I could write post after post of personal stuff, but I hesitate to do that these days. I owe three people detailed emails (sorry), and I must get around to posting a ton of pictures. I will write what comes to mind right now.
~ Tonight at Tae Kwon Do, I overheard a mother discussing bullies at her child’s school. She said, “School isn’t for feeling terrified, school is for learning.”
~ We TRIED to drive past, but we just had to get fish ‘n’ chips after Tae Kwon Do tonight. We had Chinese food the other day with chicken balls that tasted exactly the same. I still have to do the dishes that are in the sink.
~ Tonight, I found out that tomorrow is parent/teacher day. I was surprised the other mothers didn’t ask me why I didn’t know that. (The Tae Kwon Do mothers have yet to find out we homeschool.) I will have a good long talk with myself tomorrow while the children are doing their schoolwork.
~ It was such a warm afternoon that C7 and L4 played outside in the water sprinkler. We also walked to the river where they and B10 “fished” with long reeds/seaweed.
~ N14 mowed the lawn until he ran out of gas today, and B10 washed the van as high as he could reach. He couldn’t get the windshield.
~ I got a new red leather jacket in Montreal the other day. Ooooh. 
~ Derek finished all his exams for the course he has been taking. He is much smarter now.
~ I am almost caught up in laundry, and most things are put away.
~ L4 got very little schoolin’ this week. He loves to play by himself or with his imaginary friends or with his sister.
~ I went yesterday to get much needed new make-up. The sales lady told me I needed a moisturizer to prevent more wrinkles. 
She gave me a “hypo-allergenic” sample to put on my face. I told her I don’t use them because they always give me a rash, but she insisted, and I became a guinea pig yet again. A few hours later, my face was red, blotchy, swollen, and itchy. Fortunately, every time this happens, the reaction is a little less.
~ I had a hard time choosing mascara, so the sales lady pointed to the brand she was wearing. I looked at her eyes, and said “Sure, that would be great” which was sort of a lie, but I couldn’t tell her I didn’t like it, so I went out the door with her mascara. It isn’t too bad, I guess.
~ While shopping yesterday (in the middle of the day), I had an interesting conversation about homeschooling. I like to shock and awe. 
~ I bought C7 two lovely dresses in NY, and I can’t believe I left the store with one in the wrong size. Argh!
~ Most importantly, I bought a new pair of Sarah Palin RED SHOES!!!!! Go Sarah!!!
Education
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVLQhRiEXZs
Condom Quick Facts
http://www.citizenlink.org/pdfs/fosi/abstinence/Condom_Fact_Sheet.pdf
“Approximately 15 percent of women who depend on condoms for contraception will become pregnant within the first year of use. If a sexually active 15-year-old girl practices a typical use of condoms, she has a 50 percent chance of becoming pregnant before she is 20.”
Edited to add:
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=3&GA=93&DocTypeId=SB&DocNum=99&GAID=3&LegID=734&SpecSess=&Session
Lines 14-18!!!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008 8:26 AM in »
Family Planning,
Politics,
Public School,
Sex Education |
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Today was the first day back to school for our local public school children. I just wanted to mention how thankful I am for the freedom to homeschool my children.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008 4:40 PM in »
Homeschooling Controversy,
Public School |
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SAT Scores Remain at 10-Year Low
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1836111,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
“More than ever, the SAT reflects the face of education in this country…”
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 4:42 PM in »
Public School |
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Calm Down or Else
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/health/15restraint.html
“The children return from school confused, scared and sometimes with bruises on their wrists, arms or face. Many won’t talk about what happened, or simply can’t, because they are unable to communicate easily, if at all.”
“His son, then 12… ‘didn’t want to go to school because he thought the school was trying to kill him.’”
“For more than a decade, parents of children with developmental and psychiatric problems have pushed to gain more access to mainstream schools and classrooms for their sons and daughters. One unfortunate result, some experts say, is schools’ increasing use of precisely the sort of practices families hoped to avoid by steering clear of institutionalized settings: takedowns, isolation rooms, restraining chairs with straps, and worse.”
“In April, a 9-year-old Montreal boy with autism died of suffocation when a special education teacher wrapped him in a weighted blanket to calm him, according to the coroner’s report. Two Michigan public school students with autism have died while being held on the ground in so-called prone restraint.”
“‘Behavior problems in school are way up, and there’s good reason to believe that the use of these procedures is up, too.’”
“For teachers, who have many other responsibilities — not least, to teach — managing even one child with a disability can add a wild card to the day. ‘In a class of 30 to 35 children, there’s a huge question of how much safety or teaching a teacher can provide if he or she is being called on to calm or contain a student on a regular basis,’ said Patti Ralabate, a special education expert at the National Education Association. ‘The teacher is responsible for the safety of all the children in the classroom.’”
“During the 2005-6 school year, an 8-year-old with a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and mild mental retardation was repeatedly locked in a ’seclusion room’ alone, adjacent to the classroom — at least 31 times in a single year.”
“In another school, a teacher held a 12-year-old with a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder ‘face down on the floor, straddling him at his hips, and holding his hands behind his back,’”
“Dr. Peterson, the Nebraska professor, illustrates the challenges by citing two recent cases in Iowa. In one, the parents of an 11-year-old who died while being held down called for a ban on restraints; in the other, parents charged that a school failed their son by not restraining him. The boy ran away and drowned.”
Saturday, August 09, 2008 8:06 AM in »
Public School |
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Somebody recently told me how homeschooling has its “downs”, because he once knew a homeschooled teenage girl who was ignorant and not properly socialized. Just because I know a few public schooled drug-using promiscuous bullies doesn’t mean they are all like that (at least I don’t think so).
Future-spotting
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/future_spotting/
“Quebec is certainly the most secularist and statist province in Canada, so much so that the Quebec government is currently implementing a new school curriculum – Ethics and Religious Culture. Its avowed purpose is to teach children an ideology – the ideology of so-called “normative pluralism”, whereby they will be told that religious faith and practice are all right as long as people don’t take these matters too seriously. It’s a program that is designed to deter children from assimilating the basic tenets of the two cultural institutions most likely to influence their world view, their families and their churches, and to turn them into passive citizens, looking for guidance in all matters to the state rather than to civil society institutions.”
“French and English Canada both appear to be suffering, albeit in different degrees, from the same growing spiritual illness that people like J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis wrote about throughout the last century. It’s a loss of hope and purpose resulting from the loss of interior life and a living faith. The history of both Catholic and Protestant Christianity in Canada over the past 50 years has been largely, although not exclusively, one of erosion of Christian doctrine and morals and of buying into secularism.”
Wednesday, June 04, 2008 7:25 PM in »
Christianity,
Public School |
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