Some family slideshows

Our family and my dad.

Some of my favorite photos.

Old Posts, New Blog

I am gradually moving some of my posts over from homeschoolblooger.com. It's not that I don't like the other site, it's just that I feel kind of out of place over there. Most of the people I have noticed are very religous. Not that I am against that, that's their choice. I'm just not one of those people. I respect them for their views but I did not want to feel that I had to "hide" any of my own personal views. People have the right to their beliefs and views as I do. I just didn't (don't) feel like having my views questioned.

That's all.

SCATTERGORIES...

I got this from another site and thought it was a fun thing (and kind of educational) to do. Even though is says that if you can't think of anything to just "skip it", I did a search for items in that catagory that started with my first initial. (Note 9, 14 & 15)

SCATTERGORIES...

Your Name starts with a(n): T

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following...They MUST be real places, names, things...NOTHING made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

1. Athlete: Thorpe (Jim)

2. 4 letter word: tree

3. Street name: Throckmorton Street

4. Color: Tan

5. Gifts/presents: Toe socks

6. Vehicles: Taurus

7. Tropical Locations: Tobago

8. College Majors: Theater Arts

9. Dairy Products: Tillamook cheese

10. Things in a Souvenir Shop: thimbles

11. Boy Name: Tom

12. Girl Name: Tandi

13. Movie Title: TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

14. Beers: Topper

15. Occupation: træskomager (Norwegian for " wooden Shoemaker"-it doesn't say it has to be in English :-P)

16. Flowers: Tulips

17. Celebrity: Donald Trump

18. Magazine: Texas Highways

19. U.S. City: Terlingua

20. Pro Sports Team: Tennessee Titans

First Day Jitters

Tomorrow we start a new year of homeschooling. This one is a big deal because my son will be in 9th grade. Yikes! Where did the time go? Just yesterday I was watching a video of him when he was only about 2. He was so innocent then. And a little pill! I had forgotten how onery he was at that age. I also noticed that my daughter was quite a talker then and hasn't shut up since! lol!

So now I have a high schooler. If I had kept him in public school, he'd be going into 10th grade this year. I can't imagine that. He just turned 15 only 2 weeks ago. He's mature enough now that he could handle high school but several years ago, I couldn't see him in the grade level that the p.s. system said he should have been in. He was very immature when he started p.s. way back in kindergarten - the youngest in his class. His maturity level showed with the way he acted in class. Once we took him out of p.s., he started to change. He listened better, his reading got better, and I think he was actually starting to like school again. Now he could care less, but I attribute that to his age. Even though he "says" that he doesn't want to start school tomorrow, I think he's actually glad. We really just finished up last years work a week or so ago, but he's had nothing to keep him occupied since then. I caught him watching a show on the Military Channel the other day. My son, watching something educational without me telling him to? No, can't be! Must have been someone else! lol!

He will have to get up a lot earlier than normal. He hasn't been getting up until noon on some days. Tomorrow he will have to get up at 8:30 a.m. so we can go over some "pre" school stuff. I want to discuss the schedule that we will use, go over the documentation he and I will be using, discuss the curriculum we will be using along with the supplements. Then hopefully we can begin our school day at 10 a.m. and get done between 2 - 2:45.

I'm still concerned about the Algebra. I sent off for what I thought was the student's book. Come to find out it was only the Student Solutions book. I guess they don't have a students edition for this particular book. I'm not happy about it as I will have to come up with some way to cover the answers in my book when my son has to do the exercises. Either that or I will have to write them out or recite them to him to write in his notebook. One good thing, if this Algebra book doesn't work out, I am free to choose another one and get a tutor for him. We will see. Who knows, maybe I'll finally learn how to do Algebra myself! lol!

It should be interesting, that's for sure. And of course hubby is still home. He was a Master Instructor in the Air Force, started as a trainer in his previous job and was a trainer in his last one. Hopefully he won't critique me on my teaching skills. I may have to run him out of the room while we are trying to do school work. When I told my son that I may have to get a job and that his father would have to teach him, he was like "nooooo!" lol! He KNOWS how his dad is. His dad is really technical in his teaching. He "thinks" that everyone else knows as much as he does about certain things, so forgets to teach the simple things. I remember years ago when I was first learning about computers. I asked him what the difference was between a bit and a byte. His explanation was so complicated that I never did figure it out. It wasn't until I took a computer class at Angelo State that I found out what the difference was. I went home that night and asked him why didn't he tell me that. He said he did. I'm like, "You did? Sure could have fooled me!" I rarely ask him to explain something technical or complicated. I just end up getting more confused. I just look it up myself now.

I will post tomorrow what schedule we decided to use and how our day went. If I end up pulling all my hair out, I'll take a picture and post that. lol!

G-Day and goodbye dear Matey!

I am one of the thousands, perhaps millions of people who are saddened by the death of that famous crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin. He was killed today after being "stung" by a stingrays barb. Since the venom isn't that strong, they think that it was the impact of the barb itself...perhaps puncturing a hole into his heart. I feel for his family especially his children. As much as his wife may love Australia, I have a feeling that she will leave that country and come back to America to be closer to her own family. I would have a hard time staying somewhere that reminds me on a constant basis that my husband and the father of my children is no longer there. Maybe she will stay just so Australia Zoo will continue to live up to the high standards that Steve Irwin brought to it. Maybe her son will grow up to be another "Crocodile Hunter" although his dad will not be there to teach him as Steves dad did. I know I for one will miss Steve Irwins antics, his enthusiasm, his sense of adventure and his compassion along with his infamous words, "Crikey" and "Danger, danger, danger". We will miss you Steve-o!

Astronomers say Pluto is not a planet

(Note: This story came from the AP over at Yahoo. Unfortunately the link no longer works so I took it out 1/4/07)

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn't — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.

Although astronomers applauded after the vote, Jocelyn Bell Burnell — a specialist in neutron stars from Northern Ireland who oversaw the proceedings — urged those who might be "quite disappointed" to look on the bright side.

"It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called 'planet' under which the dwarf planets exist," she said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella.

The decision by the prestigious international group spells out the basic tests that celestial objects will have to meet before they can be considered for admission to the elite cosmic club.

For now, membership will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

It was unclear how Pluto's demotion might affect the mission of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which earlier this year began a 9 1/2-year journey to the oddball object to unearth more of its secrets.

The decision at a conference of 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries was a dramatic shift from just a week ago, when the group's leaders floated a proposal that would have reaffirmed Pluto's planetary status and made planets of its largest moon and two other objects.

That plan proved highly unpopular, splitting astronomers into factions and triggering days of sometimes combative debate that led to Pluto's undoing.

Now, two of the objects that at one point were cruising toward possible full-fledged planethood will join Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto whose discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena has nicknamed Xena.

Charon, the largest of Pluto's three moons, is no longer under consideration for any special designation.

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My question is, how will this affect the education of our children? Every piece of information I have in my home library states that Pluto is a planet. Should I just throw out all my books that make reference to that statement? I don't know that I'm willing to give up my belief about Pluto. Pluto being a planet has been ingrained in me for too many years to speak of here. I'm sure the publishers of educational materials are rushing to their presses to start printing out new books with the new information in them. Will the schools stop using their current books? The information is now incorrect in them so they shouldn't be using them, right? Let's spend more of my hard earned money and buy all new books with the new information in them. I think I will just tell my child that some crazy scientists are now convinced that Pluto is not a planet. Instead of calling them planets, why not just call them "heavenly bodies" and leave it at that. Next thing you know, they'll start calling our moon a planet. I refuse to throw away my model of the planets. Am I being ignorant? No, just stubborn. I happen to like having Pluto as a planet. It means that something is still the same as it was when I was a kid. After all so many things have changed since I was a child and some of those things aren't so good. I say let's start a petition to keep Pluto a planet. What say you?

Some Unit Study Pictures

I thought I would post some pictures of the unit studies we have been working on. We finished up Australia and are now working on Volcanoes. Today we had to make a model of Mt. St. Helen's before the 1980 eruption using a topographic map. I made the mistake of having my son do it on a piece of red construction paper (what on earth was I thinking???). In the one picture you can't really see the different elevations but you can in the others. I also took a picture of the different displays I put up on our bulletin board. I'm going to let my son paste those pictures into his binder that he has for both units.

I think he had fun doing the play-doh thing. We did one last week and had so much fun doing it together. We were laughing so hard that my husband could hear us over the TV out in the living room! You'd have thought that my son and I had never played with play-doh before. Well, actually we've never played with homemade play-doh before. I had to make some play-doh for the volcanoe project. All we had was clay, and it was so gooey and soft, that it just wasn't going to work. I had to get on the internet and find a recipe for play-doh. It turned out pretty good if I say so myself. My son has had fun messing with it (I keep it in ziplock baggies on the desk). Our dogs try to eat it. And of course my son has to make a ball out of it and then tease the dogs with it. Shame on him! lol!

Anyway, check out the pics. Hope you enjoy them!