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Transcript of: Homeschooling Open Chat - Media
Aired: 5/8/2008
Transcribed by The Transcript Library
MUSIC - Pinky and the Brain
LESLIE: Welcome everyone to this edition of HOMESCHOOLING OPEN CHAT for Thursday, May 8th. Yeah, welcome to our special Pinky and the Brain Episode.
MUSIC CONTINUES
LESLIE: Now you might be saying, “Why am I focusing on such an obscure, somewhat humorous but not exactly the greatest cartoon ever in the world?” Well, it’s not the cartoon, it’s the concept. If you are not familiar at all with PINKY AND THE BRAIN, you’ve got two laboratory mice, one of which is of course the genius that is going to take over the world. The other one is, let’s just say deficient in everything, except the ability to continue to take over the world unsuccessfully every episode.
Yeah, I guess it’s because we have our days, sometimes even longer than a day, sometimes we have our seasons where we have the best of intentions and they just don’t pan out. And I guess that’s one reason why I’m continually inspired to look for more and more unique ways to conduct homeschooling. What is this show about? It’s not trying to teach you anything in particular or to promote anything in particular. We are on a journey to find different methods of imparting wisdom and education skills to our children. And so you are able to come on the show, usually 3pm Eastern time on Thursdays, to impart your own wisdom. And I am system to schedule, organize and communicate with guests again. I have some thoughts about that but I’m also welcome to suggestions at springanewlive@gmail.com. If you happen to have a way that you keep yourself organized and you think I could use that for scheduling, yes for this and my other shows you are more than welcome .
Well, we have sort of a media bent to the show today. Although you are always welcome to come on, unless I have “guest” in the header, than we are open chat. And if you want to bring up a subject that has been brought up before in previous episodes, you are more than welcome to come into the chat room or call in on the phone and we can talk about something that has already been talked about.
Until then though, I have a few things to talk about today. For one thing, I have an immense case of blog-envy. I’ve just run across some homeschooling blogs that are just awesome, awesome graphically. I am just not a blogger, I am a talker, that is why I’m here doing this show. But I still have a case of blog-envy. This is a good time to make the disclaimer that whenever we do talk about a service, or a blog, please we might find a piece of wisdom or a nugget of gold but that does not necessarily mean that I am endorsing the site or that I am suggesting you subscribe to the site. A lot of times when I look at these I’ve just had a little bit of time to research them and if we ever mention a site that you have had a bad experience with, that you think might be reproducible, not just a glitch but you know something about it, make sure you let me know and we can post a disclaimer on that particular website and service. And raise your hand if you’ve ever spent money on a product, a service, a subscription, a curriculum, and then for one reason or another it just didn’t work out. Yeah, have we done that? And that I think is more aggravating for that fact that as homeschoolers we usually have limited funds to deal with. So again, you can be Pinky and the Brain. You can be buying all sorts of stuff and, I don’t know how to say it concisely…very good with what you buy or other times we just end up buying stuff that, agh, that didn’t work, that didn’t fit my child’s learning style. But whatever we do, we have to pick ourselves up and we have to go on and say, “Look, lesson learned. Let’s use the wisdom that we’ve learned to continue to make better and better choices.”
Well, Media. I got to thinking today, one of the things we have as homeschoolers is we have permission to teach whenever. We don’t have to teach 9-3 and we don’t have to stick with books. We’re imparting wisdom. And of course, the majority of wisdom over the last few centuries has been put into books. But there is also room for hands-on learning. And one of the things I got to thinking about was I bet someone out there has worked on curriculum for teaching with movies. I mean really, our kids can sit down at almost any time of the day and watch a movie. Why not have some stuff behind that, some purpose to them watching a movie? So I well sometimes the web has some free or low-cost curriculum. And I have come across this site, and again I just started looking at this so I’m not saying that I endorse it but I suggest that maybe we can look at the site together here, for just a few minutes. It’s called Teach With Movies, www.teachwithmovies.com. And it is a unique tool for teachers and parents. The only thing I’ve found so far is the items on this site are dated. For example the kudos site, what do they call that? Ugh, I just forgot it, navigated away from it. The page where you put testimonials. Anyway, those were from like 2002, 2003, 2005. So they could update that a little bit. Give people a little bit more confidence. But so far I’m seeing that it is only $11.99 per year, so you can’t beat that. I know people that have purchased movie tickets and didn’t like the movie, and dinners that were not all that good or for $11.99, so this is a possibility. I’m looking at the page, “what’s new” and they have some sample learning guides so I’m going to click on THE WIZARD OF OZ and I’m going to look at this. “Learning guides are very in-length and detailed, all 285, according as of this date, provide valuable insights for transforming movies into tools for learning. More than half contain substantial background material. Almost every guide contains suggested answers to some discussion questions and 70 guides contain suggested answers to all discussion questions. “ Well that’s pretty cool. Some of the subjects are Cinema, Drama, Musicals and US 1865-1913, Social and Emotional Learning such as Self-esteem, Friendship, Taking care of yourself…
Hi Mike, just popped in the chat room.
…and Breaking Out. I’m not quite sure what “breaking out” would mean. To me it’s usually breaking out in pimples. Anyway, and Moral Ethical Worthiness, Trust and Respect and Caring. And they are age five plus, no MPAA ratings. The description is - Oh, I’m sorry, this is pertaining to THE WIZARD OF OZ. I’m sorry. I sort of lost myself here in reviewing this. I read the note and the note sort of threw me off. Okay, anyway, all that stuff I just read was particular to THE WIZARD OF OZ. A Kansas girl caught in a tornado and knocked unconscious, etc. And then the benefits of the movie such as THE WIZARD OF OZ is a classical musical beloved by children and parents for generations, etc. which you can read on the website. Possible problems, minor, young children may be frightened by wicked witches and their minions. So they give some possible problems and parenting points. Parents can maximize the benefits of the film by asking and helping children to answer the discussion questions. Then they give some selected awards, cast and directors, such as 1939 Academy Award for best song OVER THE RAINBOW and original score and featured actors, director, helpful background. Scrolling down here, the movie as a work of literature, got a lot on that. A lot of nice pictures, an original book cover, an allegory to the history of populism in the US late 1800s. The quantity theory of money can be expressed as MV=PQ, wow, okay??? I didn’t know you could do all this with THE WIZARD OF OZ. And then the discussion questions, understanding the story. Did Oz really happen or was it just Dorothy’s dream? Question six is, why is the land of Oz green? And they give some suggested responses. Seven is, a symbol is something in a story that stands for something else, what does the tornado stand for? And then questions relating to the hopes and fears of children age 5-12. And I still have quite a bit to go. That’s 23, 26, 27...Social and Emotional Learning Discussion Questions.
Mike said he couldn’t stay he had to just pop in.
Self esteem, Friendship, okay, here’s Breaking Out. Dorothy lived in Kansas. She yearned to leave home and go somewhere over the rainbow, what did she learn about lands over the rainbow when she got there? And then discussion questions on Morality and Ethics using the six pillars of character. Oh, I remember that from my daughter’s public school. Which I think is okay. Not all public school stuff is bad. Trustworthiness, Respect, Caring, and Links to the Internet and Bridges to Reading. So that’s quite a bit there. That’s quite a bit of stuff on THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Really, we have enough to do, unless you’re using a school-in-the-box type curriculum where your day is all planned out for you and you pay for it, some of these tools can be very, very helpful. Of course the question is, the eternal challenge is, how do we incorporate these in with a curriculum? And that’s a good point we can use to segway into one of our blog articles. Let me just look and see if there’s anything else, just to end the review of Teaching with Movies, we have Home, Index, Search and New. So, for $11.99 I’m going to have to think about that. That may be something that I do.
All right, I want to bring up a couple of the blog sites that I have run across. Let me find the one that sort of segways into that. This is a Homeschool Article, I’ll give you the url here in just a second, by Elgin Smith, and it’s talking about how to run practical homeschooling programs… effectively. And I paused at that because I’m not quite sure that this article was quite on that task. It is a basic and generic article found at www.homeschoolarticles.net...../33/…too much! If you want that URL, you’ll have to email me. Or I should put it up on my blog, home schooling…see I haven’t been to my blog in so long I forgot the title! Homeschooldiva.com, (Laughing) I’m not a blogger. Anyway, this article is very basic. It said a lot of things that we have said before. First it promotes home schooling as effective, and it is using taught by parents or hired tutors, and of course that depends on where you live as to what your state allows you to do. Then it says, “Although it is not the cost factor that most parents decide to embark on practical home schooling as it is quite affordable to most parents.” Now when you read something like that you sort of think, is this person really a homeschooler? Or is this person just writing about homeschooling based on something? Then we go to some points to note. If you’re embarking on homeschooling remember, all 50 states have slightly different legal requirements, so that’s one of the first things you need to do if you’re going to embark on homeschooling is to check out the legal provisions from your state. That also includes certain aspects like curriculum, tests, and certification on who is actually doing the teaching. So that is very important. Remember what is good in one state may not be good in another. And we’re talking about not necessarily what you teach but how you teach it. In a nutshell, practical homeschooling requires the familiarity with the legal framework of the individual, close relationships with home school organizations, and having formed these associations can be a good source of information and help for those thinking of conducting home schooling. Not a bad little article there. I wonder if Elgin Smith is a practicing homeschooler or not, because it seemed a little bit too neat and wrapped up.
Continuing our blog review here, there’s a news article in the Hartselle Enquirer. And that’s on one of their articles on “Mom finds success in homeschooling“. I thought that was interesting, because what is home schooling success? I don’t know. Well, Alan G. LeBraun, special to the Enquirer, is talking about a native Hartselle-ain, Marie Denise Griffith. She homeschools three children, Blake, Tai and Brady. I’m going to assume they‘re all, well Blake is a girl, a seventh grader. Tai is 11 as of this article and Brady is 6. I take it they’re out in the country because, “likes to feed horses”, a pretty good bet they’re not in the downtown, metro area of a major city. Now, this is where it got a little, “hm?” - now don’t get me wrong, if you have a homeschool schedule, a homeschool curriculum and it’s cooking for you, by all means keep it up. But some people are going to see that your homeschool hours are from 9am to 3pm and they’re going to say, “That’s just not working for me.” And some people are going, “That works for me well.” That’s the beauty of homeschooling. We are not a 9am to 3pm homeschool family, not in the least. In fact we’re having, still, if you’ve listened to this program for any length of time, we’re still having challenges getting my kids from a night schedule, well not a totally night schedule, from a late-evening schedule to a more practical schedule, let’s say a meshing schedule with the rest of the family. Because they love to stay up late and then of course, they will get up late. There really is nothing wrong with that, if you think about it. There’s no law that says you and your children have to homeschool during “normal” hours. Well maybe there is, if you know of any let me know. But I don’t know of any at the moment. But if you have to mesh with other family members that have a more traditional schedule, that’s where the rub is. It’s not that it’s wrong or it’s right, it’s just that everyone has to work together in a family. When you’re home practically 24/7 you have to all get along together and it’s more important that your family meshes. Otherwise it can be very stressful.
Well, she scheduled her classes for six weeks on her planner, then a week off. So that’s one way that homeschooling can be conducted. Six weeks on, one week off. Of course, when you’re working with diversity and grade levels you have to be creative. Sometimes two of them are working on a math problem from a workbook while their mom gives full attention to the third child. That’s pretty standard. She buys her own textbooks and schedules classes so that the subject in the book is completed by the end of the school year. Aw, gee. You’re probably getting the idea that I’m looking at this a little askew, because that doesn’t often work. That’s often a problem. Again, I don’t want to say it’s problem, because it’s cool. It’s cool. It’s working for her. It’s going well. Kudos to her. But even in the government schools, even in the public schools, we do not always finish a book by the end of the year. So when there is a news article and it’s all glowing, they have their set schedules, the mother is organized, they finish all their curriculum on time. And she maintains detailed records on each child’s progress. This is sort of the superwoman of homeschooling. Not that you shouldn’t be doing all of those things, and if it’s working of you, it’s cool. But just remember, not everyone is all this together. Yet, the children are still learning. So, kudos to Marie Denise. We’re thrilled that this is working for you. And at any time you’re free to come on and let us know how you do it.
Continuing, and this is where I started getting blog envy here. I’m just like, these blogs are beautiful. We are on www.randomangie.blogspot.com. And we are looking at her Thursday, May 8th, 2008 post, “13 Reasons I am looking forward to homeschooling”. Now apparently somewhere there has come up some kind of, what would you call it, goal, where people are writing about 13 things on Thursdays. And obviously number 12, they’ve been doing it for 12 times now, so. I’m curious, I’m nosey. If you know about it, send me a link. I’ll post it in the chatroom. Not that I’m going to join it. Because I’ve told you I’m not a blogger. Her 13 Thursday is “13 reasons I’m looking forward to homeschooling”. She’s going to start homeschooling next year. “And while I know it will be a change for us, here are a few things: I can go on all of the field trips”, I’m going to condense this here, you’ll have to read the whole thing for yourself. “No more mountains of homework after the boys have already been in school all day, more flexibility if the kids are sick for a few days you don’t have to take them to the doctor just to get an excuse for school, we can spend more time on topics that are more interesting, a little distance from some of the bad influences in school, we’ll actually be able to talk about God during the school day, a couple of chores around the house can be part of our school day, the kids will be able to take things like beginning Spanish, music, and drama in the new Catholic homeschool co-op that will be starting next year, they will learn home-ec type lessons earlier in their lives in a very practical setting, I can give them individual attention, and every single day she’ll be using her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree.” And she tells why, you can read that more. “And I’ll get a little more time to watch up close as they grow into young men.”
Well, this is what’s been going on, a meme. I got one of those the other day and I actually never did it. Because I didn’t know what it was. I was supposed to write five things you don’t know about me. Well this apparently is a meme to get to know everyone that participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow 13-ers is encouraged. If you participate, leave the link to your 13 and other comments. It’s easy and fun. So you can get the code here. Well then you don’t have to tell me what it is because I just found out. Amazing. It’s tempting, but I have to say no. Set boundaries and I’m not going to start on that, but it’s cool. And a beautiful blog.
I think it’s time for us to do our ad, because we do have a nice sponsor, let me get that cued up here. We’ll be right back in 29 seconds.
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Going on to, is this our last blog? I think it is. I’ve got five minutes to go over our last blog, which also is one of the Thursday 13. This one is by Kat is Suburbia Georgia, she’s just done a wonderful job on her blog. I can tell she enjoys it immensely. So, sunshineandlemonade.blogspot.com and this was 2008, 05, so May of 2008. And again, blog envy, very nice blog. “13 Things I would get for homeschooling if money was not an object” and the neat thing that she’s done here, is she’s also put in pictures. That’s cool because that’s not as easy as you think, putting in graphics. It takes a little bit of time. She also has a “What Kat has read”, some books, powered by LibraryThing. Let’s not get too distracted here. There’s a lot of neat stuff on this website, for me anyway.
“Number one, Kat would get, is a telescope. Number two is art classes and more art classes because I cannot teach art classes. Number three well we’ve clearly established my travel bug, so I would fund national and international field trips. We’re about to study ancient history. How cool would it be to go study the pyramids, the Parthenon and the Pantheon in person? Number four, more local field trips.” She’s not taking into account the price of gas. “Number five, books, books, books.” She likes the DKI witness books. And I do too. Of course, if you’re a member of my clutter challenge show, we have a moratoium on books until we get the books we have organized. “Number six, I wouldn’t feel guilty buying curriculum I’m not sure of.” Drum roll there, yes, I’m not the only one. “I could buy it and pass it on if it wasn’t a match for us. In July at our local homeschooling convention I am buying the IEW writing program which will set us back about $400. I cannot buy it without talking to someone about it. We could get as many of the Rosetta Stone Language programs as we wanted and see which one sticks. Or at least we could figure out how to say where’s the bathroom in all the countries we will now be able to visit. Another laptop and we could even get a Hello Kitty one with Swarovski crystals.” Wow, I’m looking at a laptop that is pink with crystal hearts and Hello Kitty in the middle. “Number Eight, more science manipulative. We could get models of cells, skeletons, robotic kits, etc. Lots and lots of Teaching Company DVDs“, and that’s hyperlinked. I’ll open it up in a new tab here so I can look at it. “Number Ten, summer enrichment programs like Duke TIP camp or Space Camp. Number Eleven, I was running out of big dreams so she asked her husband and he said an electronic microscope. Twelve, still thinking so she asks her kids and one of her kids wants a robot cat that will do her homework. Number Thirteen, I suppose if we’re going to make wild and impossible than I’d love for Michael, which I assume is her husband, to quit his job and homeschool the kids while I sit at the computer eating bon bons and blogging all day.” (Laughing) I love it.
All right, I see a lot of homeschooling parents and a lot of homeschooling blogs out there. I’m not one, but just think of beautiful colors right now, think of beautiful pictures and beautiful graphics. We have come to the end of our half hour and I actually have some more things to talk about. So, that’s good. I have some things to talk about next week. A reminder that everything on this conversation is intended for educational and information purposes only. Make sure that you check everything out before you decide to use anything that’s mentioned on this show. I’m going to be back again tomorrow if you want to just do general chat about what’s going on in life in general, in the world, Spontaneous Speaking Smooth am chat here on TalkShoe.com Mon-Fri all things willing 9:40 am eastern and next week I will make every effort as a homeschooling mom to be here at 3pm eastern time, give or take a minute for another edition of Homeschooling Open Chat. Until I see you again on talkshoe.com be safe, be blessed and bye-bye.
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