Continuing the blog elsewhere ...

Well, in an effort to consolidate my life, I'm now posting about pretty much everything, including homeschooling, at my new blog. Hope you pop over!

Here's the link: http://writes-and-wrongs.blogspot.com/

Test Post

Testing!

FLEX TOURS -- CHECK IT OUT!

FLEX TOURS has donated two walking tours to the fundraiser, and although one has been bid on, one remains available! Come on folks, this is great for someone in the NYC area, or someone who has friends up there. What a cool gift, right? Check it out! Here's the link: NYC WALKING TOUR DIRECT TO YOUR CELL PHONE

And the fundraiser has just over a day left, and is only a few hundred shy of $6,000. Please keep bidding! Let's break the 6K mark!

Fundraiser is Live!!!!!!!!!!!

Check out my fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries! And please bid generously!

Higher Education: Excellence without a Soul

Crosswalk.com - Higher Education: Excellence without a Soul: "Higher Education: Excellence without a SoulS. Michael CravenFounding Director of the Center for Christ & CultureAnother school year has begun and an estimated 15 million young men and women will be pursuing studies at the college and university levels. However, this may not be as beneficial as we have historically believed higher education to be.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, 'Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.' This point was echoed in a recent Dallas Morning News article under the apt heading, All Brains, no Soul. The author, Thomas Hibbs is a philosopher and dean of the Honors College at Baylor University."

We've been so busy with school and getting ready for China that I haven't followed up on my promise to finish writing up last week! But I just had to post this article.

Kindergarten! Week One!

What a week! September 15, was C's last day in day care, and this week was her first week of homeschooling. We're doing kindergarten work (she's 4; will be 5 next month) and we're both loving it. It's a challenge for me, as I've lost my daytime work/writing time (mostly) but I've got that worked out (I think!).

Check out what we accomplished in week one:

Five in a Row, THE STORY OF PING – This was especially fun for us since we leave for China next month. For those of you not familiar with Ping, he's a little duck who lives on the Yangtze River. We learned what ducks eat, what type of duck Ping is (Pekin), that that type came to the US in 1870. We talked about China in general, found it on the map (again!), found the Yangtze River on the map, found YC's orphanage near a bend in the Yangtze.

We talked about the art in the book, and looked at how the artist used colored pencils. We tried that out, then drew our own picture, using squiggle lines to make things move through the water.

We looked at the drawings of reflections and then pulled out a mirror and looked at various things reflected. C's initials – CEK reflect "right" because if you write out only half, bisecting on the horizontal. Mine don't (JBK), but daddy's do (DBK). Isabella's don't either (IYK). C learned (and was using for hours but has sense forgotten) the word "symmetrical". We did the reflection thing with mommy drawing half butterflies, ants, eggs, hearts, stick figure girls, etc.

We did a whole lot more, too, but I have to get some writing work done before the weekend is up!! Will post more later!

WSJ.com - No Teacher Left Behind

WSJ.com - No Teacher Left Behind An interesting article in that it pretty much states what we already know -- that colleges are producing untrained teachers. The suggestion at the end, though, scares me: testing at each grade level so that what the kids have learned can measure what the teacher has learned. Um, gee? Does that sound like even MORE beaurocracy and even MORE "teaching to the test"? Yes, I think it does. A disaster waiting to happen, imho.