At age 18 or 20 I would've been very uncomfortable in a nighttime-crowd-unfamiliar area like that, so I can understand why some parents might be concerned.

I have a major complaint with how most homeschool programs and classical education books approach geography. Knowing where places are on a map isn't equivalent to knowing geography. This is a misinterpretation of the discipline of geography and geographic work. Believing that geography = maps is what seems to keep so many students away from studying geography in university, and I have found that once students do take a geography class, they find that it is a truly interesting and holistic subject. Geography is a study of the relationships between places and people, and the study of spatial patterns on the Earth. Geographers study everything from how blind people navigate down a city street, to where hospitals should be located to best serve a population, to how the local environment impacts diarrhea rates in Bangladesh. Geography has been neatly defined as the study of human-environment interactions. The best way to learn where countries are on the world map is to learn about them and develop relationships in your head. Rote memorization of maps is certainly possible, and filling in blank maps over and over and over again is one way to do that memorizing. But those arbitrary patterns can be forgotten quickly without constant review. I've found that students who know something about the lay of the land, the history, and the people in different parts of the world have a much better and more permanent handle on where things are. Pakistan and India are fighting over the state of Kashmir? They must border each other then. Germany invaded Poland? These two countries are probably close to each other. There is a big mountain range that runs down the east side of South America? How can we use that information to understand other traits of the physical and human environments in South America and to help us remember which nations are the mountain nations on this continent?

Thank-you!

I have avoided blogging because I do think it's just putting too much information out there in the big wide world. I'd be worried about what it might lead to--stalkers or other weird stuff. I know that it isn't very hard to figure out the names/locations/details of the people whose blogs I read . . . and if I had ill intentions, I'm pretty sure I could find most of them. That said, I know nothing bad ever really happens to the bloggers I know. So perhaps there isn't much evidence to support my fear!

Totally agree. I wanted to be all anti-consumerism, but I've failed miserably. I like toys, and now that I have a small child, I have a good excuse to buy them! I think I'm addicted to the Thomas Wooden Railway engines. :blushing: When my daughter was smaller, it was easier to resist, because I was in school and then unemployed. I had no money. Now I have a good job, and can afford to buy things, and I find it really hard to stop myself.

I just read on Wikipedia that flashing lights during the birth scene have triggered seizures in some people. So there's an excuse not to go!

Yes, I think it certainly is possible. I find all the different programs, particularly for language arts, very exciting. :001_smile: "OH! Look at this!! Now, this is PERFECT!!!" I spend a lot of time mulling over science and math programs too. And recently I've become fascinated with Oak Meadow Kindergarten, when I know I don't really need it at all. I read some very good advice in another thread: never buy any program more than a month in advance of when you intend to use it, because you will change your mind a dozen times in the meantime. I've followed that rule when facing several purchase urges. I have a list of "ultimate goals" for each subject, and when I start to feel seduced by a certain program, I go back and look at those goals. Is this new program going to help me to reach those goals? Will it do it any better than something else cheaper, or any better than my own self-built program? Or will it re-orient my plans and lead me off into terrain that doesn't support my goals at all?

My mother is alright with it and understands my motivation for homeschooling; my father thinks homeschooling is a bit abnormal and maybe not the best idea. My extended family thinks it is an abysmal idea, doomed to failure, and sure to destroy my daughter. I have 3 cousins who are high school teachers, and they take homeschooling as a personal insult. Years ago, one of them said, "Don't EVER homeschool. Just don't do it. End of discussion." That set the tone. I think my homebirth brought everyone into touch with my propensity for "strange" behaviour, but it was just one brief event, and it turned out well, so no one could say much. Homeschooling is a much longer journey. :D

About $15.

My parents and grandparents always used margarine, because it's less expensive, and I have followed their lead. I only buy butter to make certain special things, like sugar cookies and shortbread. I don't use margarine as a spread, and I don't put it on bread or vegetables or anything else, so it's pretty much only for baking. The things I bake aren't particularly healthy anyway, what with the refined sugar and the bleached flour, so I don't worry too much about the "dangers" of the margarine I'm throwing in. :D

Yes, perfectionism is very normal in gifted children. The professor who oversaw my PhD Presidential Fellowship once commented that a tremendous number of the students who receive these highly selective fellowships seem to develop psychological problems that inhibit or prevent the completion of their degrees. When you are capable of something close to academic perfection, that capability can become a significant part (or the sum total) of your self worth. That can result in an unrelenting internal pressure to BE PERFECT. When you're not perfect, it's crushing, and continuing on seems pointless. And it might be easier just to avoid that task entirely in the future, rather than countenancing failure again. Perfectionism can facilitate the production of great works, but it can also become a hurdle. (And there's my life story in a nutshell ) I agree with previous posters that participating in other activities (that you might not be so great at) can be an important part of avoiding the pitfalls of perfectionism. Even if you do turn out to be really great at the other activity, at least you will have some other place to invest some of your self worth. :D

My reasons for homeschooling: 1. The schools in my area are not as good as when I went. I see weaker language skills (and even more squandered time), and want something better for my daughter. 2. Socialization in schools is frequently unpleasant and definitely unlike anything else I've encountered in the "real world." As teacher and homeschooling advocate John Holt said in Teach Your Own: "If there were no other reason for wanting to keep kids out of school, the social life would be reason enough." In fact, many of the ideas you would find in the books of John Holt and John Taylor Gatto lie at the foundation of my decision to homeschool. 3. I want my daughter to learn things that I didn't learn in school: more history, better literature, composers and artists, logic, and the geography and Latin that I love. 4. I want more flexibility. I want my daughter to have more time to explore her own interests, rather than sitting in a classroom waiting--waiting for other students to get finished, waiting for the teacher to get on with it, waiting for something she's interested in, waiting for the bell to ring. I want her to be able to speed through things she's great at and work more slowly through things she doesn't understand. And I want to be free to take a day--say, a Wednesday--and do something unrelated to school without my daughter having to worry about what she may have missed. 5. Homeschooling can be so much fun! It's creative and productive and a great experience to share with a child. Why would I want to forgo such a fabulous opportunity to interact with my daughter? 6. Why NOT homeschool? Why should sending children to public school be the default position? For most of human history, most children haven't gone to school.

Sounds like certain people in my family . . . when it happens in my family, remarks like this are definitely supposed to be (covert?) judgment of ME, not judgment of the child. Saying something directly to my daughter would just be done to make ME feel far worse (and I guess the collateral damage is worth it for the insulter). Think about something else, do something else, ignore the mean email. As my grandmother would have said--Don't let her get your goat!

Hemorrhoids and Philippines -- those double letters!

This composition sounds quite good--your daughter's writing style is certainly superior to that of many university students! (I've been marking papers tonight, so I have material for direct comparison. :001_smile:) Something simple and mechanical: it is best to avoid contractions in formal/academic writing. Also, writing out ordinal numbers is usually preferred--first and second, rather than 1st and 2nd. What did Abigail Adams do that was so remarkable? What was all the hard work at the White House? Why was she so amazing? The content of this composition doesn't make it clear to me why I should be impressed with Adams. I feel like the claims haven't been fully supported.

Third Edition 3 times fully through. Have spent MANY other sessions going through the language arts portions. First edition, once all the way through. And my daughter isn't quite 4 years old yet. :001_smile:

Going to school doesn't = having friends. I went to public school for 13 years, in a class with the same 30 kids the whole time, and the "friendships" I had were nothing to brag about. I felt lonely and rejected the whole time and have no connections with anyone I went to school with, despite the fact I am now living in that same small town again. But that's just my own experience. Certainly some people have lots of friends at school and really love the social aspect--from what I saw in school, most people liked the social aspect far more than the academic one! Maybe your daughter really is one of those people who would thrive in school because of the level of interaction . . . but I think Halcyon has a really good idea and would give her suggestions a try first. What did the kids who needed to be in school do before there was any such thing as a public school system? Where did they interact and make friends? Extended family, church, community involvement . . . but now that family members are often living at great distances from each other, and most families have far fewer children, I guess the amount of interaction is significantly reduced. Just pondering.

Same situation here. My 3-year-old daughter comes with me, right into the room, for procedures like blood draws and EKGs. A lab tech even let her hold a vial of blood once, so she could see how warm it was. :-)

It's a policy of my library system (a system of libraries in rural western Canada, but the HQ is in a large city) that you cannot use library computers to view pornography. You also can't use the libraries in our system to access MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube, because of bandwith concerns. I think libraries should be able to make some rules. Years ago, when I was in university, I was working on a cartography assignment in a campus computer lab. Sitting just off to my left was a young guy looking at a website called "Bound and Gagged," and the images I could see were of women being tied up and raped. That was definitely against the rules of the university, but it happened anyway.

I do think it is possible to have what you're looking for. I went to a big research university, 20,000 students with all kinds of backgrounds and various reasons for being at university, and I still had a very studious experience. This is less than 10 years ago, and I teach at that university now. I didn't live in a dorm, but I knew several people who did, all throughout their university experience, and even during law school. We had study floors and quiet floors, and the floors in between study floor and quiet floor were referred to as "the morgue." And they were well and truly quiet. You would get in massive trouble for talking--if I were with a student who had to pick something up, she would make me stand in the outer hall, and tell me to be silent so she didn't get in trouble. I was good friends with an RA who regularly had to break up people having sex in her "social dorm." It was social, but they still weren't allowed to do THAT. Intervening was in her job description. So I don't think your expectations are unrealistic. If you really can't find a suitable dorm situation, off-campus housing can be great. It removes you from the general hustle and bustle of campus life. A long-ish walk to and from school can be a great contemplative experience, too. But be careful . . . off-campus isn't necessarily quiet. I lived for 4 years in a basement suite under a couple in their 60s. They would have dinner parties, practice their ballroom dancing, vacuum while I was still in bed in the morning, be in and out of the main door constantly, and the husband snored so loudly than earplugs didn't really even help me (even though my bed was on the opposite side of the house and on a different floor). I later lived in an apartment building where the tenant above me would play raucous games with her golden retriever at 3 am. You have to develop some tolerance for irritating and loud people, I think. No apartment is not isolated like a house. That was in Canada. When I went to grad school in the States, I found the university (again, a large research university, this time with 30,000 students) to be much more party-oriented, and there was far more drinking. So perhaps it will be more difficult for you to find quiet space. As for academic conversation, I really didn't get much of that until the final year of my undergrad--once I knew a few of the grad students in my dept and some of the profs had realized I was a smart one. None of my peers ever wanted to talk about anything substantial. Grad school was the place for lots of academic conversation.

Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles (AKA the Black Cauldron series) are at the top of my list. I read all 5 of them twice while in elementary school, read them all again in grade 12, and then once during undergrad. Then I finally bought (and read) the whole set while I was in grad school. We have them in the house now, so my daughter won't have to borrow from the library like I did so many times! I also loved all the books by LM Montgomery, but the Anne books especially. I had been given all of Montgomery's novels as birthday and Christmas presents by the time I was 12, and I have read them all many times since. Shasta of the Wolves by Olaf Baker is probably the stand-alone book I loved best. I got it as a discard from the elementary school library when I was in grade 4 or 5. A Dragon for Danny Dennis was probably the book I most loved having read to me as a small child. It was the only book I had with any "extra" features: the dragon images were fuzzy! The Stephen Cosgrove Serendipity series were also read many times when I was little. Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now? by Dr. Seuss was another favourite.

Where I live, you can get an older upright piano for around $50, and people sometimes throw them in the dump because they consider them so worthless. Often people are happy just to have someone take an unwanted upright away, especially in cases where older relatives have died. So you might be able to find an older piano for a really decent price. Older definitely doesn't have to mean bad or worn-out.

I think I was in 4th grade when I read it, so I would definitely let her try the original.

That brought on a flashback of my first grade teacher calling me to her desk and reprimanding me for writing my name at the top of a page, rather than printing it. Apparently cursive was forbidden; no one had told me. I felt guilty and ashamed, and was rendered much less likely to "step out of line" again in the future . . . so I guess it all worked out like it was supposed to. I think this is all part of herd management. As veggiegal said, students aren't supposed to be doing the next year's work, because it makes trouble for the next teacher down the line.

My school division, in Saskatchewan, offers what the division terms "services and supports" for homeschoolers. We can request a library card and take out materials from the school library that is most local to us. We can borrow textbooks and other learning materials from the division if they aren't needed by the school. Homeschooled students can participate in school sports teams. Homeschooled students can also take individual courses at the school if they wish to do so. Graduating students receive a Certificate of Completion from the division (not the same as a Graduation Diploma) when they complete grade 12 of their home-based education program. This is what the division has to say about financial support in their handbook: "You need to check in advance with the school district if you are hoping to receive financial support for a commercial plan, as many of these are not listed resources in the provincial curriculum and are not funded." I already know people who are angry about the extremely small population of homeschoolers in my small town/rural area, so I wouldn't try to aggravate things more by asking the school district to pay for any of my materials. I also suspect that nothing I want to use is covered. ;)