Weekend Edition~Minersville School District v. Gobitis

My local homeschool conference is coming this week!!! Thursday thru Saturday, March 9-11th 2017. I am already getting excited!

Last year, I mentioned how the HSLDA keynote address was on Jehovah's Witnesses contribution to educational freedoms in the United States of America.
Special Edition~Day One 2016 Homeschool Convention

Since then, I have come to realize that many people are not familiar with the case that the keynote address was discussing, Minersville School District Vs. Gobitis.

I personally grew up knowing a sister who was kicked out of school at the time, along with her siblings. Her and her mother would often speak to me about that time, and what happened with and to them personally from it.

I decided since my local homeschool conference is upon us, I would come back to address this case, and share information about this case directly. As even though this happened in the 1940's it has direct effect on us now as witnesses, and just as citizens, as well as our near future til we are in the new system. These experiences can give us strength to remain faithful even when opposition is fierce. Much like our Watchtower study was about today. We can not force any one to accept the message of the Good News of God's Kingdom, but we can control ourselves to remain faithful and continue to do good!

This is a link to her story from JW.org directly.
Lillian Gobitis's Story

While I hate, linking to anything on Youtube I do not know any other way to share this video interview of Lillian with Phil Donahue.
Interview Video

Weekend Edition~Homeschool Convention Tips

A few things I have gleaned from my personal experience at homeschool conventions.

1) Long before you go, make a list of what you think you want to look at and research curricula/educational game/book wise. There will be a LOT there. Having a list will help you not be overwhelmed and forget once you are there. There will be a LOT of vendors, as well as Rainbow Resource has a huge booth... seeing it all in person verses a catalog makes a huge difference, and you don't want to miss something you really wanted to see, but forgot because you got so engrossed in one or two other booths and totally forgot something you had been interested in for months and waiting to see in person!

2) Along with 1, don't forget to make a list of positively what you want to buy. There's a few things every year, I know I will be buying at the conference. And every time I get in that vendor hall you can bet, I forget a few things, if I didn't have my list!

3) Have a budget and stay in it! To support staying in your budget. Do not buy anything til you have looked at every thing on your list of what you wanted, and every thing on your list of wanting to look at. Once you have looked at it all, and priced it all. Re-evaluate what you want to buy. You may even wait til the second day to purchase. Even if they run out of stock at the actual convention, they often will give free shipping and you can order it and ship it to your house for free! So don't feel pressured to buy it the first day. Also if you find something new you want to buy because of a workshop you attended, you for sure will want to sleep on it. You could be all fired up because of the mob/group excitement during the actual workshop, but after you sleep on it, and re-evaluate if this would really be used in your home, or work with your family, or even your homeschool style, it's just not a good fit. You don't want to spend money on something that is not right for you. So think carefully first!

4) Along with the last tip... there will most likely be many things you want to buy but is either outside of your budget, or it's not really needed for this year. For instance, last year, I seen a science book I really really want for my children, and I also seen a game I really really want for my children. But, I really was at the limit of my budget, and both the science book and game were not age appropriate yet for my children. So I noted them in my notebook and took pictures of them with my phone. And they will go on this years list of things to buy!

5) If this is your first year to attend you may want to see if there is discounts for first time attendees. Sometimes it's even free!

6) Also way in advance, as soon as you know the dates of your conference. If you have children with in ages that can not, or would not enjoy sitting through lectures all day. And youc an be away from them for a day (not nursing or needing you). Plan and schedule some one else to take care of them during the day, during the convention. If they have to attend with you. Maybe ask a friend, or fellow homeschool mama with a teenager who wouldn't mind... to come with you and help you with the children.

You will not get much out of the workshops if you are constantly having to attend to children going potty, needing water, chattering etc. And it can get really frustrating and self defeating. I am all for taking children every where with me. But, I also know at my children's ages, it's more advantageous for all concerned (me getting things out of the convention, and them not feeling tortured by being still and quiet all day!) for us to schedule a local friend of mines teen to care for them at their house for the day. While her and I attend the convention together. Her home is close enough, we can go to her home at lunch and check on every one. But, really her teen and my children are responsible enough, it's not really needed. But, is a nice advantage.

7) Go the night before to the introduction workshop. They often give tips of who will be there, as well as often have seasoned been there, done that mom's with experience that will help motivate you and encourage you that it will be ok!

8) If you can get a schedule of the workshops the night before at the introduction workshop. Look through it, and pick and choose which workshops would best fit you and your families needs. Make a list of first choices, but also make a back up of second choices for each of your first choices. Sometimes, workshops are cancelled, or rescheduled, or over crowded. Or for various reasons you may not be able to attend your first choice, and often only have seconds to choose a different workshop and get in before it starts too. Of course most will let you come and go freely, but if you want to get the complete workshop you want to get there as early in the session as possible. So having a back up already planned, will make this much smoother and faster to just run down the hallway to the next choice.

9) Bring a note book for taking notes during these workshops. And pens/pencils. You will be learning many many things about how children actually learn and by the end of the day could be jumbled if you didn't take notes. And you will want to note which speaker said what. It may be a speaker you want to seek out for the future, because they were that good! And want to seek their books, or other things from them. And on the other hand, it may be some one you disagree with so much you want to make sure you avoid and don't make the mistake of purchasing from them, something that won't work for you or your family.

Weekend Edition~Winter in FULL Effect

I don't know about where you live. But, in Kansas we can have both really warm weather and down right freezing weather in January.

While sometimes, we don't mind snuggling in with a good book as the wind blows it's icy breath. There comes a time when we are just burning up with cabin fever! And have to get out! This is the time of year, I rely heavily on those family passes we have to indoor museums, like our local science museum. Or the library. Or the history museum. etc etc.

I also love the set up our annual space museum field trip in the middle of winter. It's kind of a long car trip for us. About a hour drive. And then it's a ALL day of being inside, because it's also a costly trip, and I wouldn't want to pay the cost of admission and the time devoted in the car to get there and not do every thing it has to offer while there. However, as much as we LOVE the space museum. I hate to spend two hours in the car and then the whole day inside on lovely spring, summer or autumn days. So just when we think we can't take another moment of captivity in the house, we bust out our day at the Space museum field trip. There's tons of interactive things that literally kids can spend the whole day doing there, and still not want to go home. And best of all, if you go with fellow home educating families, you get a significant discount, it's about 60-70 percent off retail price for the day! Plus you can add in hot lunch option for only a few dollars more per a person. So worth it!

So if your temperature has spiked (cabin fever), and you are looking for a way to cool it down, with out freezing to death... you may want to do some looking around at a few places that you don't normally want to spend all day indoors at during nice weather and see if it can become a good tradition for your family as well. In the meantime... pull out those family passes to what ever else your family may have memberships to that is indoors, and don't seclude yourselves in the cabin a minute longer!

Weekend Edition ~ Alpacas!

We have a really sweet Pre-School Homeschool Co-op. It's a very casual group, and while most people have at least one Pre-School age child, all children are allowed to come along. Most the women I also attended La Leche League with as well.

This group was mainly people from the Co-op. Three families came with us who are witnesses. Two of the families just started homeschooling this month! And one family is in our congregation, while they do not homeschool, they often get to come along on homeschool field trips with us! So like I keep telling all of my readers, and friends, do not dismiss inviting ones from your congregation to come along on your homeschool field trips, even if they do not home school. You would be surprised how many they may get to tag along on, and you get the added bonus of more association and bonding with others in the congregation!

Our field trip this morning was at a local Alpaca Farm, in Rose Hill, Kansas. My dad dropped us off, but then had to take my sister Sarah to a doctor appointment. But, I had just needed a ride there, because the sisters who also came to this field trip had already planned on us going to lunch together, and drove me and the kids to lunch and then home afterwards.

Weekend Edition~Jubilee Schooling

Jubilee Schooling, is a term you may see floating around, some times it is also called Sabbath Schooling.

What it usually refers to is, schooling for so many weeks in a block, and then taking so much time off.

Mostly it's schooling in a 6 week block, and then taking 1 week (the 7th week) off.

During that 6 week block, parents choose many ways of implementing how many days a week they will school. From 3 days a week to 6 days a week. Depending on how the family wants to do it. Then takes the 7th week completely off. But, it could also be 7 weeks on and 1 week off, or 5 weeks on and 1 week off, 5 weeks on and 2 weeks off. What ever works for their family!

For my family, we school 4 to 5 days a week. For 6 weeks and take a week off. Sometimes that week though turns into a few weeks! haha I like to do school though really for 4 days a week in our home, then 1 day a week community service in the morning (read field service) and a field trip in the afternoon. But, we are still honing this in our own home. And then 1 week off.

Some families. use this method and school year around. Others still use this method and school 8 to 9 months a year.

We are kind of year around homeschoolers, but do take off a lot of weeks in the summer, and any time we really need to the rest of the year.

Remember this is YOUR homeschool, and in the majority of states, it's up to you how many hours, and how many days, and how you execute such, completely! Completely in your power. You do not have to recreate institutionalized schooling in any manner what so ever when you homeschool. Find what works for your family, the rhythm and method that works the best in your home, and what is perfect for your family, regardless of what others and especially institutionalized schools do.

Weekend Edition~Why I would especially choose to homeschool a special needs child

This post is not to judge any one who feels they need the public school system to help them with their special needs child. But, rather just the reasons I would still choose to homeschool.

Firstly, children with special needs, will need more one on one time and personal attention then the average child. And the average child needs a lot of personal attention and one on one time as well! And a public school situation is not conducive to the amount a average child and especially a special needs child needs. It's not any teachers fault, there is just not the funds that would be able to allow that amount of teacher to student ratio or time and attention. It's just the numbers can not add up to it.

Secondly, and this is just as true for children with or with out special needs, no one will love and care about a child's education and welfare as much as their parents. No one. It's just a law of truth through out mankind's history. We can see that even in Solomon's wisdom in who he determined was the real mother of the child judicial case... a real mother has transcending love like no other! And yes, I do include adoptive parents in this.. I do believe the primary care giver, of care, love and daily needs of a child is the "real" parent, weather that is biological or adoption.

Thirdly, secular education is based on humanism and paganism. This can be confusing for a child with out special needs. ALL the more so confusing for a child with learning disabilities. Ask any parent of a child who does not have special needs all the educational deprogramming they have to do each night, on what their children were educated on in paganism? And how hard the deprogramming is. And then think about how much harder that is for a child who has learning disabilities.

I remember when one of my older nephews came home from Preschool and declared he had met Santa Clause, we tried and tried to explain to him that Santa was not real, he was a made up fairy tale. Well, nothing we said could convince him that Santa was not real... after all he had met him, and spoke with him, sat on his lap at school! We were the ones who were crazy for not believing in the person he met in real life!!! We seriously could not convince him otherwise. He did not have learning disabilities, I seriously do not know how we could help a special needs child in this same situation. Well, Christmas came and went, and Santa did not visit our home. And that just made my nephew very angry! He said the next time he met Santa he was going to kick him, because he had promised to come and he didn't. It took years to get him to understand that Santa really did not exist. And that is just one thing. The whole secular education is based on many many pagan and humanistic theories-evolution which skews every thing else they teach from science to historic time lines, to proper language, etc etc. And just the entire secular curricula is all centered on paganism and humanism.

And those are just the basic facts across the board with public school education. A few other reasons that come up often with special needs children are things like. Being passed on so that the school has a good passing rate, even when the child has not been educated to the degree they should for passing. Not teaching real life skills that a special needs child needs to be able to get a job after graduating. I know of a local school district that had so many special needs graduates with out real job skills, that the parents actually banded together to come up with their own business that their special needs adult children could now work for. As the schools had left them completely unhirable by the general public. Others report that the funding is not funneled correctly to the special needs children, and there is BIG funding involved. Which this high funding in and of itself lends to many public schools abusing their power and lying to families about the parents qualifications to educate their own child, so as to keep the child in their school for the funding! And then the numerous reports of child abuse to special needs children as well. Then there is the safety of a special needs child from the other students as well. Schools do not protect special needs children from abuse by other students at school.

I have two of my own experiences with this. In the seventh grade I had a major, 12 hour, back surgery. I was in a body cast for a year. When I went back to public school, I was pushed down the stairs and the rods in my back were broken. I reported this to the school principal who refused to handle the situation, because he said, I could of been confused on who I seen push me down the stairs. And since I could of been confused, he could punish the wrong child. So as that, he refused to do anything at all about it. I was NOT confused in the least! I was very adamant about who pushed me down the stairs and didn't waiver in any of my reports about who it was! I know to this day who it was. In fact, after facebook came around (almost 30 years later!) one of the girls who was part of that situation actually contacted me and apologized for it. But, that had absolutely nothing to do with the school ever protecting me at all. Later in high school, a special needs child, physically attacked me during lunch. Again nothing was done, because he had special needs, and apparently could not control his self to not physically attack other people. Who knows how many of his fellow special needs students he also attacked.

A few years ago, a friend of mine, from my congregation asked me to help her home educate her daughter. A special needs child. Who was getting sexually harassed at school. Again the school refused to help, saying it was normal. Children should be allowed to make sexual choices on their own, and they would not get involved. These kind of situations I have heard, time and again and again. So much so, as my friend was relating her story to me, I would finish what had probably happened next, and she was in shock I knew... yes, I knew because I had heard her same story, from other mothers that many times! Then the school, her daughter was in, went so far as, when my friend pulled her child from the school, they gave the sexual predators my friends home phone number and home address so the predators could contact them outside of school now! This was of course in the name of helping my friends child have social interactions outside of the home! Again this is of course not all teachers, and not all schools, but reports have been made for decades on all of these situations.

Below is a REAL worksheet that was sent home as homework to a son of one of my friends. I am in complete awe of what is being taught on this worksheet. And awe meaning, completely shocked at the sickening education this worksheet is teaching. This was for speech therapy. Which many special needs children are in. Again do not take this as a judgement against speech therapy, only as this is what could be included, and what was included for my friends son!

I would also like to close this post by saying, if you are considering homeschooling your special needs child, but are concerned about how. HSLDA.org provides help, advice, and guidance for such.

HSLDA Special Needs help

A little anecdotal from me, so far I do not think I have ever met a parent of a special needs child that has regretted choosing to home educate their child. Across the board, mothers have told me of how their children were failing and falling through the cracks at schools, and they brought them home and they flourished, some to levels of not even being considered special needs any more. Of course there are many special needs out there, that will not be over come with home education. But, time and again I have heard especially from families with ADD/ADHD, reading comprehension disabilities etc say after they brought the child home for education, the problems nearly or did disappear.

Edited to add a news paper article from the Washington Post, recently published about the public school education policies for special needs children.

Washington Post Article

The above post describes a court case about special needs education. The bottom line to me, shows exactly why public school doesn't work for special needs children. They do not have the time, staff, nor specialty to individually help those with special needs progress to the best of their ability. And are happy with mediocrity. When we home educate we can hone in on our child's needs, and specialize the curricula and learning to fit that specific child.

Weekend Edition~Home Schooling From Scratch

Another homeschooling book I came across at my local library. Home Schooling From Scratch, by Mary Potter Kenyon.

Overall I found this book pretty good. I wouldn't consider it a essential homeschooling book to have to read. But, I do consider it a nice over all read, relaxed, conversational style writing, as if she is having a conversation with the reader rather then talking at the reader, simple language, fast and short read as the entire book including resource pages is only a little over 100 pages. Actual reading pages are less then 100 pages. This book was also published in the late 90's so some of the references and information will be a bit dated, but truth be told a LOT of what she mentioned is still used and well regarded by homeschoolers nearly 2 decades later today!

Chapter 1) Tells her own story of how she learned about homeschooling and why her family chose to homeschool.

Chapter 2) Speaks about different styles of homeschooling. This part I found the most dated. There has been much more research into homeschooling since this book was printed, and so I feel there are more current studies done on what constitutes a complete education and some things she felt left holes in education many today do not agree do. As well as many more styles and kinds of homeschooling has formed as well. But, over all I was surprised she mentioned some of my favorite authors in this chapter-Ruth Beechick, John Holt, Gatto! And she mostly spoke well of them, and I enjoyed the quotes she used from them.

Chapter 3) Goes into budgeting cost of homeschooling and how most people truly can afford it, if they follow free and inexpensive resources. Which she goes into many options of being able to cost effectively find these resources and use them.

Chapter 4) Explains more ways of homeschooling for low cost or no cost at all-begging, and borrowing and apprenticeship. I, Heather, personally was able to get a huge chalk board for my classroom by simply asking on a local Freecycle group, I was also able to get one of our desk that way.

Chapter 5) Digs into where to look for support. Most of the advice in this chapter is very good. The computer support group advice is VERY outdated however. haha If you are old enough to remember the internet in the mid 90's, it was pretty current advice for the time! My own notes to you, there is TONS of internet support groups now. AOL has not been around for years, people went from those chatrooms and emails to more discussion boards and yahoo type groups, and from discussion boards and email lists (like yahoogroups), to facebook. Most the old homeschool discussion boards are pretty dead today (there's a few out there, but they are very slow and inactive). Facebook has more then you can shake a stick at! haha

Chapter 6) Speaks of inexpensive learning activities, broken down into subjects, and then ends with holistic approaches to learning.

Chapter 7) Goes into details about how to organize your home, so that educating the children is easier.

Chapter 8) Explains how cottage businesses can not only bring in income for the family, but helps teach children real life skills, as well as your routine school subjects-language arts, math, etc. I like her ending thought to this chapter, is that as a business owner you would want to continue to do research regularly on small businesses and particularly the kind you have, so that you can continue to have a money making business, and in this, this teaches your children that people continue to learn way past when they receive a diploma.

Chapter 9) Gives many ideas on how to save money on food and clothing, and other material things, in order to funnel more of your money into other things you would rather have-weather it be for homeschooling, or just in general like vacations and such. Some really nice basic ideas.

Chapter 10) List of many homeschool and money saving resources.