Our life is just a rollercoaster, hold on tight because falling off is not an option.
I’d also love to hear homeschool book recommendations. Name and author would be great, some info on it’s focus would be wonderful, personal review would be spectacular.
Honestly, I haven’t picked up a homeschooling book in a while and there’s always new ones out there. Please let me know what’s good.
BTW, the talk is on the 18th of Sept.
TIA,
Well, you see. I agreed to give this talk in a couple of weeks for the library. We’re calling it Homeschooling 101, and well, you get the idea.
I was thinking that it would be generally low key and I’d just pull it together over the next couple of weeks. I do have some friends at IFHS and IHEN pulling together some hondouts for me and I thought I’d raid my bookmarks for some links, but now I’m starting to panic about what I got myself into.
You see it started this morning with the Fedex delivery woman who started asking me about homeschooling and wants to come because she’s going to bring her son home (7th grade) in a month and wants some advice. And then this evening, the wife of one of Hubby’s co-workers approached me that they are considering homeschooling their kids (3 and 17 months) and she plans on coming. And it’s like ‘What Have I Got Myself Into?’ - Pam, if you are out there, this is all your fault!!
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone would so kind as to send me links to sites that you find helpful. I’m particularly interested in links that someone starting out (esp. with little ones) would like. If you could include some explanation of why you like the site, so much the better, but I’ll take just a bunch of links. Most of my bookmarked links tend to be for older things (with the ages of my kids.) I’d also love links for any forums that tend to have good advice. (Since I’m in Indiana, I’ll take anything Christian or not, though I’d again appreciate knowing one way or another.)
TIA,
Well, actually Indiana requires 180, but I only worry about the seatwork time. We do more than enough outside stuff to account for the other days. As I talked before about setting up a schedule that works, our seatwork for this year will run about 140ish days. It’ll be more if things don’t get accomplished. I doubt it will be less. Either way is okay, we just have a target to plan our year around.
Anyway, the first day went relatively smoothly. Boy and Hubby had their first math ‘class’ and Girl and I remembered some Russian from last year and learned our first phrases of Japanese (or Nihongo.)
I’m still trying to pull together what we are doing for physic labs and get the stuff ordered. Most of the stuff is available at Home Training Tools, but I’m thinking I may use Radioshack for some of the circuitry. I’ll have to ask Hubby. The mechanics stuff is right up my alley, but the electricity is more his area. I’m hoping to get about 20 labs. We had more like 30 each for biology and chemistry, but I don’t see getting that many for physics. Maybe when I get them figured out, I’ll post them.
Oyasumi Nasai
I recently received this email. You read it. Does it sound like the movie is not that close to the book? We get the Alagacia News emailed to us. It’s written by Paolini.
News! Last month, I traveled to Los Angeles and visited Fox studios, where I met some of the many people involved with the Eragon movie.
I also got to watch clips of the film itself. It was both strange and exciting to see images based on something I wrote! The teaser trailer Fox showed me contained only brief glimpses of the world and characters, although a dragon is always memorable, no matter how fleeting her appearance. The other sequences I saw were in various stages of completion—with rough CGI and temporary music—but even so, I got a pretty good idea of how the scenes will play in the final version of the movie. Based on the footage I saw, Jeremy Irons makes an excellent Brom. He and Ed Speleers (Eragon) seem to interact very well, with the sort of old-wolf, young-wolf dynamic the story requires.
I learned that the reason Fox made certain changes to the book was to produce a movie that looks and feels as real as possible. For example, in the novel, I describe Saphira as having sapphire-blue scales. When they applied this color to her on-screen form, however, she looked cartoonish. So after much testing, they settled on a leathery-blue skin tone, which makes her appear more like a living creature. And I saw how, bit-by-bit, computer animators are bringing Saphira to life. Fox is pushing the boundaries of current technology. The time needed to create her is so great that work is now divided between ILM, in California, and WETA, in New Zealand.
As with every book-to-movie adaptation, the filmmakers have their own vision of the story. I learned that hundreds, if not thousands, of people have been and are working on Eragon. I look forward to seeing more, to get a better idea of how the plot flows and the characters interact. The way I think about it is that Eragon provided the inspiration for the movie, but that they are separate works with their own unique attributes. I find it fascinating to see how other people interpret the land of Alagaësia. It’s like seeing my own dreams reflected back to me through a thousand different prisms.
Not to make our friends from New Mexico feel bad, but our homeschool group here just had their fall kick-off ‘Not going back to school’ swim party and it felt so great.
The weather was about the best you could get for late August, the pool cleared up (barely, but it did) and we had a blast. There was about 30 kids here ranging from (not counting the mom the shower was for) preschool age up to nearly 18. There was tons of food (most of it eaten) and great conversation.
The moms all had fun catching up and tossing ideas around for projects for the fall. The energy level was amazing and I found myself just going ‘yeah, I’m home.’
The group won’t have it’s ‘formal’ fall planning meeting for another week or two (due to the holiday and traveling - not me!!) but we are popping with ideas. One of the families just bought a new place and it has a wonderful artist’s studio in the back. She has offered the space to the group and so the Wavaho (Wabash Valley Homeschool) Schoolroom is now available to any one who wants a space to do something.
The Thursday co-op is moving there and I’ll do the Shakespearean Drama there as well. One of the moms who is into more formal highschool than I (she’s doing NARS and needs grades for things) is doing a Highschool Art class after the drama and someone else said that she’d try a Beginners Spanish class before. To keep the little ones busy during drama and art there’s going to be a pre-school class and a craft/art class in another room (there’s more than one room).
At this point when we get to the planning meeting we’ll just have field trips and parties to set dates for.
BTW, I do miss the group out in New Mexico. It was not nearly so active, but OTH, it was full of more people that I see eye-to-eye on other issues. It was fun having a year with homeschoolers that match me better on social issues. The group here is secular, but I often feel like the most liberal, token non-christian in the group.
But it is great being back with this group!!
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