We’re talking more about adding a foreign language class to our homeschool curriculum for our son and daughter. My wife and I are leaning towards Spanish, but my daughter is being like I was and wants to do something different because everyone learns Spanish. There’s a general reason for that nowadays, but I get her point. My son isn’t really interested at all in learning a foreign language. That pushes me to find something that will be as engaging as possible and keep his interest. I’d love to just go live in a foreign country for 6 months or so and force us all to learn it together and have fun! Wouldn’t that be the best!?

I know there’s Rosetta Stone (Visit RosettaStone.com) as an option, but very pricey for what I’ve seen. Does anyone have experience with them that are reading this? Let me know what you think? We have a few friends in our circles that either already teach Spanish and would be interested and willing to add our kids as students one day/night a week. One friend has offered to teach them Spanish, but also lived in Japan as a missionary for a number of years, so adding some Japanese to the mix would be very interesting.

Doing a little bit of searching in the homeschool blogs I’ve found some other options, but nothing really sticks out. We’ve worked on some Latin language training, but the curriculum we were using didn’t really click with the kids I don’t think. The audio segments were almost agonizingly painful to listen to, so I didn’t really blame them.

I found a company called inlingua (Visit inlingua-if.com) that looked to be interesting for language training. They have General Purpose Programs that would work I believe, but from everything I can read about them though, it’s all on-site, location based training in Florida. I also couldn’t get an idea about what the classes would actually cost by looking at their website. I might look for something similar here in the Indianapolis area if it exists.

I’m thinking I may just do a combination of things like we’ve done with our other curriculum. I took Spanish and French in high school and more Spanish in college. I’m sure I can get plenty of support and resources from my friends. Would love to know what your experiences have been and any insights you can provide. Let me know in the comments.

Ron Paul at the 2007 National Right to Life Convention, held at Crown Center Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, MO; June 15, 2007, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Although I haven’t really looked into it, I just read about another reason to support Ron Paul’s educational curriculum that has homeschooling families talking. The Huffington Post doesn’t like it. That’s a pretty much good enough reason for me to at least look a little deeper right?

I think it’s funny that in the HuffPost article the writer says:

Critics like The Atlantic’s Philip Bump suggest the curriculum is simply another means to push Paul’s political views and pump out mini-Ron Pauls. Fox News is skeptical too.

Hmmm? Another case of do as I say, not as I do? Hasn’t public schooling been pushing a political agenda of their own against family, religious and moral values over the last few decades? I always thought it was funny how I would see students catching flack for a boldly morally uplifting shirt for pushing their beliefs on someone, but nobody ever really questioned the Slayer, Megadeth, Quiet Riot or Marilyn Manson t-shirts and what they promote. I remember one of my favorite shirts to wear when I was in school (and in public) was one my oldest brother got me that boldly said “PRACTICE SAFE SEX! – Get married and be faithful!”

Has anyone checked out The Ron Paul Curriculum in depth? From their website header, here are four key points it says students will learn that use the curriculum.

1. Liberty vs. coercion in Western history
2. How to defend the freedom philosophy
3. What it takes for success in college
4. How to start a home business – Ron Paul

Related articles

• Announcing the Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum (Email from Tom Woods)
• Ron Paul’s Online Curriculum: I’m Director of Curriculum Development.
• Ron Paul Reaches Out To Even Younger Minds

I’ve always had an aversion to the idea of “It Takes a Village”. I may have agreed more with this kind of a statement a few decades ago when the world was a smaller place and more people knew each other in the village they lived. I’m not sure about you, but there’s not a general agreement I have with the majority of people in my local community about how to live in general, much less what I want my children to learn.  Watch the full, unedited promo from MSNBC below.

Here’s what was said by Melissa Harris-Perry:

We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

Do I believe an education should go beyond the walls of my home? Should it involve more people than just myself? Absolutely, but where it goes, who it involves and how far it goes should be under my complete discretion and without fear of retaliation or retribution on my choices.

What do you all say? I’m sure given the general audience of this blog it probably upsets many of you as much as it does my wife and I. But, what about your family members who don’t homeschool? What about your friends? What about those you go to church with that are educators themselves? What do they think?

I’d love to hear your comments below.

I don’t consider myself old, but when I stop to think about it the number that comes up when I subtract my birth year from the current year… I’m getting old. I saw this little story shared on Facebook and had to share it somewhere else as well. I remember all of these things. I enjoy the things I have, but I do long for a simpler time when there wasn’t quite so much to distract or worry about.  Wastefulness really irritates me and I’ve never really thought about the connection with the green movement (which I generally am in support of) and the compensation that’s needed because of other “advancements” in our daily lives.

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

What do you think? Remember those days? Wish you could have them back? Or do we just need to find a better balance between advancing and maybe being a little too-smart-for-our-britches?

You see, I’d love to sell most of everything we own and just hit the road full-time and explore. Along with homeschooling our kids with the curriculum we’re already using, I can’t imagine a better education could be obtained than by literally exploring the world around you and applying what you’ve learned in all of your adventures. I’m sure it would give my kids plenty of content for the blogs they say they want to start writing of their own as well.

Sadly, I don’t see this adventure happening anytime in the near future for a variety of reasons. I think one reason that would be tough for me to get over would be the loss of the community of friends we’ve established here on the south side of Indianapolis. The majority of our family are here or within 2 hours drive of our home so we get to see them regularly. And, we’ve built a tremendous network of friendships through our local church. That would be very hard to replace with a life on the road.

Luckily for me, I can live a little vicariously through some other homeschooling dads that are on the road living their adventures and sharing their stories with the world through their websites.

Recalculating Route – The Arnold Family

First there’s the Arnold family. They are originally from Indianapolis and I found out about them through one of my employers. Jon, the dad, used to have an office in the same corporate office space in Indianapolis that I work in now. Since I found out about his story and his website, I’ve been following their family’s adventures.

As some of you already know, my family and I are planning a bit of a lifestyle change later this year by taking life on the road for a year in an RV. Even though we’ve been thinking this through for well over a year now, there remains no shortage of hurdles that could derail our plans at any moment. Some of these hurdles, like renting the house, are so big they become ironically easier to face. It’s the seemingly smaller but more sinister hurdles like fear or complacency that I believe pose the greatest threats.

You can hop in the virtual backseat with the Arnold family at Recalculating Route.

It’s A Haigood Life! – The Haigood Family

Next up is the Haigood family. They were originally in the St. Louis area I believe and Alan was a pastor. They were looking at a change in their calling to ministry, but wasn’t quite sure what that would entail. In the meantime, Alan decided it was time to spend both quality and quantity of time with his kids.

Finally, my life is to lead my boys. Not only do I want to honor and obey God and love, honor and serve my wife, I want to model it for them.  I don’t want what the world would consider safe and secure to become golden handcuffs that would keep me from being the dad God wants me to be.  I want to be there with them when they find a cricket, see a shooting star, ask why the sky is blue, figure out a math problem, and tell a funny story.  Now again, I’m not saying every dad should stay at home, but for me, for this time, this is my place…and I don’t want to miss a minute.

How busy do we get in life as dads doing important stuff, but still missing the more important things in life?

You can keep up with the Haigood family at It’s A Haigood Life!

Boyinks 4 Adventure – The Boyink Family

Bringing up the rear of this little family RV caravan is the Boyink family. This is the most recent family I’ve come across experiencing the adventure of life on the road. I stumbled across their story as I read an article about them through a software company I use (Techsmith’s Snagit software is what I used to grab the screenshots of this post).

I encourage you to read the entire “Why We’re Doing This” post on the site as it probably most closely reflects my own feelings about the current state of matters. But if you don’t want to read it, here’s a little snippet:

It’s a crazy system we’ve created for ourselves – wherein we give away the best years of our lives to someone (or something) else.  We have kids but are too busy to be with them.  We buy a house and then have to work long hours to pay for it and keep it up.  We spend our most productive and creative years helping design, build and sell widgets that were the fruit of someone else’s dream.  And we do all this for years – in hopes that when we finally get to retirement age there is just enough money and just enough health and just enough life left in us to finally kick off the shackles and take complete ownership of our days.

Another family. Another adventure. Follow along with the Boyinks at Boyinks 4 Adventure.

To find even more families that are doing full-time traveling together, visit the Fulltime Families website. It’s a members saving program and website for families that full time RV, but also a great place to find more families and read more stories from the road.

Although the commercial struck a chord with many viewers because of the contrast of a great commercial compared to the sex and moral decay usually exhibited in other commercials of the evening, it rang true with me because I remember hearing Paul’s calming voice and his sharing of “The Rest of the Story” through my childhood. Having worked in radio a bit myself, Paul Harvey was one of the people I kind of looked up to and got inspiration from in my own efforts.

After seeing last night’s commercial and explaining who Paul Harvey was to my kids, I did a little searching online this evening and came across the Paul Harvey Archives Unofficial website. Even though they’re not official, they have various (I’m not sure if they have all of them?) episodes of Harvey’s classic renditions of the episodes available for download in MP3 format. I just finished downloading almost 700 of them, which I’m now going to burn onto a CD and keep with me in my car.

When I want to relax and reconnect with my childhood of a better and simpler time, I”ll just pop the CD in and listen to a few. I’ve already shared a couple about Walt Disney and Andy Griffith with my daughter.

I recently saw the following item posted online. Although according to Snopes.com it’s mostly accurate related to Warren Buffet having made the quote. He did not initiate the other items. Regardless though, I believe all of these items are steps that should be taken with our existing legislature to make sure the people that are supposed to be elected to represent us can actually recognize what it means to be part of the “us” and the “US” they were elected to represent.

Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 – before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land – all because of public pressure.

Warren Buffet is asking (no he didn’t, the writer of the original email did) each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2012

1. No Tenure / No Pension. –  A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they’re out of office.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. - All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
3. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. - Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
4. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
5. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
6. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 12/1/12.  – The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

Do you agree? There’s nothing stated here that I would disagree with right now. I’m sure there are details of it that might get complex at some point, but I say keep it simple and straight forward.

• Glenda Ritz, Democrat
• Tony Bennett, Republican

Here’s the challenge this evening. I have a number of friends that are educators and a few them may have their positions eliminated if Bennett is elected because he has stated that one of his budget cutting measures would be to eliminate fine arts instruction from schools. Glenda Ritz on the other hand has stated that she is probably interested in implementing new, additional policies on homeschooling for the state of Indiana.

Honestly, I’m not necessarily opposed to Indiana increasing some of the oversight of homeschoolers in our state. As Ritz stated, I believe homeschooling probably is being abused by families in our state and I believe that that is a disservice to those children affected as well as society as a whole if these children are not educated appropriately. I’ll withhold the entire debate of what it means to be “educated” for another post. However, the more appropriate action in this case is probably not more or additional policies, but to just enforce those that are already in place in the state.

This statement was agreed on by the HSLDA in a recent article:

First, homeschooling is regulated in Indiana. There are several code provisions and Indiana case law that applies to anyone who want to teach their children at home. If, and I mean “if,” this situation Ms. Ritz mentioned is actually happening, these provisions of Indiana law can be applied to ensure that children are being educated.

For instance, local attendance officers can bring a case to enforce the compulsory school attendance provisions of Indiana law. They can also serve notice on any parent whose child is out of school illegally. Parents who are convicted of failure to send a child to school can be imprisoned up to 180 days and fined up to $1,000 dollars.

In Indiana a parent conducting a homeschool program is legally recognized as operating a nonpublic school. Among other things, they must maintain certain records to provide evidence that their child is legally attending their homeschool program and receiving instruction that is equivalent to that given in the public schools. Homeschoolers in Indiana don’t need any further regulation.

As with many of my other political arguments. In general, we don’t need MORE regulation. We need enforcement of EXISTING policies and regulations. It still astonishes me when people think a new law will somehow be the one a criminal (or someone not interested in obeying laws) will agree to not break.

But, does that mean I vote for Bennett? Not necessarily. I absolutely believe that fine arts programs are important in schools. I believe there are plenty of other areas to cut funding in, or perhaps the better solution is to change how resources are made available and established for schools and educators. I don’t want my friends to be out of jobs either. Where’s the balance?

In the end, there’s no guarantee that Ritz won’t cut programs that will impact the careers of my friends. And, no guarantee that Bennett won’t go along with initiating some additional regulations that will impact homeschooling families like myself as well.

I believe it’s important that the freedom to homeschool isn’t abused. I also believe that even though we’re homeschooling our children, it’s important that I’m aware and involved with what’s happening in public schools as well. I understand that homeschooling is not the best option for everyone just as public schools aren’t the best option for everyone. I know I haven’t talked to a single teacher friend yet that’s in support of Bennett. That’s got to say something.

Hmmm.

One of the practice sheets I created was for long division work, but also using answers to problems with remainder values specified. This is obviously a much easier method of division in that the kids didn’t have to work through the entire problem out to a certain number of decimal places. Instead, you just specify how many times the divisor will go into the dividend evenly, then specify the remainder left over.

The challenge was that I didn’t create an answer key when I created these worksheets and I didn’t want to have work through all the problems myself to get the correct answer. I came across the CalculatorSoup.com website with a quick Google search. It allows me to specify the divisor and the dividend for each problem. It then tells me the answer, including the remainder value. It also provides step-by-step solution for that problem so I can check and verify where my kids may have been having problems in their own work.

In the screenshot above I’ve highlighted the area where you enter the values of the problems you’re checking, and displays each line of the answer as you work towards the solution. The other highlighted area illustrates the instructions for the mathematical concept as it’s shared on the website.

I encourage you to add CalculatorSoup.com to your list of resources for your own math needs and efforts for your family.

If you’re a dad, what activities are you actively participating in with your kids as it relates to homeschool? You are helping right? It’s not just your wife’s responsibility. Get involved. Get involved because you should be and you need to be and your wife sure could use your help and a break on a regular basis.