Let the Homeschooling ...End?!

Yep. It wasn't a good fit, him and it.

Seton's big box o' books for the Kindergarten curriculum passed my parental muster for their solidity, orthodoxy, and thoroughness of substance in subject matter. The lesson plans came outlined in sections for each day in binder-ready pages. Everything was in place, and I labored nights to plan each day's lessons and document each day's progress.

The problem? The kid hated it! Every page, nay, every penstroke was a power struggle. Tears, wailing, gnashing of teeth. He liked the games, the outings, and adaptability afforded by homeschooling, but the assigned workbook pages were a battle for every inch of ground.

I'll give no argument that squeezing Play-Doh, singing songs, romping around the zoo, and cutting and gluing colored scraps into something beautiful have a big part in a kindergartner's life, but it's expected of incoming first graders to come in knowing their basic phonics and handwriting. That means putting in plenty of time sitting down to some paper, pencil in hand, and banging out some p's and q's.

There's the problem. My big guy was a star pupil and model citizen back at the public school, but when I wear my homeschoolmarm's gown, he spares me no quarter when the time comes to do some reading aloud, phonics drills, and writing or coloring of any sort. Three weeks in, and it never relents for a minute till he's done, far too many wasted minutes after we start. I've seen little to no new literacy occuring here. Is it because as his father and sometimes playmate, I get no respect from him in the role of teacher? Is it because his mindset is that the kitchen table and back room are places for food and fun, and therefore not schoolwork? Does he miss that structure from the "real" school he was used to? Do the teachers there present material just so in such a way that meshes with young minds in a way that I do not?

No matter. We tried this three weeks, failed, and we're taking action to keep him from falling behind. Today we spoke with the good folks at the parish school, worked the numbers and will start him there next week.

Homeschooling in the future? Maybe for my next two in line, our special needs preschool lads who greatly enjoy sitting in on lessons at the family tabletop classroom. This is a good thing since the Catholic school probably wouldn't be able to handle them anyway.

How is that fringe candidate Ron Paul's people own the Net?

And, while we're on it, is anyone else here throroughly annoyed by these people?

By my estimate, Ron Paul has simply got to have the biggest Internet spam operation in history. His people are running all over the Net like they own the place, spamming anything with a type field on it. They're posting to YouTube video comments, blogs, discussion boards, and Amazon product reviews. Go to Yahoo Answers where someone asks a question and you'll see a Ron Paul spam post in the answers, signed off with a mile long list of campaign organizations no one will ever join.

Who's the manpower behind this campaign? Is it a cult of mind slaves holed up with laptops in a boiler room, tapping away at link after link and pasting diatribes wherever there's a hole? Is it a single nonliving spambot following link chains and autosurfing webrings? Maybe it's a human/automated hybrid, or "libertarian", getting one hour of sleep a day tripping out on dope, I mean "hemp", maniacally clicking sites and polluting hard drives globally with pasted boilerplate. Voters, let's trounce Ron Paul to give this guy a rest.

If they still made Sesame Street this hilarious...

...I would pledge instantly to switch our children's television staple from Noggin to PBS.



(I'd date this around 1970 or 1971; I remember seeing it as a youngster when it aired originally.)

Let the Homeschooling Begin!

The time has come to pull the wraps off our plan to homeschool. Every homeschooling family has its own reasons for doing so, including imparting their values they hold precious, which is where we fit in to all this.

Truth be known, we'd send them to a Catholic school could we afford it, but we can't. Now that convents are empty, lay people fill the need for teachers at a living wage, driving tuitions up into the stratosphere. Tuition has roughly tripled its inflation-indexed cost since I was a student in Catholic schools.

Our first plan was to send our children to public school for the 3 R's, then supplement them with religious instruction here at home and at Sunday school. For starters we registered our oldest, our kindergartener in the district, and shortly received two indicators that the plan wasn't working out. First, he candidly stated that what he likes about lunch at school is that he doesn't pray before eating. The second and greater sign was when he uttered forbidden words. "Oh my God," he slipped, before he caught himself and corrected, "I mean, oh my gosh!"

This slip indicated that his mindset maintained a dual set of standards, one for school and one for home. At school, he matched his peers', and for all I know, even the teachers' casual use of OMGs. This was a substantial environmental difference between his public school education and my Catholic one. In my day, the teachers would correct you for breaking the Second Commandment, but at public school, the only values they're empowered to impart are to eat healthy, study, and visit your library.

After having applied a good deal of research, we decided to enroll in Seton Home Study School. They're solid on Catholic orthodoxy, provide curriculum and materials, maintain actual grades and enrollment records for your child on site, include human telephone support in real time, and appear to have the best Internet based support in place for communications and work submission. Since I'm uncomfortable with wandering the child-directed wilderness of unschooling, I like Seton's structured day to day lesson plan booklet and big box o' books included in the price. Next, on to class.