#homeschooling

The Upside Down World ~ The Blog

Jun 6, 2012
9 min

Smart Kids Being Dumb

If I had it to do all over again, I would never have put them in school. I would have gone straight to online schools once I could no longer continue homeschooling them myself. Noah had been on track to finish high school a year early had we continued homeschooling and now will barely eek out graduating. Collin discovered that he really was smarter than most people, including a lot of adults, and became nearly insufferable. After being in school, both of them are extremely co

Sep 7, 2011
2 min

Today I’m thinking about school – Update

After thinking about it for a while and talking with the school principal to get his take on what the core of the issue might be, I decided that my son has not ever reconciled himself to the concept of necessary evils. And that this was not a problem that started with or was limited to being at school. So, I talked with the boy about it. When I asked him how he thought we should respond to necessary evils he said, “fight them?” Ding! Ding! Ding! We’ve found the problem!

Sep 2, 2011
2 min

Today I am thinking about school

Here’s the dilemma I am wrestling with: these are all normal parts of middle school, but are they acceptable? Is my son who is having a hissy fit saying, “I don’t care if this is normal for these people. It’s stupid and idiotic and I don’t want anything to do with it” actually speaking out of wisdom? He gets accused all the time of not being willing to just suck it up and deal with it. Which isn’t entirely fair; he sucks it up and deals with it and keeps putting one foot

Jul 28, 2008
4 min

Summer Camp and Peer Socialization

While I’m pleased as punch that he handled himself well with other kids, I am not nearly so pleased with how quickly and (to me) dramatically, he oriented himself to his peers. Each day when he came home, he was wired up to the point of being completely out of hand. He was rowdy, rude, scattered and largely unresponsive to me and my attempts to get him to settle down. The problem is that he had spent all day getting positive feedback from the other kids for his antics. I

Jun 11, 2008
4 min

Gifted in Public

My kids and I took a little trip today to a local cave. It’s a sight seeing sort of place with some cool geology and stalactites and stalagmites and such. We’ve been there before, but not for a couple of years, so it was new enough for my boys for them to enjoy it again. I was, however, kind of disturbed to learn that they let the bats that overwinter in the cave stay in the attached gift shop as well. At least I think they said they let the little guano machines hibernat

Apr 28, 2008
1 min

10 year old boys are right: word problems are evil!

New research seems to back up my decision to drop word problems. Researchers have conducted experiments which showed that students who were taught the abstract concepts underlying math problems, without real world examples were better able to apply what they learned than those who were taught using real world examples. So, I guess all the kids who have ever looked at a problem about two trains leaving the station, traveling in opposite directions and said, “this is dumb!” mi

Apr 16, 2008
1 min

African American Homeschoolers

Joanne Jacobs points us to a story in The Village Voice about the growing number of African American homeschoolers. If you can get past the first paragraph which is as bad a display of provincial ignorance as one is likely to ever encounter, it’s an interesting, in depth story. Given the abysmal job the public school system is doing of educating African American boys in particular, more African Americans homeschooling their kids can only a be a good thing. As a multi-racial

Apr 15, 2008
1 min

Someone should notify the authorities!

zero tolerance” policy and label her as a sexual harasser post haste. Future colleges and employers have a right to know what kind of perverted soul they could be dealing with. Thankfully, my 8 year old, Collin, is old enough to know that girls have cooties and has refused to take part in her nefarious schemes. Otherwise I’d have to call the police on him. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #humor #zerobrains #zerotolerance #kids #homeschooling

Apr 9, 2008
1 min

Homeschooling Blahs

Of course, for some reason, this time of year tends to be a bit wearing on me. It’s the interminable wait for spring, I suppose. Any other long-time homeschool moms who’ve had to work past the point where you’re the one who doesn’t want to do school? BTW, don’t you love this picture? It’s one of my favorites, but I’m too lazy to look up its title and artist at the moment and my mind’s drawing a blank, so anyone who would like to leave the info in the comments section would

Apr 8, 2008
1 min

The Carnival of Homeschooling Is Up!

This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at A Pondering Heart. Thanks to Jocelyn for putting it together. If you have a chance, check out Barbara Frank’s post on interviews with women who tried to have it all and are older and wiser now. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #homeschooling

Apr 4, 2008
2 min

There are things I don’t understand

I know that my perspective is different because I do homeschool and it’s for reasons far less pressing than protecting my kids from violence or sexual abuse or something like that. So I suppose that having taken the step of removing my kids from the school system for relatively benign reasons it is hard for me to fathom why the parents keep sending their kids back to schools where there children are exposed to violence, educational malfeasance or damage done to children by t

Mar 30, 2008
5 min

Raising Christian Evolutionists

I wrote a post on why parents who teach their children creation science or intelligent design in a way which elevates those teachings to a fundamental of the Christian faith are putting their children’s long term spiritual well being at risk. In the comments on that post (which were remarkably civil for this topic BTW, thank you to all who commented!), someone asked how I teach my kids to be faithful Christians while also accepting the science of evolution and geology and su

Mar 25, 2008
1 min

Did you know that homeschoolers sometimes leave their homes?

I’m still waiting to get my internet back on, so I don’t have time to blog properly about this, but I just wanted to direct everyone’s attention to an Outlook article from the Washington Post on homeschooling written by an actual homeschooling parent, no less! (I’m sure I’m the 5 kabilionth homeschool blogger to point this article out, but hey!) Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #family #homeschooling #life

Mar 7, 2008
4 min

The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List

The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List By Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling, Issue #1, Fall 2007 1 Please stop asking us if it’s legal. If it is — and it is — it’s insulting to imply that we’re criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it? 2 Learn what the words “socialize” and “socialization” mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having a

Feb 25, 2008
7 min

Teaching Creation Science or ID? A formula for putting your child’s Christian faith at risk.

In my last post I kind of poked at those who use ridiculous notions of socialization to criticize homeschooling. Today, I’m going to sharpen my stick and point it in the direction of some of my fellow homeschoolers. It is my firm belief that an unfortunate number of Christian homeschoolers are putting their child’s future spiritual walk at risk in service to an idea which is not even necessary to the faith. I am talking, of course, about those who are teaching their childr

Feb 8, 2008
3 min

Christians as a “Creative Minority”

I came across a great quote today from Pope Benedict which presents a way of thinking about living an authentic Christian life in our modern, western world: We do not know what the future of Europe will be. Here we must agree with Toynbee, that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and thereby to place itself at th

Jan 8, 2008
2 min

There are elves in the fire

I got to do something today which I had once planned on spending much of my life doing, but never really got the chance to do after getting waylaid by children and life and my own insecurities. I got to take a kid who thinks poetry is boring and meaningless and show them the magic which is present in those short, truncated lines with the fancy words. I made my oldest son Noah copy out the poem “The Lion of Winter” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare into hi

Oct 1, 2006
1 min

The Wall of Taxonomy

Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #biologytaxonomy #homeschooling #ideas