A Few Ads...

It is hard to believe the end of another year is upon us!  We finished our fall semester on Tuesday.  The books have been left to gather a little dust, and we are in the full swing of preparing for Christmas.  We don't have many ads this month.  In fact, I think this is the first time we have ever sent a Digest in December.  But we did want to let you know about a couple of great opportunities that came our way in the last couple of weeks. 
The Digest will be back in January with more homeschool doings and more posts on the blog.  Until then, all of us at the PHEA office wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

The Home School Resource Center is offering two robotics courses for the spring semester.  The middle school level course uses the LEGO robotics technology and focuses on the basics of robotics and programming.   The high school level course will cover basic C++, how to work with electronics components and the basics of Ohms Law. See below for details:

 Lego Robotics: Grades 6-8
20 weeks of classes meet on Thursday mornings from 8-10 starting January 9, 2014
Cost: $255
Lab fee:  $75
Minimum: five students

Arduino: Grades 9-12
20 weeks of classes meet on Thursday mornings from 10-12 starting January 9, 2014
Cost: $255
Additional Lab fee: $75
Book fee: $15
Minimum: four students

If you are interested in signing up your student please contact Angela or Deborah at hsresourcecenter@gmail.com or 864-354-9934.  An application can be found online at hsresourcecenter.com.

A Recent Question

Here at the PHEA office we are in the thick of printing transcripts and sending out notices regarding the Senior class ranking.  Not surprisingly we receive a lot of questions about which categories certain classes might fall under.  Below is Martha’s response to a question about how a Christian Worldview Course might be categorized.

Question:  Can Christian Worldview count as a history credit?

Answer:   When I answer questions like this, I keep in mind the freedom we have as home schoolers to direct the education of our children according to their gifts and needs.  I also keep in mind that the children will need to be able to function in the world as adults and this probably means further education beyond high school.  I try to advise parents with both of these points in mind.  Parents can choose to cover history on a totally different scope and sequence than the public school starting with ancient history and covering all areas of the world (including Biblical history) simultaneously so that the various histories are integrated.  These kids will likely walk away with a much more integrated knowledge of history than their public school (and home school) peers.  As long as the parents are covering the subject, they have that freedom.

The home school law only states that each of the subjects must be covered each year.  I have always told parents that this part means that they need to cover some of each subject but they are not required to complete a credit in it.  For some families this means doing a math class for two years then assigning the credit when they finish.  For others it may mean reading histories of a time period they are interested in or biographies of scientists or outside reading on a particular part of science with no plans for it ever be on the transcript or part of a credit.  (For my daughter in law, this took the form of studying how medieval people used herbs as medicine - research she needed to know for a novel she was writing.  I am pretty sure she has learned more science since she graduated in doing this sort of research than she did in high school!)

I also encourage families to use the public school requirements as a guideline.  For example, they only have to do 3 histories - two credits of which are specified. We do not have to do ANY of the requirements yet if the home school student is going on to college, they will be competing with all the other students for a spot at the university they want to attend.  If they do not meet the requirements that the universities set, their student will not be accepted.  The public school requirements codify what the majority of the universities require so that the majority of public school kids will be accepted into college.  So it is wise to follow those requirements as a MINIMUM of what should be covered.

At that point though we have to loop back around to the needs of the student.  You may have a student who is exceptional in music and is totally lost in math.  For this student, the parent needs to continue to cover math but at a pace that the student can actually grasp the concepts.  In the end, there may be only one or two high school math classes on the high school transcript.  For this student, if they do want to go on to college, there are ways to do that - either being accepted by a college that wants the talent of the musician so will do remedial classes in the math, or doing the same thing themselves at one of the community colleges.

The Christian Worldview class is actually a philosophy course so on the transcript it would either go under electives or under religion. Because it covers history within its scope and sequence, the parent is fulfilling the law as far as teaching history, but the class itself is not a history.

To Teach or Not to Teach - Thoughts on Handling Controversial Subjects

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  It seems that we live in a world full of controversial topics. From the continuing Creation vs. Evolution debate to newer debates on marriage and legalized drug use we certainly live in an age where maintaining a clear understanding of our own beliefs and passing them on to our children can be difficult.
  Many of us have chosen to homeschool in part because we can shield our children from the influences of the world and teach them the principles that we would have them follow as they grow from youth to adulthood.  We like having the freedom to teach from a Christian perspective.  We like having the freedom to leave behind all the baffling array of arguments against our beliefs and just teach our children what we know - and believe.
  But should we only offer our students one perspective?  Should we, for example, only teach that God created the earth in six literal days without ever mentioning the opposing viewpoint?  Many parents choose not to for fear of upsetting their children's budding faith and leading them astray.  Other parents may choose to present each argument with equal weight and leave the decision as to which is right entirely up to the child.
  With our children my husband and I take a middle ground approach.  From a young age we have taught them our beliefs and we have raised them on the principles that flow from those beliefs.  I may not always explain it to my kids, but there is usually a reason behind the things we do and don't do and the standards of behavior we hold them to.  We are continually reaffirming our beliefs and theology to them, sometimes in explicit statement and sometimes by way of principle.  So we are making sure they are well grounded as, Lord willing, they come to faith and begin to mature.
  Using our own beliefs as a backdrop, we then venture into the world of the controversial.  We do not spend a lot of time talking about these things, but as they come up we discuss each topic presenting what the world believes in contrast to what we believe, limiting the discussion, of course, to the level of the child's understanding.  In doing so, we are not only affirming our beliefs, but we are giving them a defense against the attacks of the world's philosophy.
  Why do we do this?  Part of the process of passing along our beliefs to a younger generation is teaching them not only what we believe, but why we believe it.  If our children must "take it on faith" that certain things are true, they are much more likely to be swayed by the world when a more compelling argument comes along. 
  Take for example the evolution and creation debate.  In a secular setting, the debate is all but over.  College professors no longer debate the merits of evolution against creation, they simply accept that the world is a random process of evolution formed over billons of years - and they build their entire philosophy on that structure.  A student who has only been taught on the "The Bible says it so I believe it" system will suffer major shock coming into such a hostile setting is sure to have his faith shaken if not destroyed.
  A better solution would be to teach creation and affirm the faith while simultaneously teaching the student now to rationally present a defense of his beliefs.  And there are many rational, scientific proofs for creation!  One has only to look at the second law of thermodynamics: "Things tend to greater disorder" to discover that the very laws governing how nature works are opposed to a system where time produces greater order. 
  In Romans 12 Paul exhorts us to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind".  I believe that Paul is urging us to strengthen our minds in the truth, both by learning the truth and by learning to defend the truth against opposing viewpoints.  I believe that he would have us do as the Bereans did, and "find out if these things be so".  And I believe that we should guide our children to do the same thing. 

  How about you?  How does your family handle controversial topics?

What do we do all year?

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The busy registration time has ended.  We are no longer working at a furious pace trying to keep up with all the applications in the mailbox.  The middle of July through the middle of August is undoubtedly the busiest time for us.  But that is not to say that we don’t keep busy during the rest of the year.  So what do we do all year?

  Well, after the volume of incoming mail slows down a bit we take a deep breath.  Then we get busy helping the families who decide right before or right after the beginning of the Public Schools’ start that they should homeschool.  Lisa and Monica are available by phone and email to answer questions about how to get started, where to get books and how to inform the school that a student will not be attending.

  Our other major fall project is making the high schoolers’ transcripts.  We type in all the grades that were submitted at the end of last school year and now Martha is going through and checking and rechecking each transcript to be sure that everything is correct.  Fall is also busy as our new seniors are preparing to apply to colleges.  Everyone needs something a little different so we work with parents to make sure the transcripts reflect what the colleges are looking for.  Then we print and mail them – to parents, to colleges, to the NCAA, to the military academies. Fall is also when we see who has qualified for the Palmetto Fellows Scholarship.  We await the test scores almost as eagerly as the students do.  The first scores from the fall testing are coming available online and we just discovered that one of our students qualified with the higher test scores and helping them put together the submission.  The submission goes in the mail the first week of December.

  After that we all heave a sigh of relief and take a week or two to spend with family and celebrate the holidays.

  January is district count time.  We must submit the number of students we have registered (no names or addresses –just numbers!) in each school district to the school districts.  This makes a nice four or five hour job for someone, counting rows and rows of grade levels.  Then we check to see if the school district address has changed (Greenville’s office has moved three times in the last four years!) and we send those off.

  February and March are our quiet months.  Not many applications come in, and the phone calls and emails are usually questions from parents who are already registered.  We spend this time putting stamps and return addresses on hundreds of envelopes so they will be ready for the mailing in April and the registering in July.  We normally need about three thousand envelopes on hand.  We also prepare the envelopes to mail our soon to be graduating seniors their records.  Each senior’s file will have a large mailing envelope with copies of the Disposition of Application ready to have the transcripts inserted when we complete them in early June.  All this preparation allows us to be more efficient at the busy times. 

  In April we turn our minds to the next school year, updating and improving the application as needed.  Then we print a thousand renewal applications and fold and stuff them into envelopes.  Each envelope gets a label and then heads to the post office.

  We start gearing up for the second Palmetto Fellows Scholarship submission in May.  We work on a much tighter time frame for this one as we have to type in all the grades and calculate the final senior class ranking between the middle of May and the second week of June.  When that is done, Martha disappears into the office and prints and prints and prints all those transcripts to be sent to the families.

  By the time we finish the major transcript work it is July again and we are getting ready for an avalanche of applications.

  So all in all we manage to keep quite busy all year.  What is missing from this broad description is all the little things that happen occasionally, but can make a big difference in the life of a homeschool family.  In addition to the general questions about homeschooling, we also help take care of our families whose homeschool has been questioned for one reason or another by the authorities.  While this doesn’t happen terribly often, when it does, Martha spends a lot of time talking to the family and talking to whatever entity is concerned about the homeschool, helping to make sure that the rights of the family are protected.

  Martha also spends a good bit of time talking with people from many realms – from school employees checking to see if a family is registered to people at the Commission on Higher Education to ensure that the high school transcripts we produce meet the requirements for both state scholarships and for colleges around the state and from admissions staff at various colleges to parents trying to decide if home schooling is the best choice and how to go about it.

  Through the years we have come to see just about every facet of homeschooling.  While much of our day to day work centers on the high school students – the seniors in particular, yet we are very in touch with young families as well.  If we can help you in any way don’t hesitate to call!

More Lessons From Mom

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I have been a lot more relaxed this school year, thanks in large part to the advice from both my mom and my mother-in-law.  As a bit of a follow-up, I'd like to share another piece of advice they have given me and how I have (finally!) been able to apply it to my own homeschool.

You don't have to complete every workbook page or lesson.

  I usually receive this advice when I show up at one house or the other a little late and feeling harried because there just isn't time to squeeze all the things I feel like we need to cover into a reasonable school day.  And yes, usually does mean I have heard this advice more than once.
  I tend to be a "by the book" kind of person, which makes it really hard to me to skip pages with out feeling guilty or worrying that I am somehow endangering my children's education.  While I know that my children are not going to end up illiterate and ignorant just because we failed to complete half a math page in second grade, identifying which pages can be skipped without missing important concepts can be a hard task.
  In the past, I have felt that certain subjects could not be skipped at all.  Giving my students a good foundation in math and reading have been so all important that other, to my mind at least, less important things have slipped through the cracks.  Science experiments and creative writing are always the first things to get dropped.
  But science experiments and creative writing are important too, so this summer I spent some time evaluating our school day to see how I could put all those "less important" things back in my teaching without stressing over the other work.
  One of the main things I did was to plan for busy days.  We keep the same schedule from week to week as far as the activities we do outside of school, so it isn't too hard to pinpoint those days when I need to plan a little less school work.  Time consuming activities are planned for the days that I can run a little late with school or when we can get back to it after lunch.
  I also gave myself the option to skip certain activities if they did not fit in the day.  I plan to do math flashcards every day.  We only do them two or three times most weeks, but that is two or three times a week more than we did last year.
  I have found it helpful to decide what is important today.  We are currently working through a five week science project involving plants.  Some of the experiments are timed to be done at a certain point in the plant's growth, and if we are off by a day or two they don't work as well.  So science has the priority right now.  We haven't had a chance to do many flashcards, but we are almost done with the science project, and I know that we will have more time for flashcards in a couple of weeks.
  I think part of the reason I have been afraid to skip a workbook page or lesson is that I'm afraid we will miss something important.  I have spent a lot more time this year flipping though the books (usually while I am waiting for my kids to finish an assignment) to see where we are headed.  Knowing where we are going gives me a better sense of the importance of a particular page or lesson.
  Another thing I have started doing is to try to identify which portions of a lesson can be skipped if necessary.  Today we had ten examples in our math textbook and twenty-five problems in the workbook.  I decided that it would be a better use of our time if we only did one or two of the examples from the textbook and then I planned to work with my daughter on part of the workbook page.  As it turned out, when I tried to work with her on the workbook page, she allowed me to coach her through two problems and then took the book saying, "Mom, I've got this."  Music to my ears!
  I'm lucky to have two moms who support my homeschool living just a few minutes away.  They often give me a hand on days when I am pressed for time, and you can bet those grandmothers are happy to teach their grandkids!  But that is the subject for another blog post. 
In the mean time...

What about you?  How do you fit everything into a busy school day?

 

Homeschool materials for sale

Contact: Connie Hatfield: 864-616-289

Book: “Homeschooling the Teen Years” by Cafi Cohen 2000                                                                 $ 5.00

Bright Ideas Press: “All American History Volume II The Civil War to the 21^st Century”
Complete Curriculum
Student Reader                                                                                                                                       $10.00
Student Activity Book                                                                                                                              $ 5.00
Teacher’s Guide & Answer Key                                                                                                              $ 5.00

 Walch book: “150 Great Books: Synopses, quizzes, & tests for independent reading” (grades 7 to adult)     $ 8.00

Walch books: Life Skills Literacy:
"Things to Know About Medicine and Health”                                                                                         $ 5.00
"Things to Know About Cars and Driving”                                                                                                $ 5.00

BJU Press: “Math 6 Reviews” Activity book                                                                                              $ 5.00

Educators Publishing: “Wordly Wise” book 2 (grade 5)                                                                            $ 5.00

Audio Memory: “Grammar Songs” on cassette tape (grades 3-8)      New in original pkg                       $ 5.00

HomeScholar Book: “Literary Lessons from The Lord of the Rings”  Teachers ed 2004 Spiral bound    $30.00
(The above book is a complete literature curriculum for secondary students, by Amelia Harper: ISBN: 0-9754934-0-X. Companion student edition is available: ISBN: 0-9754934-1-8)

Alpha/Omega complete curriculum kit: Lifepacs Language Arts 10                                                         $10.00

Alpha/Omega Lifepac books: Health Teacher’s Guide                                                                             $ 5.00

Language Arts 10 Teacher’s Guide                                                                                                          $ 5.00
History & Geography 10 Teacher’s Guide and Lifepac units 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, &10.                                        $ 8.00

Wadsworth Publishing: “Your College Experience Strategies for Success” The Freshman Year Experience Series  3^rd ed.                                                                                                                                                              $8.00

Webster’s “New World Student’s Dictionary”   ISBN: 0-671-51087-8                                                       $10.00  OBO

 Please call and make me a reasonable offer on  any of the books listed below:

 Saxon “Algebra ½”: 2^nd ed.
Saxon “Algebra 1”: 2^nd ed. (2 copies)
BJU Press “The Physical World” ISBN: 1-57924-420-3
“The Life of Christ From the Gospel of John” 3^rd printing
BJU Press “World History”: 2^nd ed.
Sadlier-Oxford “Writing a Research Paper” ISBN:  0-8215-0761-3
BJU Press “Geography” Activities book ISBN:  0-57924-300-2
South-Western “Applied Computer Keyboarding”: 4^th ed.
A Beka “Themes in Literature”: 3^rd ed.
TAKE TENN “Learning How to Study” workbook
BJU Press “Vocabulary” Level B workbook: 2^nd ed.
The Wilds Music “We’re Singing”: 7^th ed.

Free to anyone who buys anything above: Old, but unused: Hampton Park Christian School Academic Planner (can be used for any year)

 

On the River Flows

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  Welcome to the new school year!  I can't believe how quickly the summer has sped by.  It seems like only a few weeks ago that we heaved a sigh of relief and put the school books away for a while.  But here it is again - school!
  I love the start of school; the promise of new things, the smell of new books, maybe even a hint of fall.  I enjoy putting new pencils in the kids' pencil boxes and putting unread books on the shelf, and yes, for a few weeks at least, I even enjoy doing lesson plans.  But often that grand feeling of newness gives way to stress as I begin to feel like we have got to get all this schoolwork done - now! In the first week of school!  Or their educations will be ruined forever!
  This year I have been a lot more relaxed, in part, I think, because I made it a point not to stuff the first few weeks of school with too many things.  I am beginning to know my limits and to plan accordingly. 

 Also, all the advice from my mom and my mother-in-law, who both homeschooled, is finally beginning to sink in.

  From their perspective, as moms who have schooled their children successfully though high school, they can see the forest for the trees as it were.  While I am so focused on the day to day, they can see that it is not the little things that make a great education, but rather the goals and philosophies that underlie and guide what we do from day to day ensure that we are on track to a good education.
  Sure, the forest and the trees are a great analogy, but I have found myself thinking more lately of a river.  Our lives flow on from day to day, and how often I struggle with the little difficulties, the rocks in the stream as it were.  But if I could look ahead and see where the river is flowing - as my moms look behind and see where it has come from - perhaps I would flow on a little more peacefully.
  But for now, this is enough - life flows on, and I am content to flow with it.

As we go into the new school year, please don't hesitate to call us if you have any questions or concerns.  All the ladies in our office are veteran homeschool moms and well qualified to advise.