all four girls taking classes online and all doing the bulk of their schoolwork in the morning, without having to play musical chairs. Phil was about due for a new laptop, he uses his mostly for work, but it is his personal computer. I suggested he get a new one and his old one go to the girls. He agreed and picked up a new one yesterday. Evie needs a desktop computer for the full size keyboard. So she will have the computer Lili has been using in their room, and Phil's old laptop will be Lili's to use. Tori has been using my old laptop. Beth uses the desktop in her room. So, crazy as it may seem, we now have 6 working, up to date computers in use, 3 laptops, 3 desktop, plus a couple in the closet as backups. I can't imagine what we'd do if the computers had to be hard wired to the network. That would be a real mess.

Overheard from the kitchen-Homeschool kids are soooo smart!

2009-05-18T14:18:00.000-04:00

A couple of random bits of conversation overheard from the kitchen in the past 10 minutes or so. Are these an accurate reflection of my children's levels of intelligence?

#4 child - Are strawberries fruits or berries?
# Me - I think they are both
#4 child - But they can't be fruits since the seeds are on the outside
# Me - I don't know, maybe they aren't fruit
#4 child - Well I don't like asparagus
#2 child - You've never had asparagus
#4 child - I still don't like it

There was no indication of surprise from any of us that the conversation went without pause from strawberries to asparagus

#2 child - You can't tickle yourself
#1 child - So
#2 child - When you get married you become one with your spouse
#1 child - So
#2 child - So, then you can tickle yourself

:)

#4 child - Fried flies, goose goulash, hamburgers, nightingale nuggets, an order of possum...

I stopped listening at that point, I was getting a little scared she was making up a meal plan.

Firsts and Lasts, a couple of homeschool weeks in review

2009-05-13T10:13:00.000-04:00

We've had several firsts and lasts since I last wrote about our homeschooling. I know this is a little long and has a lot of photos, but, well, a lot has been going on around here... Sorry!

Tori's first day at college - it was a big day for both of us. This was her first time in a classroom and my first time not being a part of her learning. She got a little turned around in the hallway, but wasn't late to class. There are only 15 students in her Sociology class, she thinks an even split of typical college age students and adults. She did say one of the students was sleeping. On the first day! She has one assignment due mid June but will have reading assignments each week. She enjoyed it but was surprised that it was so easy. Tori thinks her teacher looks and kind of sounds like my dad.

Rather than a photo with a lunchbox and backpack, she has a satchel and a purse.

About to head off to class.

She said the teacher asked today if any of the students in the class were high school students, she's the only one. He then asked what she thought of the FCAT (yearly state achievement test), she replied "I'm homeschooled", implying she doesn't have to and never has taken that test. I tensed up a little expecting her to relate that his response would be something negative. I'd previously warned her that not all teachers appreciate homeschoolers, but to keep in mind that our choice to homeschool is just as valid as the choice to use public or private schools. The teacher responded to her statement, "I'm homeschooled" with, "We should discuss all the benefits of homeschooling." You'll just have to imagine my huge inward sigh of relief. They didn't end up discussing the subject, but maybe it will come up later. Tori is a very confident person in general, and I'm sure she won't have any difficulty standing her ground, so to speak, but I'm very relieved she wasn't met with any hostility in her first class ever.

First purchase of college textbooks - her two books were priced $130 used at the college bookstore or $175 new, why would anyone buy new? We found one of the books online through eBay for $27 with shipping, and bought the other at a local used college textbook store for $38. Ouch!

First purchase of school supplies not on sale - we've never had a first day of school before, so we'd always buy school supplies a couple of weeks after school starts and get a full year supply for 4 kids for under $20. I spent at least that much for Tori for this one class!

First time to see a sky really full of stars - we drove about 4 hours north to an island in the Gulf with the darkest night sky east of the Mississippi. We have too much light pollution to see many stars here. I'd seen this image and it intrigued me.

I'd never imagined you could see that many stars without using a telescope. When I discovered you can, I thought we'd have to go out to the desert or out into the Gulf on a boat to get away from the light. I found a few places online listing truly dark night skies in Florida and we went for a little (poorly planned) adventure. Even with the mistakes we made, it was unbelievably beautiful. We went to Shired Island, an island at the tail end of a national wildlife refuge. The spot is completely accessible but also very remote. We will go back, but hopefully with a little more prep and planning and a little more understanding of the night sky. We've borrowed a telescope from friends and will learn as much as we can about astronomy before attending a public stargazing event at the end of the month. I need to buy a planisphere to help us understand what little we can see here at home.

Last performing arts event until the fall - We attended a play in Tampa about Leonardi daVinci. It was pretty interesting. I wish they'd talked a little more about the inventions he designed.

Last field trip and Teacher Meeting until August - Spring Fun Day is usually held as a separate event, it was combined with the last TM this year. It makes a lot of sense to do it that way, so I imagine it will continue. I hung out in the pavilion with my mom friends this time while the kids participated in the games. There are a couple more events planned by group members, but we have begun our summer plan already so we are skipping those.

Beth catches up with some of her girlfriends.

Tori is looking a little tired.

Lili's self portrait of her face painting.

Evie's lion, she adores lions.

Um, yeah, I don't know what is happening here.

Last PE class until August - The Presidential Physical Fitness Test awards ceremony and end of the year picnic for PE was held yesterday. Beth got a National level award. Tori, Lili and Evie got Participant level awards. We didn't stay long as we are all (except Beth) still sick. We all have colds, fortunately not flu. Evie always gets fever, but the rest of us have had them too, along with the sneezing and sniffling and chapped noses and headaches. Blech!

Here are some photos of the Water Games day. PE always ends with some fun and wet field games.

Half of Evie's group, playing a musical hot potato game, where the potato was a water bottle used to spray someone else.

The big girls group getting ready to play a water balloon toss.

The big girls with their coaches, Keith and Esther DeRouen.

Last Lit Club meeting until October - The movie watching after reading the book discussion went really well. I wish I'd thought to take pictures, oh well. I'll spend this summer reading and selecting books for next year.

First sunburn - It was finally warm enough for me to swim last week, I didn't stay in long that time. Then I went in again a couple of days ago and came out sunburnt. I like to swim without the kids, it's more peaceful that way. Our pool isn't big enough for true swimming, so mostly I just relax and float. Combine that with a low humidity day and lots of peace and quiet and you get a quick sunburn.

First summer storm - I know it's not technically summer yet, but it is definitely summer weather in Florida. We have hit the point where the day gets hot enough and the air is humid enough to result in afternoon thunderstorms. It's been really dry here and there have been a lot of wildfires. The lightning from the storms don't help with the fires, but the rain sure will.

From here on until August, we will do school just about every day. Mornings will be spent on schoolwork, afternoons in the pool. We'll head to the library about once a week, and will take days off here and there when we feel like it.

Tori is almost finished with both Algebra II and English I. She is taking the finals for both of those this week. She starts two new FLVS classes next week, American History and World History. She should finish both those classes in January and will then take a half credit American Government class. Those are the last classes she has to take for high school only. All the rest of her classes will be through PCC, either dual enrolling where she will earn high school credit and college credit at the same time, or just college only.

Beth is working in the second semester of Algebra I and is doing so much better when I sit with her for the lessons. I'm absolutely not teaching her, she gets the information much faster than I do. I think she just needed the extra encouragement and interaction to help her do well. She will finish Language Arts 3 at the end of July and Algebra I at the end of August. I thought I'd already selected her next classes, but don't find it in my records. So, we'll go through and pick them out later today.

Lili is almost finished with M/J Math 2, and will move on to a Personal Fitness class June 1. She is just about finished with the first semester of Spanish I and will continue in that class until some time in September. She always does well in her classes and frequently works ahead of pace.

Evie is ready to start her first FLVS class, Keyboarding. It is the first class all of the girls have started with. It is one of the more difficult classes, but it teaches them to type by touch. FLVS classes are done online, so it is to their benefit to be able to type as soon as possible. The work itself isn't difficult, but there is a lot of time spent learning to type, plus the learning curve of how to prepare and submit lessons online.

All of the girls will continue with their homeschool lessons which include Sequential Spelling, Bible study and Wordly Wise. Tori is in the last book of Wordly Wise, so when that one is done, she won't have any more of that work to do.

I will be working on the Personal Economics class I started planning last summer. I got a little lost in what path I wanted to use when planning and ended up overwhelmed by it, so I put it on hold last fall. I'm determined to make it happen this time. At the end of summer I will make a listing of field trips I'd like to set up for the year, I led a lot of trips this year. We start our art co-op again sometime in August with a new family joining in.

That's it for the update. Off to work on laundry, catch up on some reading and have some lunch.

Creature Feature

2009-05-04T19:16:00.000-04:00

I love how conversations can sometimes take on a life of their own.

Recently my children watched the original version of The Fly with my husband via Netflix Watch Now. If you haven't tried that part of their service, you should, it's fabulous and free is always a great deal. Anyway, the girls were not even a little bit creeped out by the movie, it was just cheesy to them. They told a friend, an 11 yr old girl, about it and recommended she watch. Either they weren't clear enough in their description that she should watch the old black and white 1958 version, or she just forgot. Her parents rented the movie for her, and yep you guessed it, she saw the 1986 Jeff Goldblum version. Blech, blech and more blech. I can't even watch that one. Maybe her parents did realize, as we were informed she also watched Anaconda and Lake Placid. Those are enormous gigantic super big and bad snake and crocodile, respectively.

So, my girls were telling my husband and I about the friend's recent entertainment and gradually the conversation changed to us talking about movies that were creepy and gross when we were kids. Both Phil and I grew up in Lakeland, so we have very similar experiences. We were both born in the early 70's, and when we were 10 years old or so, we had tvs with maybe a dozen channels and had to manually turn the dial on the console tv. Although, it may have been right around this time that we had a tv with a clicker. It was a remote, but not at all like the remotes we have now. It was a brick about the size of a blackboard eraser with buttons for volume up and down, channel up and down and power, and each of the buttons made a clicking sound when pushed. When you found a show that was even a little interesting, you'd stick with it, mostly because there wasn't much else to choose from.

We both went immediately to our memories of Saturday afternoons spent watching The Creature Feature show with Dr. Paul Bearer.

As soon as it came up we both started doing impressions of how we remembered his voice (think reallllly old guy who smokes about 8 packs of cigarettes a day) and talking about the various fake commercials he'd made up, the silly songs and visits from Elvira. As you already know, you can find anything on the internet, including Dr. Paul Bearer. There are clips like this one on YouTube.

Here are a couple other videos with clips from several of his shows. Oh how they bring me back to the 70's and 80's.
Clip 1
Clip 3
Clip 4

He would have a little skit at the opening of shock movies. You'd see a couple more during the movie, then one at the end. They didn't last long, but they were so entertaining. Most of the time the movies were B movies, campy for the sake of being campy. If I remember correctly, this is the time when Godzilla movies would show as well. His humor was usually innocent and always silly, but in a fun and not annoying way. My girls were just watching the clips above and were giggling at his bad puns and crazy songs. Who can forget "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"?

You can find online articles about his being the longest running horror movie host and how he came to do what he did. There are Christmas cards that read, It's the Ghoul Tide season. You can find photos of props he used on the show, like Herse's Milk Shockolate and Mr. Badbar candy bars. You can see photos of him with her personal car, a black hearse, which he often drove around the Tampa area like you or I would use our minivan or sedan. You can find out his real name was Dick Bennick, that his creepy look was enhanced by a real glass eye, and that he died in 1995. He was the definition of "a character".

I sometimes think it's a shame that a show like his would likely not succeed now due to the variety of choices in entertainment available to a young kid on a Saturday afternoon.

Until next time, I'll be lurrrrrking for you....

Homeschool Explorers

2009-04-27T12:04:00.000-04:00

Since last I wrote, we've been exploring, on foot and in our minds. Last week quite busy.

On Monday Tori and I went out to PCC to register for her first class. She got her first choice, Sociology. We only had to wait a couple of minutes to see and advisor. I expected a long wait as it was the first day for dual enrolled students to register. Public school is still in session, so most of those kids would still be in classes. Likely when we come back to register in August for a fall term class, there will be a long wait.

After seeing the price of college textbooks, even used, we have tentatively decided to have Tori switch to being enrolled as a Collegiate High School student next year. You have to be starting your junior or senior year to enroll, Tori is just starting her sophomore year now, so she will still dual enroll this year. I'd had some misconceptions about the program that made it not a choice we would take, but with those cleared up, I can see it will be a good program for us. The best benefit is that we won't have to pay for the books. She'll no longer be a homeschooled or private schooled student, she'll be a public school student, but I think it won't really make a difference. We'll see. I can switch back to the private school and straight dual enrolling if we need to later.

Tuesday was Crazy Olympics at Homeschool PE. There are all sorts of silly games for the kids to play, obstacle courses, parachute pickup, general zaniness. They are repeating the event this week, so hopefully I'll get some pictures this time. We had art co-op that afternoon and decided we are going to take a break for the summer and just have playdate get togethers. Both Jeannette and I will have our oldest daughters taking classes at PCC over the summer. We have another family that will be joining our art co-op in the fall. They will be using the curriculum over the summer to catch up to the lessons we have already worked through.

Wednesday was a schoolwork and take it easy day.

Thursday morning we had a field trip to the Mulberry Phosphate Museum. Phosphate is one of the biggest industries in our county, with many employed at the various phosphate plants. My dad worked at one for many years in the lab, before retiring a couple of years ago. They had some videos to watch about the phosphate mining process. It's not mines like you'd picture for coal, it's basically digging into the ground very deeply, but it's still referred to as the mines. Then you could tour the room with all the fossils that can be found in the phosphate. Lastly there is a large pile of the material (I've already forgotten the name) that the phosphate comes from. The kids could sort through the pile to look for shark teeth and any other sort of fossil they could find.

Thursday night the girls participated in a Career Exploration night. They'd put together reports on careers they are interested in, or at least found interesting enough to select for this event. They each gave a 3 minute or so speech about the career they'd selected. The group was small, but it will be an annual event and will hopefully get bigger. Tori spoke about a paralegal, Beth chose a creative writer and Lili chose a graphic designer.

Friday was a schoolwork and housework day. We went to clean a house in my husband's community in the afternoon. He was starting vacation for this week, so we were all in a take it easy, feeling lazy kind of mood.

Saturday Phil started on his to do list. Not my kind of vacation, but it's what he wanted to do. First was the sprinkler system. Two zones weren't working, and within those and other zones, some of the sprinkler heads were clogged or stuck. He got those fixed but accidentally cut the main water line to the house. That was a pretty quick repair but we found the kitchen and master bath sinks wouldn't work. We put attempting to repair those on hold until today, just in case we needed a plumber. We didn't want to have to pay for a Sunday call.

Sunday was church in the morning, hang out and relax in the afternoon, then my choice for evening activity. I'll write about that in another post.

Today we fixed the kitchen and master bath sink, mostly. Now the kitchen hot water line is leaking a little, but that should be a quick fix tomorrow. Phil did some work on getting a veggie garden started in the backyard. We all worked on the laundry. Phil and I went grocery shopping together, which always results in us buying too much. We just made homemade pizza and are waiting for them to finish cooking.

PE tomorrow, Teachers' Meeting and Spring Fun Day on Thursday. Art co-op is on the schedule for Thursday afternoon, but I think we planned that before we decided to take the summer off. Friday we are having our last Lit Club discussion for the year, here at the house. Our book is City of Ember and we are going to watch the movie and talk about how different the movie is from the book.

A few homeschool field trips

2009-04-15T14:05:00.000-04:00

In lieu of my usual wordiness, here are a bunch of pictures.

We went to a tour of the milk/ice cream plant at the Publix warehouse Tuesday of last week.

My big girls sure do stand out from the elementary aged kids.

You know you are near the Publix warehouses when you are this close to the cake water tower.

The girls love the free ice cream at the end of the tour

We also did a class at Crystal Springs about birds on Thursday. They have an amazing educational center. The springs are open to the public by reservation, but no swimming. This is also the site which is the source of water in Crystal Springs bottled water. We heard but didn't see many birds.

We saw lots of these baby grasshoppers.

Evie found a turkey feather

Phil took the girls to Circle B Bar Reserve on Thursday and again on Saturday.

Do you see the alligator on the path?

This hawk keeps an eye on the kids.

That's a pileated woodpecker and a cardinal in that tree.

Dual Enrolling, Lost Glasses and Tornados

2009-04-15T12:47:00.000-04:00

Tori went to PCC last week to take the CPT tests. She did really well. She had done practice tests several times over the past year, and did a couple the night before. We weren't concerned that she would do a poor job, but with it being a new experience, we were both a little wary. She took all three sections: Reading, English and Math. She needed at least an 83 on Reading, she scored 119.8. She needed 83 on English as well, scored 119.0 there. In Math she needed 72 on the Elementary Algebra section, scored 109.6. She also scored 34 on the College Math section, but did not need to score into the College Math section at all to dual enroll.

Based on the current College Math score, if she were to enroll in a math class at PCC right now, it would need to be Intermediate Algebra. She would need a minimum score of 43 on the College Math section to skip Intermediate Algebra. We'd originally planned (if she scored well enough) to start her in MAC 1105-College Algebra for her first class, as she will have just finished her Algebra 2 class through FLVS. Going immediately into College Algebra was appealing as she wouldn't lose the momentum or the skills during a break. We were advised that due to the compressed nature of College Algebra during the summer term, that it would be better to take that during the full Fall or Spring terms. Given that advice and her score not being quite high enough, we decided to wait on College Algebra. She will finish Algebra 2, and try many practice CPT tests during the summer to determine where she needs extra studying, then retake that portion of the CPT before the Fall term to try and better the score so she can skip over the Intermediate Algebra course. She's quite close, I think she'll be able to do it.

We are in the process of finalizing details with the Dual Enrollment coordinator. We filled out an online application to PCC through the FACTS.org website, not realizing dual enrolled students should not use the online application. I had to change her birthdate and graduation date by one year to get setup in their system. So we have had those corrected and provided the information on our private school. We should be able to go Monday morning to actually register for classes. At this point her selections are: 1. SYG2000 Sociology-a full summer course 2. HLP1081 Wellness Concepts-a 6 week class available in either term 3A or 3B 3. AMH1020 US History 1877-Present-a 6 week class available in either term 3A or 3B She can only take one class over the summer, but we know we need to have several choices in case one or another is already full.

My friend Jeannette was just telling me about the Honors program at PCC. I checked the entrance requirements, Tori qualifies. I've written to see if dual enrolled students can enter the Honors program. If so, I think she'd do well. I didn't see any classes on the Summer schedule that were designated as being Honors, so I'm not sure if summer classes are available. Jeannette's daughter is a student at PCC in the Collegiate High School program. She will also be taking summer classes. I thought the Collegiate High School program took the summer off like most high schools. I also thought taking a class with a friend would appeal to Tori, but the friend is not taking any of the classes Tori has on her short list. She is taking 2 night classes which Tori said no to right away, and she is taking a philosophy class. Tori thought the sociology class she'd selected sounded more interesting and useful. I think I'll make a note of the philosophy class in case all three of her prior selections are unavailable. We definitely want to stick with the Lakeland campus for classes.

Beth and I have been working hard on her Algebra I class through FLVS. She is just not a math girl, I can completely relate. She does seem to do better when working with me than when working by herself. So we may need to keep that up. I'm certainly not teaching her, algebra still does not make any sense to me, but I can follow directions well enough. She's brought her grade up from a low C to a middle B. She needs to finish up the first semester, take the semester test, then she will have a break before starting the second semester when we all take vacation at the end of this month. She is doing really well in her Language Arts 3 class. She really enjoys it, but even more so now that they are doing a section on poetry. She's written some lovely poems, even if they are a little dark. Her semester score in that class is 100!

Lili is still plugging along, doing great in her classes. She's a hard worker but it also seems that the work comes easy to her. It's really a wonderful thing that we have the opportunity to homeschool. I'm quite confident she wouldn't do well in school because she has a loud, wiggly, boisterous personality. I don't think she'd be able to spend a full day in classes, she needs more freedom of movement and expression to get through the day. I just requested the Personal Fitness class for her to start in May, just after she finishes Math 2

Evie is also doing quite well, or was up until yesterday. Her glasses have gone missing. We are still looking, but trying to read without them is an effort. It's possible, but leads to headaches. I'm not ready to go buy another pair yet, they'll turn up. Hopefully they won't turn up with holes from dog teeth like my last pair. She will be starting Keyboarding through FLVS in July. She's excited to be taking online classes like her sisters.

We attend Lakeland Homeschool PE on Tuesday mornings. I woke up late Tuesday morning and found we were under a tornado watch and PE had been cancelled. We would have stayed home due to the rain and getting up late anyway, but this way I didn't feel like we were slacking. I woke the girls to tell them to get dressed, including shoes but that we weren't going to PE. They didn't understand until I started reminding them about our tornado drills. It may seem silly, but we actually practice tornado and fire drills in our family. I could tell Evie was a little more nervous than the other girls as she kept her lovies with her all day. The winds got pretty nasty and we had a (lovely to me) vigorous and long lasting thunder/lightning storm. The pool nearly overflowed, but didn't quite. We've had the living room flood more than once from the pool overflowing. We got quite a bit of rain out of it, so maybe the dead patches in our lawn will make a comeback.

We'll be cleaning today and tomorrow, working on Career Exploration Night reports tomorrow and through the weekend. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner tonight. We were to have it yesterday but I didn't take it out to thaw in time.

Game Night Gone Wild

2009-04-07T10:51:00.000-04:00

Last night one of the girls, Lili I think, suggested we play a board game. Trivial Pursuit was selected. We were missing many of the pie pieces so needed to play in teams. We made it through the game, but it was more silliness than true game play. Evie took care of moving the pawns, about halfway through we realized she'd been moving just one of them most of the time. I didn't realize the teams weren't supposed to take turns back and forth and so kept calling out answers when it wasn't our turn. We all fussed when one team would get an incredibly easy question, then the next team would get one that seemed inordinately hard. For instance one questions was, "What does a tadpole become when it matures"? Followed by, "Where is the National Cowboy Hall of Fame located"? Huh! There was some great silliness like when Lili asked the question "What were the the 49ers looking for in California" The other team answered "Gold", she read the answer to another question, telling the team they were wrong and the answer was Philadelphia! Another question was about what was the overdue book fee charged for a book returned to a specific library 233 years late. Someone answered, one... one dollar... I followed with "one dollar book fine" to the tune of "five dollar foot long". Maybe you had to be there.

We had a great time and will have to pull out more of the board games for more fun evenings. It's easy to forget when very busy that it can be so easy and cheap to have fun all together.

We gave up cable tv more than a month ago to save money. I thought we'd really miss it, multiple tvs were always on, whether they were being watched or not. Each of the girls could often be found watching the same show in different rooms. They watched Nick and Disney, but were just as likely to watch HGTV or the Food channel. Discovery, Discovery Kids and Animal Planet were very popular as well. We still have cable internet and many channels have their shows available for viewing online. We thought the computers would be the girls' new tvs. We were wrong. Except for needing to make arrangements for them to see the Kid's Choice Awards on Nick at my parent's house, it hasn't been an issue at all.

My kids have always gotten along well, there are of course nitpicks, but nothing too bad. I now realize most of the issues that came up in the past were related to the tv. Someone wanted to watch a different show than was currently being watched. Another was standing too close to the tv and blocking the view of the others. One remembered this happening in a tv show, the other remembered that happening, and so on. Not only are those petty arguments gone, the general nitpicking and taunting has been all but eliminated as well. I've never thought tv was bad for kids, I still don't. But I think it does draw siblings away from one another. I can't believe how much more time they spend talking to one another, comparing notes on books they've shared, making up silly games, making plans for ways to entertain themselves. It's truly a wonderful thing.

Here are my dogs Bubba and Daisy enjoying the sun a few days ago, keeping me company while I was outside reading.

This video is Beth holding a ringneck snake we found in the pool. These are sweet, beautiful little snakes. We'd found snake eggs under some wood a few years ago and brought them in the house to watch them hatch. It was very cool.

Ring Neck Snake from Melissa B on Vimeo.

Taco soup for dinner tonight, in honor of what must surely be the last cold spell of the year. Tori needs to go take the CPT (college placement test) sometime this week. We have a field trip to Publix tomorrow and one to Crystal Springs on Thursday.

Went to fly a kite and end up viewing swordfighting?

2009-03-28T12:57:00.000-04:00

We went to Carter Road Park today to fly kites. It's really windy, too windy actually. One of the crossbars on the first kite had split halfway through, I tried repairing with electrical tape. The repair wasn't strong enough and the cross bar was bending like a bendy straw.

Beth tried really hard to get it flying, then found it made a nice mat to lay on.

The other kite was fine but kept crashing.

Once we finally worked out that problem, it flew so well that it broke the string. Fortunately we were in a park large enough to be well away from traffic. The kite landed in the road, but it was just a road to the ball fields. Got the kite back up and flying well, but ran out of string. Once a kite is up as far as it will go, it gets kind of boring.

Beth, Lili and Evie laid down to watch, finding it more comfortable.

I noticed several cars driving back to the dunes in the back of the park, towards where a couple of small boat launches are located. I thought they might be people going to fish from the shore, but the noticed a bunch of guys running up and down on a hill in the distance. We watched for a while to try and figure it out, but were too far to tell for sure. Our curiosity got the best of us, so we drove back to check it out. The guys were playing at war or maybe king of the mountain? Tori took some video. Sorry for the shakiness, it was very windy and she'd zoomed in as far as possible. They sure did seem to be having fun!

Swordplay in Lakeland from Melissa B on Vimeo.

We'd hoped to turn in Tori's registration paperwork for PCC yesterday, but I was running late and didn't get there. I'd hoped they'd be open today, no luck there. They aren't open Saturdays, and are on Spring Break this coming week, so we are on hold again. My fault this time.

Time to have lunch then head out to get some chlorine for our gone green pool and propane for the steaks tonight.

Ugh, I'm sick

2009-03-24T17:32:00.000-04:00

I have been bothered by a dry scratchy throat and mild stuffiness and runny nose for the past couple of days. Not bad enough to take medicine, but bad enough to be a bother. My throat is worst in the middle of the night which makes for a bad night of sleep. Bad sleep nights result in bad headache days. The girls had dentist appointments yesterday and I had to pull over and have Tori drive home. I was having difficulty seeing clearly. I'd noticed the problem while still in the dentist office, but thought it was lack of sleep and bad lighting while trying to read. Turns out it was an ocular migraine. I've had this before, but didn't recognize it for what it was right away. When I get these, I don't get the pain part of the migraine, just the disturbed vision. My vision ends up partially blocked by what looks like ribbons of brightly colored kaleidoscope. If I didn't have to worry about safety, it would actually be kind of cool. I find myself trying to look around the the ribbons, which of course won't work, because they aren't really there. You can read about them here. This picture is a great display of what it is like, although instead of seeing gray, I see kaleidoscope.

I never posted about the trial run of Neurontin. It didn't work. I was still having the ice pick headaches and the lack of balance didn't go away. So now I am back to the muscle relaxant I've been taking for quite some time now, but take it 3 times a day instead of just at bedtime. This has been the case for a couple of weeks now. They still aren't gone but may have decreased in frequency some.

So, this is supposed to be a blog about homeschooling, right? Well, we've hit two snags.

One of my girls has fallen behind in her schoolwork. I've been preoccupied with lots of things this month and wasn't doing my job of checking in to be sure they were staying on track. She is nearly 3 weeks behind in her English class and 1.5 weeks behind in Math. We made a plan today to get her caught back up, but it will be a good amount of extra work.

I was trying to finish up the application process at PCC for my oldest and am on hold for now. We are homeschoolers through a private school. Legally speaking, my children are private school students. PCC requires students dual enrolling to be a resident of Polk County, be enrolled in a public school, private high school with an articulation agreement, or be in a home school registered with the Polk County School Board. The articulation agreement being the key words. I contacted the dual enrollment coordinator to request the “Polk Community College Early Admission Application for Private Schools (by agreement)” described in their Dual Enrollment At A Glance brochure. Seems they don't have a document by that name. They do have a dual enrollment application, but it is the same for public, private or homeschool students. I asked about the articulation agreement, and they are just confused. The Dual Enrollment Coordinator stated that I should fill out the Home School Dual Enrollment Agreement. That form is for homeschoolers, which we (legally speaking) are not. Even if we were, their forms are incorrect. They require in that form that you sign (as a homeschool family) that you can provide documentation that you have registered the child home study school as a non-public school with the state of Florida and that you file the Annual Non-Public School Survey. Families registered with the school board of their county in the Home Education Program, wouldn't do either of those. I sent a document from the Home Education Foundation, a group that works with Florida legislators on matters related to home education, whether through the Home Ed program or through a private school as we are. The document explains how to deal with students wishing to dual enroll from non-traditional private schools. After sending this information I called the D.E. Coordinator again, she said they are researching the issue. So we are on hold there.

PCC was in the news today, their name change has been approved. The school will now be called Polk State College. I think Sunshine State College would have been a better name. Polk State is a little weird since, well, Polk isn't a state! Now they need to settle on a new logo.

Schoolwork tomorrow, teachers' meeting on Thursday, cleaning some more rentals Friday, and a quiet weekend, I think, I hope.

Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin

2009-03-10T08:12:00.001-04:00

into the future....

Last week slipped away. It wasn't terribly busy, but we were on the go a lot. I had my dentist appointment Monday. We had PE and Art co-op on Tuesday. Wednesday the girls finished up their science fair projects, making the display boards. I went grocery shopping to get the ingredients for two months work of bulk cooking. Thursday morning we went to set up the science fair projects and meet with the judges. Thursday night was the award celebration. Friday I went to Phil's community and cleaned one of his vacant homes to get it ready for sale. Saturday morning Phil did most of the bulk cooking for me. We went to walk around Lake Morton and feed the birds. The girls went for their first swim of the year yesterday. I wish I'd taken pictures but I didn't think to until the girls were already in the house. The water is only 76 degrees, much too cold for me. I prefer the water to be around 85 or so, which means I don't usually swim until late June or so. I did some more grocery shopping, and other than that it was a nice calm weekend.

We went up to a nearby hill to watch the shuttle launch last night. We are in the Highlands section of Lakeland, and went less than a mile to a spot that provides a great unobstructed view of Lakeland. It was beautiful. The sun had just set, so it was lighting the contrail in shades of pink and orange. The sky was so clear you could see the solid rocket boosters separate and fall. The shuttle was clear for a very long time. We could only see the light of course, so it looked like a moving star, but it was beautiful.

I have been spending the morning working on the details for getting Tori enrolled at PCC. Last week we submitted an online application through Facts.org, the state run website that brings together a huge amount of upper level education information. Tori received a letter Saturday letting her know she'd been provisionally admitted to PCC. This is just a formality, as the school has open enrollment. I need to clarify whether Tori can enroll as a dual enrollment student while being enrolled in the private school we've used for years, or if she will need to convert to being enrolled in the Home Education Program. The private school we use is not located in our county, and I don't believe it has an "articulation agreement", so she may have to switch from being legally a private school student, to being registered with the county as a home education student. It will make no difference in the way we homeschool or the way college works for her, but it is a formality to be dealt with.

The girls did well at the science fair.

Tori's project was called Project Peppermint. She found the idea for the project at ScienceBuddies.com They have a survey you can complete to help you find a project that meets your interests. Her project was about whether the taste of peppermint will improve your reaction time. She used a website with an online reaction time test and gave volunteer participants instructions to take the test, make note of their average time result, then to take the test again with a peppermint in their mouth. She collected some identifying data from the participants and entered those into Excel to be able to sort the results using several different criteria. She found that participants under 35 years old generally did better with the peppermint or stayed the same. Participants over 35 generally did worse with the peppermint or stayed the same. It was quite interesting. She won a Grand Champion award. I tried to get a picture with her display and the ribbon, but each time I went to take the shot, there were people taking her test.

Beth's project was about growing sugar crystals. She was testing to see if starting with different temperatures of water to make the simple syrup would result in differing amounts of crystal growth. We discovered growing sugar crystals can be difficult. At one point it seemed the project wasn't going to be successful, so she was going to switch to one about pennies and lemon juice. We noticed on the second day of the new project that her sugar mixes had started to grow crystals, so she switched back. She found that the hotter the water, the more crystals you grow. There were a few other crystal projects in the fair. Beth won a Participant award.

Lili did a project about killing plants. She was testing to see whether removing the water, the soil, or the sun would result in the death of a plant faster. She found it was the lack of water. It took a couple of days to die, and did not recover once she started watering again. The other plants showed little decay at all. There were several projects using plants at the fair as well, all slightly different projects. Lili won a Participant award.

Evie did a project involving peripheral vision. She mad a large protractor out of cardboard and several different colored basic shapes on popsicle sticks. Her participants would hold the cardboard protractor in front of their face while Evie would hold up a shape at one end and gradually move it toward the center. The participants would let her know at which point they could see the color and shape. She found red was most easily spotted and yellow was most difficult. Circles were most difficult to distinguish, triangles were easiest. Evie won a Grand Champion award.

I think Tori and Evie's projects being unique helped quite a bit. Both projects were interactive as well, the judges and other visitors were able to try the project themselves.

Today I will be making a large batch of egg sandwiches and another of french toast. I cook them now and freeze for quick breakfasts later. The egg sandwiches get microwaved for about 30 seconds to warm them up, the french toast slices just go into the toaster. We have PE and Art co-op Tuesday and a field trip to Crystal Springs on Thursday. Saturday is Justin and Season's wedding.

PCC- Here she comes!

2009-03-09T14:53:00.001-04:00

I checked the website for PCC-Polk Community College this weekend and found they now have the schedule for the Summer '09 term and course listing available. During the Summer session there are classes that are in the 8, 10 or 12 week range, which are considered to run the length of that term. There are also 6 week classes in term 3A or term 3B. Tori wants to take an in person class, not one of the online or hybrid classes, and we need to stick with either the Lakeland campus or possibly classes at the Airside building, near the Lakeland airport. Taking a full summer session class is preferable to the even shorter 6 week classes.

I went through the online catalog with Tori's college plan in hand and knowing that the idea of taking College Algebra as her first class might not pan out. We'd been advised that the courses are heavily compressed and that such a difficult course may not be the best choice. After eliminating the classes that were online, hybrid, held at another campus, or not in her college plan at all, we weren't left with many choices. For the full summer term she could choose from Intro to Sociology or Human Anatomy & Physiology I, that's it. Dual enrolled students have to wait to register until regular students have a chance, so it's possible those two classes will be full by the time it's her turn to register. I suggested she also pick some classes from Term 3A or 3B as backups. So, she picked Wellness Concepts and US History 1877-Today as options. Both are available in both 3A and 3B. College Algebra is also listed in the six week class listing, but having the class so compressed and reviews at Rate My Professor.com that describe the teacher as good but speedy, left us deciding that class can wait until the fall.

So now we need to fill out the application and other forms and find out whether we need to switch from being registered with a private school to being registered with the county. The private school we are using, Florida Unschoolers, is in a different county, so it may or may not be an issue.

On a side note, the girls went nuts this weekend. They went for a walk down the street and noticed some coconuts set out with other lawn debris for pickup. They took them and brought them home to open. They worked on them for quite awhile, using many different tools from the garage, but they were able to open them. I don't care for the taste or smell of coconut ever, but to smell these obviously too long on the ground nuts was just terrible. Beth said the milk smells like coconut wine, good and fermented. Blech! They had fun, that's all that really matters.

I had a dentist appointment this morning. No new cavities, plenty still to be dealt with. We have PE and Co-op tomorrow and the science fair on Thursday. It's a fairly lightweight week, let's hope it stays that way.

Strange day ahead

2009-03-04T10:34:00.000-05:00

You know how some mornings you can tell right away that the day is going to be a little different than normal? Not always different in a bad way, but enough to keep you on your toes?

When I was getting my shower this morning, combing conditioner through my hair, I realized that I may or may not have actually washed my hair first. I couldn't remember. So of course I had to wash it just in case, then condition again. The whole time I was fighting with the shower curtain, I swear it was attacking me. About a week ago the hose popped off the end of the shower sprayer. I was shaving my legs and had the handle of the sprayer draped over my shoulder so it wouldn't wash away the shaving cream until I was ready. I moved it to my other shoulder and the hose just fell off the end of the sprayer. Then the hose went wild.

It looked sort of like this, minus the grass and the fireman of course.

Anyway, Phil found an old shower nozzle to put up. I took out the little piece that reduces the water flow. I know we should be saving water, but who wants to take a shower that takes 5 minutes to just rinse out the shampoo? Without the little plastic piece the shower head is really strong. When you turn it on the water sprays so hard it bounces against the far wall and sometimes out of the shower. When you get in you have to fight the shower curtain as it is being sucked in against your legs, but it's worth it because the pressure is so strong it's like a thousand little fingers massaging your neck and shoulders. You do have to crouch a little since the spray nozzle is so low without the handle, but it will do for now and didn't cost anything. Did you know there are several theories about why the shower curtain blows in? I looked it up. You can read a summary of some of the theories here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shower-curtain_effect Did you know that pretty much any question you could ever think up has been asked and answered on a website somewhere. Of course you did, but still that's pretty cool!

So, back to the weird day. I actually made breakfast today. Banana muffins. I think it only happened because Phil took the mix out of the cabinet last night and left it on the counter and pointedly said. "Here, have these for breakfast tomorrow." I'm so not a morning person that it usually doesn't occur to me to use the muffin mixes that I purposely purchase to use for breakfasts. That idea usually occurs to me when I am in the baking cabinet getting out a cookie mix or the really big mixing bowls in the late afternoon or evening.

Tori just called her English I teacher to do an oral quiz. Her regular teacher just went on maternity leave, so she has a sub. The sub is the first mom I met in Lighthouse, the homeschool support group we've been part of for eight years now. Her name is Jacque Whitehead, and I believe she helped start Lighthouse. She was always very welcoming and helpful, so I'm delighted she will be Tori's teacher.

I mentioned to Phil recently that our azalea plant didn't seem to be blooming. You can't see if from in the house, it's on side and can only really be seen when driving up to the house. I had been noticing the azaleas blooming in just about every other yard in Lakeland. This morning as I'm playing with the dogs, I notice through the front window that our bushes are covered in pretty pink flowers. They aren't azaleas, but are the exact same color. I call them firecracker flowers because they look like mini fireworks. Hmm, that means fireworks flowers would make more sense. Oh well. They are really called, Loropetallum chinense `Zhuzhou Fuschia', firecracker flowers is much easier to remember. Aren't they lovely. Ignore how out of control and in need of a clipping they are, just focus on the pretty.

The African Iris are about to bloom en masse. I usually call those popcorn flowers, Phil calls them frickin iris. Usually there are just one or two blooms, but there looks to be about 2 dozen flowers ready to open under the girls' bedroom windows. There is lantana blooming in another corner and the bougainvillea is starting to come back after being burnt by the freeze a couple of weeks ago. The lawn is still a mess, but it doesn't really bother me. I'm not an outdoorsy gardening type of girl. I like to look and not have to touch.

Laundry is running, pot roast for dinner, grocery shopping this afternoon, and work with the girls on their science fair projects. We have a field trip to pack groceries at Viste (Volunteers In Service to The Elderly) tomorrow morning, followed by art co-op which was supposed to happen yesterday, but we were able to move the day. We also skipped PE yesterday, it was pretty cold and that aggravates Lili's asthma and gives me back spasms. Friday is Lit Club, and Justin and Alissa will come for the weekend.

I have terrific kids!

2009-02-28T11:39:00.001-05:00

This past week was really busy. We had regular schoolwork assignments to complete Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We had our Homeschool PE class on Tuesday, doing the last day of Presidential Physical Fitness testing. Wednesday, I had a doctor appointment that ended up taking four hours. That morning, I also had a job interview, though I ended up turning down the position. On Thursday, we had the monthly teachers' meeting for our homeschool group. I set up a scavenger hunt for the older kids in the group that ended with a party at my house. And we had the normal everyday cleaning, shopping, bill paying, laundry hating days as well.

All week long I was asking the girls for extra help to get through the long to-do lists. None of them complained at all, not even a sigh or eye roll! They are good girls, but we all have bad days from time to time. Not this week. They couldn't have been more willing and helpful. I made sure to let them know how I noticed and how much I appreciated their help, or at least I tried. I don't think it's possible to truly convey how much of a help they were, how I understand that not all kids are so willing and gracious. We are taking this weekend easy. Phil just took the girls on a hike and I stayed home to do laundry. It's nice to not have anything big on the agenda.

The photo scavenger hunt was a social for the Plus kids. I found a bunch of lists of scavenger hunt items online and picked out the things I found most interesting or fun. The kids split off into small groups, families switching children here and there. They took their lists with the instructions to take as many pictures from the list as they wanted and to meet back at my house in 1.5 hours. When everyone arrived, I uploaded their photos to my computer, and we watched them in a slide show on the tv while snacking. It worked out really well and the kids had a good time seeing each other's photos and listening to the explanations. There were some really creative solutions to some of the picture assignments. Here are a few photos from our group.

Jessica, Courtney, Colton & Brandon - Empty KFC bucket

Kyle & Kurt - All team members hugging

Stacy, Amber & Victoria - Silly Faces

Ashley, Nicole, Dalton & Austin - Yellow Car

Tori, Chloe & Jennifer - All kids on same piece of playground equipment

Beth, Lili, Evie & Anne Marie - Toilet Seat

Madison, Gabi, Frank & Selina - Can't believe we all fit

Beth, Lili, Evie & Anne Marie - Flag flying

Next week we have Homeschool PE, Art Co-op, a community service project for Viste, and Lit Club. I'm the discussion leader for the literature group for the older Plus kids in our homeschool group. I selected Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements for this month's book. The book is about a boy who wakes up invisible one morning and how he and his family deal with that problem. I have two sequels to read as well. So I'll be reading all three this week to get refreshed and prepared for the discussion. Beth and I need to go over her Algebra work. She's struggling a bit, and I'm not really much help. If we can't get through it then we'll need to give her teacher a call.

The sky is falling, no wait, it's just the ceiling.

2009-02-23T15:04:00.000-05:00

Almost a month ago in one of my posts, I made a brief mention about part of our garage ceiling collapsing-which at first to me sounded like a car crashing into the house. It's getting worse.

My husband noticed the garage before it happened. We'd seen quite some time ago that the drywall seams in the garage were separating from the drywall itself in some places. No big deal, it's a garage. The house is 30 years old, we've lived here 8 years, it has and will continue to need repairs. The spots where we'd noticed problems in the past were closest to the garage door opener, lots and lots of vibration. The attic isn't insulated, we live in FL with all the heat and humidity, we've had several hurricanes and tropical storms the past 5 years or so, and so on. It was strange that the drywall just dropped-the nails were still in the ceiling, and that it basically shattered when it hit the ground, but, I thought it was just a garage problem.

About a week ago, I decided the girls' bathroom ceiling needed painting. It had previously been stripped of it's popcorn coating while having a hole repaired. I can't remember if the hole was part of the plan of replacing the bathroom fan, or an unfortunate accident. When scraping off popcorn ceilings, we did this in the living room as well, we found the ceiling drywall had not been painted. Phil painted the living room and either he or I (I think I'm blocking this memory) painted the bathroom. Who knew you should use semi gloss paint in a bathroom on the ceiling? We used flat. Flat paint is porous. Bathrooms, even with fans, are humid. Humidity gets into the porous paint and causes it to peel. Humidity also gets to the poorly applied hole repair paper tape stuff and causes it to peel. A peeling bathroom ceiling is just icky.

Cut to this this weekend. My brother in law Justin was here with his daughter Alissa. We took advantage of his knowledge of how to properly apply drywall seam tape and asked him to repair the bad spot in the bathroom. While explaining the past repair attempt, he and Phil got to talking about repairing the ceiling in the garage. Phil came into the family room to point out a crack in the ceiling near the a/c vent, and noticed just to the left of the crack, the drywall tape in that spot is failing. Lovely. What I'd chalked up to humidity and insulation problems are occurring in a non-humid, well insulated, non vibrated ceiling. That's just great. As Scarlet would say, I'll worry about that tomorrow. That happened quite literally, but I needed to deal with the bathroom ceiling right then.

I scraped the bathroom ceiling Saturday, getting the spots where the paint was clearly peeling. Justin fixed the tape problem Saturday afternoon. Sunday afternoon, Justin did sanding of the repaired spot. I checked to make sure we had all the supplies needed to repaint. Phil bought the paint. :) Today, Tori sanded the scraped parts of the ceiling, then she and I painted again, with semi gloss paint. I normally don't mind painting, but I don't like painting ceilings, not even a little. Tori did the edges where the ceiling meets the wall. It's much easier for her to climb up and down on a chair to reach the edges with the careful touch needed to not end up with white graffiti on the pale green walls. I did the main ceiling. I ended up looking like I'd sprinkled salt in my hair, on my clothes and on my glasses. It (the ceiling) looks better, hopefully it doesn't peel again.

I also finished entering all the audio books that had been donated to our homeschool group into a database and got that up on to a website for our members to use. I'm so glad that project is done. I put more effort into it than was probably necessary. I get carried away with things like that sometimes. I didn't mind the process, but it took way too long. We are having a photo scavenger hunt social for the Plus kids (10 yrs +) in our support group here at the house this Thursday, so I'll need to find some boxes to get the tapes out of the dining room. It would be great if many of the families request tapes quickly so I can get them out of the house completely.

I still need to clean the freezer half of the fridge, I did the fridge half on Saturday morning. We also got the bookcases cleaned up, cleaned the back yard and pool deck again, purchased or located all the supplies for the science fair projects, and introduced Justin and Alissa to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie this weekend. I haven't even thought about laundry today until just now. We are all snuffly with allergies. The girls are playing loudly right behind me. Dinner is cooking in the crock pot, spaghetti tonight. I'm tired and feeling grumpy but trying to keep it to myself. We have PE tomorrow, the last day of Presidential Physical Fitness testing, so we can't skip. I think I'll go lay down for a bit. I need a nap.

A typical day in the life of this homeschool family

2009-02-18T16:25:00.001-05:00

I just found this post I'd written a little over a week ago, but never posted. I don't know why that happened, but here it is, a glance into my recent past.

I made notes one day last week of a typical homeschool day for our family, up until dinner time anyway. This is the first chance I've had to post it, as we've been a little busier than normal. I'm often curious about the daily goings on of other homeschoolers, so maybe this will satisfy the curiosity of someone else.

9:00 Just got up, checking email and news headlines. Phil just left for work. Lili is already awake, had breakfast and is working on schoolwork.

9:15 Evie is up and having cereal for breakfast.

9:30 Tori and Beth are up; both are having cereal, Beth only eats breakfast about 50% of the time.

9:45 Beth and Tori are starting on schoolwork.

10:00 Clearing some email, having first Coke, getting on to Evie to finish her schoolwork.

10:15 Shower then contemplating whether to start laundry or if it cant wait until tomorrow.

11:00 Second Coke, helping Beth with Algebra, Lili has finished her schoolwork, get on to Evie to finish her schoolwork

11:15 Looking for an online algebra calculator - I'm terrible at Algebra!!

11:45 Finished helping Beth with Algebra, yes it took that long for us to work through 5 problems, one is almost definitely wrong. I suggest she call her teacher and ask for help. I call Phil and ask him to look online for some software that you can enter an algebra problem and it shows both the answer and how to work it out. I think there must be something out there that does this. Lili is working on her daily job (chore). Get on to Evie to finish her schoolwork.

11:55 Tori lets me know she has reached the last day in spelling, the last day I have prepped that is. Tori starts on her daily job. I switch a load of laundry, I decided not to wait until tomorrow.

12:10 Trying to figure out how to get the audio book database to Lighthouse members in the easiest way. There are 838 books on tape and almost 100 video tapes.

12:30 Girls are eating lunch and I am entering more books into the database. Just switched laundry again.

1:45 Still working on database, but stopped at some point to make up a grocery list.

2:10 Going to the park, then the library, then grocery shopping. I need to grab something to eat, I forgot to have lunch.

4:50 Home from our errands, Tori drove the whole way, Phil pulled in the driveway right behind us. We visited the main public library as well as the E-Library, went to the Common Ground Park and got a full week of groceries.

Today has been essentially the same. Beth has discovered recently that waking up earlier leaves her feeling more rested and in a better mood, so she hasn't been the last one up the past few days. We didn't run errands today, the girls have spent that time selecting science fair projects. Tori is doing a survey project about response times and Beth is doing a sugar crystal project, Evie is going to do a project on peripheral vision. Lili is still trying to select a project.

We had two visits from the cable company today to reinstall our cable phone service, so we can switch the phone number over to our cell phone company. That doesn't make any sense, does it? If you ever plan to switch from a landline to cell phone service and want to keep your home number, be sure to get the process completed through the cell phone company before you disconnect the service with the landline phone company. This process has been going on for almost 3 weeks now, it's crazy.

I have a field trip tomorrow, but the girls do not. I set up an informational seminar with FLVS for the interested homeschool families in our support group. A speaker will explain and demonstrate how FLVS work and the parents can ask questions and try it out. It can seem overwhelming at first but we have really enjoyed the classes. Hopefully this seminar will answer all of their questions and be helpful for their families.

Laundry is happening, but that is the case more often than not. Tacos are for dinner tonight. The weather has been beautiful so we've been keeping the house open. Pollen is horrendous so there has been quite a lot of sneezing. I need to scrape the ceiling in the girls bathroom so I can repaint it this weekend. Who knew you need to use semi gloss on bathroom ceilings so the paint won't peel? I didn't. We are supposed to have a table at a garage sale in the community Phil manages. I haven't picked out a single thing to sell. I am almost finished with the audio book database. Hooray!

Side Effects

2009-02-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

When I went to the doctor yesterday I was expecting to get a nerve block, instead I got a prescription. After going over my history and listening to my description of my headaches since the last nerve block, the doctor wasn't sure it was the right step to take. He did an exam where he pressed on the nerve bundle that would have received the injection. If I'd immediately experienced one of the ice pick headaches or if it had been painful, then it would be an indication that the nerve block is the right way to go. He did this on both sides of my head and it felt the same in either place. He looked through his notes and found this was the same result when he did this exam before giving me the block last time. He asked if I'd consider a prescription this time, I agreed if it would accomplish the same thing, as I am still nervous about the injection for the block. I don't have a needle phobia, I do have a needle going into the back of my head phobia. I was given a prescription for 600 mg of Neurontin and am to come back in 2 weeks.

I took the medication last night, by itself. I asked the doctor if I could take this with the other medications I am taking, he said the computer would block the prescription if there were problems. I think it's a great safety measure that is in place, but it definitely isn't foolproof. I'm allergic to codeine and penicillin, and a couple of years ago a prescription for a codeine based medication made it through this same computer system, rather it made it made it through because the nurses entering the prescription hit okay when the system popped up error messages. Hmmm... That and a really bad reaction to an antibiotic in the past have left me vigilant about reading the slips from the pharmacy that come with medications, even after usually reading the information online before I drop off the prescription. I trust the doctors and the nurses, but I know they can just as easily make mistakes as I can.

So, I took the pill last night before going to read in bed. Tiredness and drowsiness are the first listed side effects, so bed was the place to be. It didn't kick in right away that I could tell, it was about two hours before I started to feel anything, but half an hour after that I was gone. I don't think I moved at all once I closed my eyes. This is a good thing. I've always had a hard time getting to sleep, I take melatonin every night (except last night) to help with this problem. I woke up this morning feeling good, wide awake, upset stomach was gone, no headaches. Then I got out of bed. I must have looked like the ball in a pinball machine. I was going left and right, grabbing the bedpost, grabbing the dresser, banging into the bathroom doorjamb. This isn't good. I head out to get a drink thinking it's just a bit of fogginess in my brain or something, bouncing my way down the hall and zig-zagging through the kitchen. Okay, no PE today, I'm not driving anywhere. I send a note to the PE director to inform her of my absence, I have been a helper at the shuttle run event for the Presidential Physical Fitness program. I head back to bed thinking maybe I just need a little more sleep. That didn't happen, I was wide awake.

So here we are. The girls are taking the day easy and so am I. Laundry is the only thing on the agenda now. I feel fine, I just wobble when I walk. I had an upset stomach last night, so took the pill without having had any dinner. Maybe it will be better tonight/tomorrow morning, we'll see. The house is open to the stunning weather and I'm off to read some more. Wait, the girls just asked to go to the park. I tell them I can't drive. In unison Lili and Evie tell me Tori can drive. Hey, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe we can go out, we'll see.

What a weekend

2009-02-09T11:25:00.000-05:00

The weather couldn't have been prettier this weekend. I love these kinds of days in winter. It's cool and pleasant but not cold enough that you need a jacket. We have the house open and can hear the birds outside and hear the fountain in the turtle's pond. It's a perfect day.

I spent part of the time each day this weekend working on cataloging the audio books we received from the library. They are all in a list now, but are still in piles on the floor. We have them divided into stacks by first letter of the author's last name, at least that was the plan. The girls were doing the sorting, and at least one of them was sorting part of the time by the name of the narrator instead of the author. Oh my. We still need to go through and pick out the ones we want to keep, oh and get a tape player, that would be a big help. I will print out the list and share it with the Lighthouse families and let them choose what they'd like. Phil said he has some big boxes at the office, so we will box them and probably keep them in the garage and pull the sets as requested. It won't get hot enough in there to damage them for awhile, I hope.

I took Tori out driving again this weekend. Saturday we did a couple of laps through our neighborhood then I drove us to a neighborhood in the making, just roads, no homes. She practiced there for a bit and was able to get up a little more speed. I then took her out into traffic. She did great, her hands were shaking quite a bit of the time, but she did really well. We ended up doing a tour of South Lakeland. The only real trouble she had was in a Publix parking lot. She was in one of the outside driving lanes of the lot and someone was coming out of the lane towards her and drove into the other driving lane a little. This spooked Tori and she drove up onto the curb. I'm pretty sure it was the only time I grabbed the door handle. She drove the rest of the way home, but hasn't tried parking in the garage yet. That will have to wait awhile. Our driveway is really steep, you have to hit the gas to get up to the garage but be ready to brake fast enough to not go through the wall into the kitchen.

We went to a bridal shower for my brother in law Justin and his fiance Season. It was held in the clubhouse of an apartment complex Phil and I lived in before we had kids. You could see our old apartment from the clubhouse, so we pointed it out to the girls. It seems so long ago, but then it should. Phil and I have been married 19 years tomorrow. How is that possible? I've been married now longer than I haven't been married. I got Phil cologne, Intimately by David Beckham, it's a light fresh scent. He got us a new bedroom set, a chocolate and gray/blue design. They go great together. :)

I received a call from a friend Saturday night that she was on her way home with news that her house was on fire. She was asking for me to spread the word and ask for prayers. Fortunately the family was safe, though they lost one of their dogs. The fire started near the air conditioner, which was at the same end of the house as the bedrooms. If it had been a couple of hours later, the family would have been sleeping. That's just terrifying. While they have a lot of smoke and water damage, the house was saved. They have family in the neighborhood they were able to stay with and the insurance company was coming today. I hope they can get everything restored quickly, at least the material things. I imagine it would take awhile to start to feel safe again. I made sure to check the smoke detectors in our house were working. Lili checked the kitchen one again yesterday while making grilled cheese sandwiches. :)

Today I will be doing some work for my husband, data entry of some office records, then I have an appointment to see my neurologist to get an occipital nerve block. I have been struggling for years with two different types of headaches. I get tension headaches, the type that (for me) feel like someone has placed a steel clamp around my head and is tightening that clamp more and more, and ice pick headaches which feel like what it would probably feel like to be stabbed in the head with an ice pick-clever name isn't it. With the tension headaches the pain is always the worst in my forehead, and as crazy as it sounds, I always think that if I could just remove the bone that is my forehead, all the pressure would be relieved and I'd feel better. These headaches come and go but last for 3 to 4 days at a time. I've been taking a prescription muscle relaxant for about 2 years now that really helps to keep them away, but unfortunately has a pretty big and negative impact on my memory.

The ice pick headaches, aka primary stabbing headaches are the reason for the doctor visit today. These headaches are a sharp and very fast jab of pain. Most people have kicked a bedpost or dresser in the middle of the night and experienced the pain that is so sharp and unexpected that it takes your breath away and leaves you feeling momentarily nauseous. I get these headaches up to a couple dozen times a day. They are there and gone often before you even have a chance to realize what happened. My doctor gave me a medication that usually works for these, Indomethecin, but it made me terribly sick and I couldn't continue taking it. I think the muscle relaxant medication was working on these headaches as well but is starting to lose its effectiveness or else they are just getting worse, so I'm back to the nerve block. I've had this done once before, about two years ago. The block was placed at the same appointment my doctor mentioned it to me, I didn't have much time to think or worry about it and would have done anything to get rid of the pain then, it was that frequent and severe. The block completely stopped the ice pick headaches for about 6 months, which I now understand is longer than many will experience the relief. They started to come back gradually, so gradually that I wasn't willing to have the block done again. I'd had the time to think about the needle being stuck into my skull and was sufficiently freaked out that I just couldn't do it, but they have increased in frequency again, to the point that I need the block more than I fear it.

This week should be a calm one. We have PE tomorrow, and co-op on Thursday, no field trips this week. Tori needs to do some work on the kids newsletter for our homeschool group, she is the editor and is struggling with a lack of articles from the kids in the group. I need to do just a little grocery shopping and of course there is the never ending laundry cycle to continue. I'm looking forward to having the time to rest.

Baby its cold outside

2009-02-04T13:18:00.000-05:00

Have you heard any of the great variations of that song? This one is really cute. I like that they switched the roles.

I just caught Vinta sunbathing. I had to take the picture through the door, otherwise he will dive into his pond or beg at the wall to come in and play with the dogs. He'll be warmer in his sunlamp for now, I'll bring him in later. Cold is relative, I know. It's 56 outside right now at 1:30 in the afternoon, for central Florida, that's a really cold day.

A vanload of books, on tape

2009-02-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

I received an email from the meeting room coordinator at our local library the other day. She said the library is removing all of the children's books on tape from circulation and was offering them to our homeschool group. I jumped at the opportunity. The girls and I went down to see what they had and ended up taking them all. The tape sets were on shelves and racks in a back room of the library. As we looked through we were reminded of favorite books from the past and saw others that we have on our bookshelves now or plan to read later. We started selecting the books my kids would be interested in and then started adding those we thought some of our homeschooling friends might like. We were picking more than we were passing over. The homeschool group we are in is very large. This year we have 133 families participating with almost 350 children. I know my girls enjoyed listening to books on tape when they were younger, I figured most kids like them. It was too hard to try and pick what we thought others may be interested in, and there were many my kids wanted, so we took them all. It's a good thing I have one of the larger mini-vans, it's hard to gauge how many books are on a shelf or rack. I backed the van up to the loading dock and we put the books directly into the back, and when that filled, we put them in the back row of seats as well.

Sorry about the bad picture, I didn't realize the flash was turned off. We unloaded the books to my dining room table, and then to the chairs as well. I found some software online to catalog the books, once I have a list I'll offer the books to the group. I'm guessing there are 700-800 books and some VHS tapes on my table right now, so I think it will take awhile.

I've been sick since last Thursday or Friday. What started with a sore throat moved into a head cold and now is a chest cold. Bleh! As least I can breathe through my nose now. We missed our nephew Tim's wedding over the weekend because three of us were sick. My brother in law Justin and niece Alyssa are coming to spend the weekend with us tomorrow. Hopefully they don't pick up this icky cold.

We are supposed to have a hard freeze tonight, so Vinta the turtle will be coming in to spend the night in the bathtub. He normally lives in a pond on our back porch. We are pretty sure Vinta is a Florida Cooter, and we've had him for at least 13 years. Our hibiscus was just starting to green up again after getting burned by the freeze a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure the girls will be putting out bowls of water to freeze and will probably ask Phil to turn on the sprinklers to see ice on the lawn. The yard has a sort of camouflage look right now, which is kind of funny when you think that camo is meant to make other things blend into the look of grass and plants. Our is different colors due to lack of rain, the hard freeze we already had, overzealous weed spraying and poor maintenance. None of us have green thumbs and it shows.

We have to be out early tomorrow for field trips. We need to leave by 8am, and we are so not early birds. I am taking Tori and Beth and my friend Jeannette's daughter to a Career Expo at a local high school. She is taking Lili and Evie with her two youngest to a field trip at the main post office. We have a co-op playdate after our trips are done, as much for the moms as it is for the kids.

Feeling worn out but energized-huh?

2009-01-30T21:34:00.000-05:00

This past week has been a doozy, today took the cake. We had the interview at PCC Monday morning, then drove to Jacksonville to stay with my best friend DeeDee and her family. DeeDee is a much better host than I am. She eats really healthy foods, we eat regular food, meaning the kind you don't take much time to think about. We brought some food in order to not overburden her grocery budget, but she bought food that would appeal to us. So sweet. I picked up the ingredients for some chip dip she made while we were there that was just wonderful. I'm not going to say what the ingredients are because it's so embarrassingly easy that I don't want to admit that I'm such a bad cook that I didn't have a clue about how to make it.

The kids got to play on the trampoline, check out the creek and mostly play on the game systems. We have computers but no game systems. My girls enjoyed theirs but we aren't missing having one here. We took them geocaching near a small creek and on the beach. Lili caught a fish, sortof. Beth, Tori and Koty flew a kite. Evie and Mikki collected shells. Notice Lili is in shorts and a jacket, it was a weird kind of day.

DeeDee and I went out for dinner and to see Revolutionary Road. Dinner was great, the movie was terrible and I got sick. That whole day was really misty/foggy and that night it was kind of beautiful the way the lights would shine through. This picture doesn't really do justice.

We had the plan for me to help DeeDee with her website, www.deedeesongs.com but with all the talking, we never even got started. I was supposed to help her with it from here today, but today just sort of disappeared.

We headed home Wednesday just after lunch and drove through heavy rains pretty much the whole way. Tori sat up front with me so Beth could have the whole back row to herself to stretch out. On the drive up she wasn't feeling well with either a mild cold or bad allergies and needed to sleep. On the way home she just wanted that much space to herself again. Lili usually sits in the back row with Beth, Evie and Tori are usually in the captain's chairs. Lili and Beth made the plan without checking with Tori, which she made sure I knew, but didn't really complain. She was a nice driving companion, it's easier to carry on a conversation with her sitting right next to me instead of behind.

We had the teachers' meeting for our homeschool group on Thursday, planning and signing up for field trips, gabbing with friends, enjoying a nice but windy day. I had planned to do a GPS scavenger hunt/geocache with the older kids in our group, but didn't hear from enough parents with GPS units. So I switched to do a simple get to know you game which the kids seemed to tolerate if not enjoy. It is hard to read teens sometimes, but I had almost 30 kids participating, so I think it went pretty well.

We were to have co-op after the meeting, but Jeannette (my co-op partner) had sick children running high fevers, so we put this week on hold. It was nice to have the afternoon to relax a little.

Today was supposed to be the day to really relax and catch up on the little things. When my husband Phil got home and asked what I did today I couldn't remember anything that could account for where the time had gone. It didn't seem like I accomplished much, but the day was very busy. Now I remember. I had an appointment for the cable tv to be cut and our home phone (also through the cable co) to be removed and had piles of laundry to be washed. I planned meals for the week and went grocery shopping. I made rookie driver magnets for the van for when Tori is driving. They turned out pretty well, I hope they stay on when we are driving.

I was on the phone with our cell phone co for about an hour trying to work out getting our home number switched over to a cell phone, that may or may not happen by the 13th of next month. Ugh! I paid some bills, voted on the new name for PCC, loaded up my bookcase some more, did some online shopping for school books, looked over science fair projects with the kids, and got a little freaked out when we heard a big bang outside. For some reason I thought a car had crashed into the house. If you saw my house you'd wonder why I would come to that confusion/conclusion. My house is on a hill, a steep hill, the driveway is just about a 45 degree angle. No car crash, I think that would be nearly impossible, it was just the ceiling of my garage crashing to the ground. Fortunately it was the half that wasn't over the new van and even more fortunately no one was in the garage when it happened. One of the girls had just been out there getting a soda and another had just gone through to get the mail. The girls bikes were covered with drywall, but no damage. We don't know why it fell, and the repairs will have to wait for awhile. Tomorrow is the wedding of one of our nephews in Orlando. Sunday I'm helping my parents with their taxes. I need to call DeeDee about the website at some point. And hopefully this sore throat and slight fever don't get any worse...

Dual Enrolling

2009-01-26T11:38:00.000-05:00

We met with the Dual Enrollment Coordinator at the Lakeland campus of PCC this morning to ask a few questions, to be sure that I wasn't missing anything and would be prepared for Tori to start in May. We will wait until just before she is ready to register to fill out the application and take the CPT tests. We'd planned for her to take College Algebra as her first class, as she will have just completed Algebra II through FLVS and I don't want her to lose any momentum or skills. But, the summer session is compressed, so taking a rigorous math class then might not be the best choice. We'll have to see how she does on the CPT, then may switch to taking an English course first and taking the Algebra course in the fall. The only question that didn't have a clear answer is whether we need to switch from being enrolled with a private school for homeschoolers to being registered with our county. We use a private/umbrella school that is located in Martin County while we live in Polk County. I will need to contact the local school board to see if they can provide any further information.

Barring any complications, Tori will be a PCC student in May.

We are off to spend a couple of days in Jacksonville with my very good friends DeeDee, Tony, Koty and Mikki.

Creating a homeschool transcript

2009-01-25T11:07:00.001-05:00

I've spent some time over the past couple of months planning for my oldest daughter to enter our local community college-PCC as a dual enrolled student, starting with the summer session this May. Our expectation is for all of our children to take classes through the dual enrollment program as part of their high school career. Ideally they will complete their AA or AS degree by the time they would finish high school. If not, then they will be close to doing so. This is partly due to the costs of college (dual enrolling is free except for the cost of books) and partly due to knowing our children well enough to expect this level of work. In my efforts to make this happen without an undue burden of work for them, I worked on a transcript and a plan for future classes. I also made a checklist to be sure they would meet or exceed the typical graduation requirements for a public school student and those of each of the different levels of the Bright Futures scholarship program. I realize Bright Futures may not exist by the time my children would be ready to use it, but feel it is a good basis for the minimum standard that may be required by other potential scholarships.

I know if my children are successful at reaching their AA degree by the time they finish high school, a transcript will not be necessary. Florida students completing their AA degree are guaranteed admission to a Florida university under the 2+2 plan, but choice of university is not guaranteed. I want to document all I can to increase my children's chances to attend the college they choose, hopefully USF since they have a Lakeland campus less than 10 minutes from home.

First of all, some basic information. Dual enrolled students may not enroll at our community college-PCC until they are 15 years old. Other community colleges may have different standards. Sophomores may take one class per semester. There are three semesters per year, so that would provide an average of 9 credit hours for the sophomore year. Juniors may take two classes per semester for an average of 18 credit hours for the junior year. Seniors may take up to 11 credit hours per semester as dual enrolled students. Seniors may also opt to switch to the early admission program which will allow them to take a full course load. You can read more about the dual enrollment/early admission program and other requirements for each at this website. Be sure to read through the handbook. Graduation from PCC with an AA degree requires the general education component of 36 semester credit hours plus other credit hours for a total of 60. You can see this information in the college catalog, starting on page 47.

We are using FLVS, Florida Virtual School for some of the girls classes in addition to our typical homeschool materials. If Tori were in a typical public or private school, she would be in the middle of her 9th grade year. Since we are homeschoolers, the grade assignment is just an arbitrary term, work can be done at any level or at no level depending on the subject and our choice. Tori has been taking high school level classes through FLVS since late 2005. The high school classes she took through FLVS when she was 11 years old and thereafter were the exact same classes and workload available to seniors in high school. I didn't want to penalize her early hard work by sticking with a typical transcript format. Most transcripts list coursework in a chronological format, all 9th grade work together in one section, 10th in another and so on. I chose to use a format that places her classes in subject order. I used the FL DOE Course listing to document some of our homeschool subjects by matching the subject material we covered as closely as possible to existing courses. I noted that I used this method on her transcript.

So, with the checklist I made for the mininums for graduation and scholarships, the transcript I created of her FLVS work and our homeschool work, and the classes needed for an AA degree, I made a plan for the next three years. I just went through and filled in the blanks, trying to arrange classes so they would naturally flow from one level of work to another and just have it make some sort of sense. I used the Dual Enrollment Equivalency List to be sure the courses taken through PCC would fit the requirements for a typical high school diploma and in so doing made sure all the class requirements for Bright Futures would be met. I'm not naive enough to think that a plan is what is absolutely going to happen, but this gives us a goal to reach for and a path to follow. Since Tori is my oldest, I haven't been through any of this before. It was an all new learning experience for me as her parent and as her guidance counselor. I used the same methods to make plans for the other girls at the same time.

I don't know if this will be helpful to anyone approaching this point in their educational plan, but here it is. If you are just curious, it's there for you as well. I've removed all of our identifying info, cause you never know who might be reading, but all the important info is there. Below the transcript is the form I made up to use as a checklist. If you want either of these files with Tori's info removed so you can fill in your own, please send me an email requesting them at homeschoolinginlakeland(at)gmail(dot)com

The Transcript

Anonymous Transcript PDF

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Other Academic Work dual enroll homeschool high scho

The College Plan

Tori's College PlanPDF

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Other Academic Work college plan homeschool high scho

Below I've summarized some of the information about Bright Futures as it stands right now.

Bright Futures has three different levels of scholarship awards. Bright Futures will pay for classes at a community college at 100% at any of the levels, but dual enrolled students are not eligble. I am not sure if early admission students are eligble. I have an interview at PCC tomorrow and that will be one of my questions.

Some universities are now charging a fee called "differential tuition" that will not be covered by Bright Futures.

The Florida Academic Scholars award is equal to 100% of tuition and allowable fees* plus the specified amount** established by the Florida Legislature in the General Appropriations Act provided for college-related expenses (excluding summer term) prorated by term and hours. The 100% applies only to public institutions. For those attending a private college, the award is a fixed award amount based on 100% of the average tuition and allowable fees covered at a comparable Florida public institution including the specified amount** established by the Florida Legislature in the General Appropriations Act provided for college-related expenses (excluding summer term) prorated by term and hours. The website above lists the qualification requirements for that level of award. The minimums are the same for public or private school students. Home Education students must meet the minimum SAT/ACT scores but do not have to prove the GPA or course load. They must be registered with their district home education program for both 11th and 12th grade.

The Florida Medallion Scholars award pays 100% at community colleges and 75% at public institutions or for private institutions a fixed award based on 75% of tuition at a comparable public institution. It has different minimum qualifications, listed at the above website. Home Education students must have a minimum 1070 SAT/23 ACT score *or* must have a minimum 970 SAT/20 ACT score and prove a minimum 3.0 GPA in a list of required core classes. Those core classes must be documented through Florida public, FDOE-registered private, FLVS or dual enrollment transcripts. Home Education credits do not apply here.

The Florida Gold Seal Vocational Scholars award pays at the same rate as the Medallion Scholars award, 75%, but has different standards. It is too complicated to summarize, but you can read about it at the link above.

Facts.org is a website for students and their parents to learn all about the various requirements for graduation, college admission, selecting a college, selecting a career, and so on. The website is incredibly helpful in pulling a vast amount of information together into one place but making it easy to navigate as well.

There is a section of the site called ePEP, which is an electronic personal education planner. This planner will pull transcript information from a student's public school record and compare it against several criteria. Home education students can also use the service by setting up an ID, but you will have to manually enter all of your information. You set up a login ID and password and then fill in your student's information. Since it isn't really set up for homeschoolers, I used the information on the school my daughter would be attending if she were in public school. For the student identifier number, I entered 9 zeros followed by a 1, this worked fine. They would use this number to pull the transcript, but since we don't have a number, I just used the format required. I used the standard/4 year/24 credit, College Prep diploma track. I did not select a career cluster, and chose college studies as the major area of interest. It was helpful in checking to see whether what I understand from my reading of many other websites was correct. I just discovered that the information I'd entered was not saved. I think this is because the system is designed to check for any transcript updates from official documents. When it didn't find Tori's transcript, it updated the fields to blanks. That's a shame. Perhaps they will add access for homeschoolers in the future.

I hope this was helpful. I the information here to hopefully help others, but also to be a reminder for me if I get confused or forgetful at some point. If you have any questions, please email me and I will answer what I can. homeschoolinginlakeland (at) gmail (dot) com.

One of those days

2009-01-23T18:50:00.001-05:00

Today has been a strange day. I accomplished a lot of little things, but I don't think I did any one thing that feels like it could justify where the time went. My desk is cleared, the girls schoolwork is done and checked. Dinner is cooking, lasagna with broccoli and garlic bread tonight. Most of the dishes are done, we had to run the dishwasher twice after taking the day off from chores yesterday. Two field trips are finalized, though I sent the information about them to the wrong people. I got my parents cell phones set up, that took about half a dozen phone calls. I didn't come close to dealing with the laundry, but I did think about it. If only I had some magical power that led from thinking about dirty laundry to it's actually being dealt with. That would make me one very happy momma. The things that seem like they should have only taken a couple of minutes have taken much longer. Those things I didn't think I'd be able to check off my mental or actual to do list for a week or more are done. It's leaving me feeling a little off kilter. My brother in law and niece are spending the weekend with us, then the girls and I are off to Jacksonville on Monday. Tomorrow I need to do the meal planning and shopping for the week. My bulk cooking supply is empty, so I'll have to think about whether to make that happen this week or to go back to a day to day plan for this week. I think I'll go to bed early and hopefully work it all out in my sleep.

Common Ground Park

2009-01-22T16:04:00.001-05:00

We visited the newly opened Common Ground Park today. It was pretty crowded for a weekday, most of the children were preschoolers as expected given the time, but I've never seen that many at one park at the same time. I've also never seen a park like this one. It's really amazing and has so much more to do than most playgrounds.

When you first enter the park you see a fairly steep hill, usually occupied by a sliding or rolling toddler. The hill is steep enough and the surface smooth enough that you can body surf your way down.

Under the hill is a tunnel, large enough for several children and wide enough for a wheelchair to fit through comfortably. Behind the hill is a large play structure with multiple levels. There is a rolling bar slide, an inverted climbing net, several regular slides and lots of things to climb. Underneath are several areas for pretend play.

Tori looks bored but was actually just tired and a little dizzy.

To the right is a hinged bar plaything, sort of like a combo teeter totter/caterpillar ride.

Surrounding this area are several spinning rides that you can sit or lay on to make yourself dizzy. My girls tried these out a lot.

There are baby swings, strap swings and swings that can support the whole body, whether for toddlers or children who don't have the strength or ability to sit in a strap swing. There is a section for making music and another with what my girls call a pizza swing. It's a shallow saucer shape big enough for several children or a parent and child to swing together. They have a simpler climbing play structure as well, the newer plastic and metal type seen at most playgrounds now. There are plenty of benches, picnic tables and low walls for parents to sit and watch and wait while the kids play.

The entire park is laid out in the shape of a butterfly. As you enter the park you find a map and a recording playing that explains the different areas of the park and how to identify the sections that would best fit your child's needs. The park was partially funded by the proceeds from the auction of the Kaleidoscope Butterflies in Flight sculptures. Several are present in the landscaping of the park. Children's music plays throughout the playground, loud enough to be enjoyable without being obnoxious. I haven't heard many of the tunes in years. Most of the play area has artificial grass, which I think must be more usable by those with walking difficulties or on wheels. At most playgrounds the surface is mulch which hides broken glass too well and often ends up coming home in shoes. An unfortunate byproduct of the plastic grass is the amount of static generated by playing children. We were giving each other major shocks the entire time. We really enjoyed this new park and will be sure to visit often.

A day in the sun

2009-01-22T15:24:00.000-05:00

When we left this morning to go to the Alafia River Rendezvous it was 30 degrees outside and the yard was covered with frost. I thought this picture Tori took is really beautiful. You may want to double click it to see the large version, the detail is great.

The girls made sure to write messages in the frost on my husband's car windows, he was still in the house snuggled up in our warm bed sleeping. We stopped to borrow some gloves from my mom and off we went. It is so rarely cold here that I didn't have any of my own. We all started out with warm shirts, jackets, gloves and hats, but slowly throughout the morning we were shedding bits and pieces. By the time we left the temp had jumped to 50, but with no clouds at all the sun made us feel much warmer. I'm pretty sure my face is sunburned but my toes are still cold. We had a great time at the Rendezvous this year, I found the pair of men that told us about making baskets from Saw Palmetto and Sabel Palm were the most interesting, mostly because we have both growing in our yard.

The kettle corn booth was lots of fun too.

We listened to a quartet of dulcimer players, then it turned into a trio while the fourth made a wooden doll dance to the music. It was delightful.

Dulcimer Dancer from Melissa B on Vimeo.

We talked to a trapper/trader for awhile about the skins he had, the buffalo hide was amazingly soft-it felt like cotton, and he had a skunk skin hat that was quite interesting to look at. He said it didn't smell, I took his word for it. We saw broom makers, yarn weavers, learned about the rifles used in that time, got to check out the inside of a teepee, and I shook my head at the explanation of how tea was worth it's weight in gold. Tea, blech.

This little girl stood nearby playing quietly with a string and a piece of wood while we listened to the broom maker. So adorable.

The girls got to do a little shopping at the trading posts, lots of looking, all that was purchased was edible. I did have to wonder at the bowl pictured below. I can't imagine what these were used for but I wasn't about to ask.

This year there was no one in strollers and it wasn't as windy as it has been in years past. I got to visit with a few of my really good mom friends, the kids did the same, and got to learn even more about the life of those that came before us. It's the biggest field trip our group attends each year, and at $6 for adults, free for kids, you can't beat the deal.

Adventures in Parenting

2009-01-21T13:00:00.001-05:00

I was looking online this morning for the physical address for the location where the Alafia River Rendezvous is being held. We are attending a tour of this event tomorrow with our homeschool group and I was curious if the weather would be different since it is in such a rural area. While looking for their address I spotted a picture in the section on School Tours with a familiar looking little body. That's my youngest daughter front and center in the yellow jacket. It was cool that they chose a picture with her in it for their website, but it made me wonder if that was one of the two times she was wearing a cast on her right arm. Yes, she's broken the same arm twice, in addition to her left leg and collar bone. So, I went looking through old pictures to see if I could match the time period. I couldn't, but did find some old pictures I'd forgotten about that show some of the more unusual aspects of parenthood. I've picked two of each of the girls and the last of three of them to show a not atypical day in my house.

Evie is all charged up.

SkinnyEvie Onlypants

Lili's Indian Princess look.

Lili says this is her Duck face.

Beth likes snakes.

Beth's first try at makeup.

Tori's being eaten by a Florida gator, a Florida gator, a Florida gator...

Tori's first Hermie, Kuzko

A typical day in the life

Facebook and my Mom

2009-01-20T13:29:00.001-05:00

I got an invite through email Sunday from my mom to join Facebook. From My Mom!!! How strange is that. My parents were at my house yesterday getting added to my cell phone family plan. They've been having service problems with their company and wanted to switch. Mom asked about my plan and we figured out they can save a lot of money by joining ours instead of getting a new one of their own. So they were here to pick out phones and get set up. I mention to my mom that I don't have a Facebook account. I've never looked at Facebook and wasn't really interested. Then I asked why I still hadn't seen photos of her trip to Okinawa and Seattle to see two of my sisters. My parents live literally down the street, she's been home for a month and I still haven't seen the photos. Getting off point there... So I told my mom I don't do Facebook, "it's free" she sort of whines. "Laura (my older sister) is on Facebook." "Tim (Laura's husband) is on Facebook." "Meg (who?) is on Facebook." Ok, enough already. So I join Facebook. I don't think I can set a good example for my children when it comes to 'join a social networking website' peer pressure. I let it do the scanning my contacts list thing and it popped up with a bunch of people I know, so click now we are connected I guess. Then it pops up with a bunch of names that are vaguely familiar, I finally realize I went to high school with these people. I don't think I added any of them. I didn't participate in high school too much, I was in a work training program so wasn't there most of the time. I don't think I ever attended a sporting event of any kind. I'm not a loser, it just wasn't interesting to me. So, there it is, a Facebook page with a bunch of people I know and some I kindof sortof know. So now what. ??crickets chirp softly in the background?? I don't get it. Maybe it will make sense tomorrow after a decent night sleep, maybe not, but now my mom can't pressure me anymore!

Oh hey, there is a rumor spreading in Lakeland that we may see snow flurries. How cool would that be! The last time it snowed here was in 1978 when I was 7 years old. It happened before anyone was up and really just looked like frost. I've never seen falling snow, ever. Just as I was typing this, my youngest daughter Evie came up and told me she couldn't go outside because she has bare feet. I was about to tell her she was right and to put her shoes on when I looked at her feet.

Mom's can be so slow sometimes...

She's Street Legal

2009-01-20T13:07:00.000-05:00

"I'm street legal!" That's what my oldest daughter told a friend on the phone as we left the DMV. I don't think she quite understands the terminology, but I wasn't going to dampen her excitment. The testing went fine, 2 questions wrong on the rules test, no questions wrong on the signs test. This amazingly was the first time I've ever had to wait at the DMV, I guess I was just lucky in the past. I know now to make an appointment for next time. The wait wasn't terrible, we were at the counter in about 20 minutes, but boy was it crowded. No one wanted to wait outside for their family members due to the cold. Her picture turned out pretty cute too. We left and grabbed some breakfast then drove to the back of my husband's property (he's the manager at a mobile home community) so she could get behind the wheel. I went over the basics of the buttons, knobs and doodads, then let her at it. When she went to shift into drive the first time she had to wipe her hands on her pants because they were sweating. Too cute! We practiced driving around the empty roads for about an hour then switched back to come home. We are going to go back out and practice later today in our neighborhood. Hopefully there will be just a little traffic. Tip to those going through this in the near future, let them practice left turns before right. I didn't realize how much easier lefts are.

Look at the concentration. (click to enlarge the photo to see what I mean)

Make sure to check both ways.

Random Act of Kindness Reminder

2009-01-19T20:09:00.000-05:00

According to Wikipedia, a Random Act of Kindness is a purportedly selfless act performed by a person or persons wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual or in some cases even an animal. There will generally be no reason other than to make people smile, or be happier. I was just reminded of being the recipient of one of these.

I was making some flash cards for one of the girls which required the use of markers. In my house, finding craft supplies is a crapshoot. You might find the color marker you need, but it may be completely dried out. You might find a scissor, but it may be stuck shut permanently after being used outside to make Survivor Soup. Glue bottles are nearly guaranteed to be empty, glue sticks will absolutely have been partially eaten by one of the dogs. A few years ago I was at a used curriculum sale, set up with a table of a few homeschool materials I was willing to part with and mostly baby clothes I didn't realize weren't supposed to be there. I was standing next to a mom from my homeschool group that I'd met before but didn't know very well. We of course started chatting, it's hard for me to resist the impulse to chat at any given moment about anything and everything. While chatting I noticed a simple plastic bag with a set of colored markers. I realized these markers were scented. Oh boy was I excited. I shared how much I loved these markers when I was in elementary school, how some colors were shunned in favor of others, and how I just loved to sit and sniff the markers. Of course I was sniffing the entire time I was telling my story. Throughout the afternoon I would go back to that bag of markers as we talked. At the end of the sale as we were packing up just about everything we'd brought to sell, my friend Carol handed me the bag and said, "You clearly enjoyed these markers, I had such a good time watching you, you have to have them." It was such a simple gesture, but I was delighted. I could have bought them of course, they were probably only a dollar, but it's hard to justify a purchase that silly for an adult. So silly, I don't think it even crossed my mind to buy them. I think of Carol whenever I use the markers, which honestly isn't that often. But it brings me just as much happiness each time, well except for when I have to use the icky mint green. That one doesn't make me so happy. Thanks Carol, it was a truly wonderful act of kindness.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

2009-01-19T13:38:00.000-05:00

We saw a commercial over the weekend for Kool-Aid.

That brought back some vivid memories. I grew up on the stuff. We used milk jugs as our containers. I clearly remember sorting through the many packets at the store picking my favorite flavors (there must have been more than a dozen), the funnel, the scoops of sugar, the twisty turn arm move to mix it up, the times when I hadn't put the lid on tight enough and the resulting Kool-Aid flood, the Kool-Aid mustache. The memories sent me searching for the Kool-Aid plastic pitcher and matching mugs you could order with proof of purchase. Oh how I wanted that set, but now I can't remember if we ever got it.

I don't believe my kids have ever tasted Kool-Aid, it wasn't a concious choice, it just didn't happen. So I set out to remedy this grave injustice. I bought some yesterday, the kind in the plastic tub that you don't have to add extra sugar. Evie is mixing some now, I can smell it all the way in here. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing a Kool-Aid mustache.

That looks like fun

2009-01-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

Three of my four daughters are taking classes through FLVS, Florida Virtual School. It's paid for by the state, staffed with Florida teachers. Some of the teachers teach only through FLVS, others work in physical classrooms during the day and through FLVS at night. We've been very happy with the classes and the teachers (except for one) so far. My oldest just pointed out a new type of class they are going to offer. They've had American History for quite some time, but now are offering a different version of the class. It is set up in a video game format. You can read about and see of video of the game here: FLVS American History Tori isn't scheduled to start that class until next January, so I'd guess by then they should have any kinks worked out. She is really excited about the format.

We are using FLVS for quite a few of the girls classes. Tori is taking English I and Algebra II. Beth is taking M/J Language Arts 3 and Algebra I. Lili is taking M/J Math 2 and just this morning finished M/J Art 2D, and is waiting to start Spanish I. Evie will start this summer with M/J Keyboarding. I've had all of the girls start with Keyboarding. The classes are all online, so it makes sense for them to take that class first, it makes their work that much easier if they don't have to hunt and peck.

We will go out to PCC this week to meet with a Dual Enrollment Advisor to make sure our plans for Tori to start the Summer session this May are on track. Tori will have just finished Algebra II through FLVS, so we hope to move her straight into College Algebra before there is the chance for her to lose the skills she's already learned. How is it possible I have a 15 year old? She going to take the test to get her Learner's Permit tomorrow and to get the application process started for college this week. None of it has snuck up on me, but it's still surprising.

Bubba doesn't want to be left out. I spend a lot of my day on the computer and he likes to try and sit in my lap. Try because I move around a lot and he won't be still, so it doesn't last long. I just moved a bookcase near my desk and haven't filled it yet. I decided to give him a shelf, for today at least, so he can be near me, but not digging his nails into my lap.

Inspirational or Sad?

2009-01-18T14:44:00.000-05:00

I was just flipping through a catalog from SeventhAvenue.com that came in the mail yesterday. Oddly enough it has a sticker on the cover that says: Last Chance, We don't want to bother you with unwanted catalogs. This could be your FINAL CATALOG. I'm quite certain I've never heard of, much less seen a catalog from this business. It is full of home decor items, some cheesy, some kind of cool, nothing I'm likely to buy. I came to a pair of wall plaques, the type that have (often obnoxious) sayings on them.

The first is innocuous enough, but the second just struck me as sad. I get the point that you should always have dreams, but the saying seems to really say, don't ever be satisfied with what you have. I know I wouldn't appreciate seeing that everyday.

They do have a hanging photo frame that I like the look of but not the price. I might have to make something like this myself. I'm pretty handy and those frames are very simple. How much could the chain and a dowel with some simple finials cost? Hmmm... That looks like a fun project.

Well Hello There!

2009-01-17T14:47:00.000-05:00

Time to give blogging another try. I briefly blogged for the Polk Voice community newspaper, but when I stopped receiving it in the mail, I figured it was going under. It is still out there, but I never felt it was the right venue for anything personal. This time I’ll try to write about what is going on in our family, what I find interesting, how we are homeschooling. Maybe I’ll be able to keep friends and family up to date with more than the random photo site update.

Tori turned 15 yesterday and just finished taking an online 4-Hour Drug Alcohol Traffic Awareness (DATA) which is required before you can get your learner’s permit. We used http://www.firsttimedriver.com/ for the class. It cost $29 to take the course and she will get a certificate in the mail to take with her to get the license. She’s now studying the handbook and getting quizzed by us as we drive around town to get ready for the rules and signs test. We plan for her to take the test this Tuesday while the other girls are at PE, it’s just around the corner. We have some printable magnet paper around here somewhere, I want to make a student driver sign for the back of the van so hopefully other drivers will cut her some slack if she is going slower than they want her to drive.

I planned to make donuts with the girls this morning, but woke up to the donuts already finished. Phil got up before me and took care of it all. They turned out great. He made a glaze that had too much lemon, but they were still pretty tasty. He made sure to take pictures of his efforts. We used Publix southern style biscuits. The yellow spots are little bits of butter in the dough. We punch the hole with a 2 liter soda bottle lid and use our deep skillet to fry them. I found out I prefer dusted powdered sugar more than glaze or cinnamon/sugar mix.

Evie has been asking to go to the park for the past few days, but I was busy working on my resume and applying for a job. Yes, I am going back to work, if I can find any. I’ll look for something in the evenings again, we definitely aren’t going to stop homeschooling at this point in the game. The new Common Ground park opened officially yesterday, it’s a park specially designed to be accessible to all children, regardless of physical handicap. We drove by the other day when it was almost complete, it is beautiful. At Evie’s request, we tried to go this morning. The parking lot was packed. We decided we’ll come back in a few days when the other kids are in school so we can have some room to enjoy it. If you aren’t aware of this park, it’s on Edgewood drive, next to the public tennis courts, across from the entrance to the golf course.

We decided to drive over to Lake Morton to walk around the lake and feed the birds. I was able to get some great photos of the the swans and geese. I tried to get some video of the sea gulls catching bread and cookies in the air, but I couldn’t track them on the camera fast enough. They would get so close, it was a little disconcerting. Here are a few photos and a video of Evie arguing with a goose.

I was bitten by a swan and ended up with just a bruised thumb nail. Tori and Lili weren’t so lucky.

A sea gull closing in for a Nilla wafer.

This swan let me sit about a foot away and just watched me taking pictures.

Evie arguing with a goose.

This guy was looking for bread but clearly hadn’t finished his salad.

It was beautiful but cold. I’m not complaining, we rarely get days you can call cold, and it’s relative, it was actually about 55 out at the time. But it was cold and windy enough that my lips were chapping and my eyes were watering. We drove back home, quizzing Tori about road signs some more, then lunch and on to household chores. Ah, the fun stuff…