Oh happy day!!!

Well, I just published my new ebook.

I've been working on it for quite some time now, then I suffered a bit of stage fright LOL Anyhow it is now published. This is something that I've wanted to do forever and a day now and finally I've done it: I've written my own ebook!!! I'm so psyched and thrilled. If you'd like to check it out, here's the link. I don't mean to go on and on but there's something great feeling whenever you achieve a major goal. I think that this is something that we as homeschooling parents are truly able to teach our children. I wish each and every one of you the best of success in the coming new year.

Play dates...

...are not all that they're cracked up to be. We had one today and by golly my daughter must have cried for no good reason at least 5 times. For some reason she seems to be going through a rebellious stage. It is absolutely driving me crazy. She can be soooo sweet for her grandparents and then soooo bad for me :( I keep threatening to send her to public school even though I would never do it. I'm trying to crack through her thick skull that she can't act this way. I know that kids are always better for people other than their parents but by golly I just am about my wits end. I love this kid to death and love spending every waking minute with her but I'll be greatful once this stage is over. Anyhow, I'll stop ranting now LOL

Wowsers

Well, I finally got caught up on my email today. I'm glad about that but I have so many great articles that I have written while away that I'm having a hard time getting caught up there. I also have an ebook ready to convert to a PDF file to be published and sold. I think that this is going to be a good year. We're going to meet some new friends tomorrow. They're unschoolers. I think that we'll get along just fine even though we're more eclectic, only bordering on unschooling. At least my daughter will have some friends now. Plus I can have her best friend over too which will be nice. There's also a homeschool group that this mom is a part of that I'll start going to in January. My daughter now will be with kids 4 out of 7 days of the week. It will be good for her. We'll just need to learn how to do school around all of these great new things that will be going on. I'm actually truly looking forward to it though. After all this is really waht homeschooling is all about in my opinion. Well, I'm off to bed... Good night!

Goodness I missed being online...

...but I sure did learn a lot and now that I'm back I look forward to sharing everything with you really soon. I'm just trying to catch up on a few things now and my dad will be here soon to hook up my Vonage phone line. I'll chat with you soon though, promise!

:-( I'm lost without the Internet :-(

Unfortunately Verizon offers very poor service. I moved from one apartment to another and they have totally messed up my account. Thus, I am waiting for Comcast to give me service. Unfortunately they cannot do this until Thursday. As such I will be offline until then. Missing you all...

Taking a small, short break!

I'm going to be away from this blog for a few days because real life has me busy. I'll be back Monday or Tuesday. For now though, I'll leave you with this "song" that I found online (sorry, I don't know who to give proper credit to as it was floating around a few groups that I'm in and all by different people posting it) and really liked so I thought that you may too. Anyhow, I'm sure I'll have a lot to tell you when I get back...

The 14 days of Homeschooling( sung to The 12 Days of Christmas)
On the first day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Can you homeschool legally?”
On the second day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”
On the third day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”
On the fourth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “What about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”
On the fifth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “YOU ARE SO STRANGE! What about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”
On the sixth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “How long will you homeschool, YOU ARE S0 STRANGE, what about P.E. , do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”
On the seventh day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE!, what about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, do you homeschool legally?”
On the eighth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE, what about P.E. do you give them tests, are they socialized, do you homeschool legally?”
On the ninth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “They’ll miss the prom, why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE!, what about P.E. do you give them tests, are they socialized, do you homeschool legally?”
On the tenth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “What about graduation, they’ll miss the prom, why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE!, what about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”
On the eleventh day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “I could never do that, what about graduation, they’ll miss the prom, why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE, what about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”
On the twelfth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Can they go to college, I could never do that, what about graduation, they’ll miss the prom, why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE, What about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”
On the thirteenth day of homeschool I thoughtfully replied: “They Can go to college, yes you can do this, they can have graduation, we don’t like the prom, we do it cuz we like it, they are missing nothing, we’ll homeschool forever, WE ARE NOT STRANGE!, We give them P.E., and we give them tests, they are socialized, AND WE HOMESCHOOL LEGALLY!
On the fourteenth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “How can I get started, why didn’t you tell me, where do I buy curriculum, when is the next conference, WILL PEOPLE THINK WE’RE STRANGE? I think we can do this, if you will help us, we’ll join a sports team, and we’ll homeschool legally.

Curriculum

In my opinion there are 2 real ways in which to get content. One requires money while the other requires time. I am so glad that I have tons of time on my hands because I'm on a strict budget. As such I end up making most of my own curriculum. That's what I just spent the last 3.5 hours doing and I still have some stuff to finish. I don't think I'm going to get it done tonight but at least half of it is done. I have fun doing this so maybe I'm crazy. I'm not complaining really, just taking a deep breath.

Finding a homeschooling style

Each of us as parents has to find a method that works for us. However, I am finding that mine is so much different than a lot of the people that I'm around. I don't honestly even know what to call my method and I wonder if it even matters but sometimes it does because I try to tell people what we do and can't just say "CM" or somethin as easy as that LOL Instead I have to tell them more than they probably wanted to know. This is why... My homeschooling method is a lot of unschooling, with about 30 minutes of worksheets per day. The rest of the time my daughter is playing educational games either with me or on the computer, reading with me or looking at books alone, doing file folder games by herself or notebooking/coloring. (I probably forgot a few other things along the way LOL) It works for us though and that's my point: If you find something that works for your child: RUN WITH IT!!!

Lapbooking

I know that I just recently had an article published about lapbooking but in all honesty I cannot sing enough praises about it. My daughter is learning so much from it and she really enjoys doing it. All I have to do is ask her if she wants to color and away we go on a journey into learning without her even really realizing it. Another thing that I like is that most of the material is quite inexpensive and can be used over and over again (well at least 2 maybe 3 times it can be used). I don't know if you realize how much money this can save you. The fact is that most material is expensive but not this. Of course you do sometimes have to look information up online but it's not that difficult to do. Anyhow, I just wanted to encourage you to read my lapbooking article if you don't know what lapbooking is. Then if you want to try some great lapbooks out, you can even find a free one to try, just go to HandsOfAChild.com OK I'm off my "soap box" now LOL I just get so excited when I see something working :-)