I got sick yesterday...sort of.  Joel had this yucky stomach bug that lasted for about a week and the girls kind of had it too, but not quite as bad.  I felt really awful yesterday and laid on the couch most of the day, but nothing ever happened.  I'm thankful to not actually be sick, but it wasn't a fun day!

We had co-op today, and we only have two more weeks of it.  We are off next week and then on the following two.  With today, I officially used all of my ideas for the class and now have to come up with two more.  I'd also like to start coming up with some things for next semester so that I am not scrambling for activities then!  I think I will try to find two more animal activities as we have done animals all semester. 

I'm starting to do some really thinking and planning for next year with school.  I think it is going to be fun to add some more things in, and I am also planning to change up how we school, not taking all summer off so we don't forget everything we have worked so hard on!  I have some ideas for introducing Spanish as well without actually buying a Rosetta Stone curriculum yet!  I think as we get closer to the end of the school year I'll write a post about all my plans!  I have a curriculum meeting with some friends from the co-op in a couple of weeks, which I am excited about too.  I don't know if I ever mentioned it, but I actually entered college to be a teacher, but I realized quickly (read...the first day) that I didn't want to do that.  I don't enjoy other peoples' children that much.  But I do enjoy my own and enjoy teaching them.  So curriculum and school things really get me excited!  A little weird, but hey, you don't have to read this!

I read a really good response to how it is that home-schoolers can think they are giving their children a better education than sending them to public school and I thought I would share it here.  I thought this man explained it very well!

A friend of mine asked me to give him answers to a public school administrator who claims that homeschool parents can't possibly teach as well as teachers with multiple specialized degrees. In the case example he posed, the issue was a chemistry teacher vs. a homeschooling parent. I thought that some of you might like to see my answer. I don't think anyone (at least not Brian Ray or me) would claim that an average homeschooling parent can teach chemistry better than a person with two chemistry degrees. If a person with two chemistry degrees would teach a student one on one--there would be no comparison. But that is not what happens. The public school teacher is teaching 1 on 30. We are teaching 1 on 1. That is the comparison. And the comparisons from standardized testing are not in course-specific comparisons like chemistry. We need to remember that in K-12 education there are really three goals: 1. Master the tools of language 2. Master the tools of mathematics and 3. Get a good broad exposure to other key topics--history, science, foreign language, etc, etc. No student is going to become a specialist in any of the these subjects in K-12. English and mathematics are the two languages of learning. Math and science fields use the language of math. All other fields use the language of words. Students must have mastery in these two languages if they are going to succeed at the college level. The success of homeschooling comes from the mastery of the two languages. It is a demonstrated fact that homeschoolers do better in these core competencies than institutional schools. It is not because we are smarter or better looking than public school teachers. This is true because one-on-one instruction works better than one-on-thirty instruction. When it comes time to teach mastery of a specialized topic--that is where a specialized instructor cannot be beaten. But, homeschoolers even have somewhat of an advantage here. Because homeschool students have mastered the tools of learning to a greater degree, their ability to learn the specialized subject benefits from this advantage. This hypothetical example makes the point--I am just making up all of these numbers but I believe they reflect the truth. If a public school chemistry teacher puts out 100 units of chemistry per hour to students only capable of absorbing 40 units of chemistry per hour, but because there are 30 students there is a distraction which results in a slower rate of absorbtion, the average chemistry knowledge acquired might be 30 units of chemistry per hour. The homeschool parent trying to teach chemistry is only capable of producing 65 units of chemsitry knowledge per hour. But because of mastery of the tools of learning, their child is actually capable of absorbing even more than this--perhaps 80 units per hour. Since it is one-on-one instruction there are no distraction factors and so the average student in homeschooling acquires 65 units per hour. So the net amount learned in homeschooling is greater than in public schooling, not because our teachers are better, but because we have students with better tools of learning and we have fewer distractions. This is why homeschool kids do so well in college and why PHC is so successful. At PHC have specialists who are teaching specialized knowledge. Our students have mastered the tools of learning and they suffer from fewer distractions. And they do very, very well. Homeschooling works.

To wrap that up succinctly, the biggest benefit to homeschooling is that it is one-on-one.  No matter how good the teachers in school are, they just have too many kids to deal with!  

If you have made it this far, I am amazed!  I hope you have a lovely weekend!