Huber Hof Academy - Homeschool Blogger

Captain George Vancouver ~ A Voyage of Discovery

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 01:30:00 -0500

Today our homeschool group had a field trip to our local museum where we learned about Captain George Vancouver and the discovery of Vancouver Island :)

The first part of our lesson was learning about how the explorers were able to chart the new land that they found by using a lead line. If you are not familiar with what a lead line is it's just a heavy piece of lead tied to a rope that was dropped over the side of the ship until it hit the bottom of the ocean floor.

You can tell when it has stopped going because it no longer pulls heavily on the rope once it is sitting on the ground. From there they would inspect the symbols or knots on their ropes as they pulled the line back in to determine just how deep that section of the ocean was :)

Each of the children had a graph that they filled out showing the depth around the balcony of the museum. What a great little exercise! As we were outside the children learned that there were three major players when Vancouver Island was discovered in 1792. The Russians, the English, and the Spaniards and each of them hoped to find the Northwest Passage. It was a confusing time for the Native Americans who had already been on the land for 10,000 - 12,000 years. There were so many foreign languages being spoken that they couldn't understand a word of and the Spanish were erecting these HUGE wooden crosses all over that represented their claim to certain areas of land.

I think the highlight of the whole program was when the children got to try writing with quill pens and ink :)

There were two stations set up and everyone had their own quill pen and paper where they wrote entries into their ships log just like Captain George Vancouver would have done in his log while charting the waters around Vancouver Island on his ship aptly named the Discovery.

Quill pens were usually made from goose feathers that had been boiled to clean and remove all of the oils from them and then while still soft the tips were shaped and trimmed into the traditional quill pen tip.

To finish off our visit the children were given a 'treat'. *grin* I'm not sure exactly how much of a treat it was though. LOL. They all got to try a little bit of sauerkraut!

When the explorers and their crew were out at sea for months on end their food sources were very limited and they had little to no access to fresh fruit. With the absence of vitamin C many of them developed scurvy and died from it as a result.

There were some remedies that they tried to use to prevent it such as boiling down oxen bones until they rendered a gelatinous goop that was thought to cure the scurvy, but sauerkraut proved to be the most successful preventative since it is very rich in vitamin c. The problem was that it was not very tasty and the crew wouldn't eat it!! So Captain George Vancouver tricked his crew into eating it! He made it known that only the highest ranked officers were allowed to eat the sauerkraut and that it was off limits to the rest of the crew. Well this of course made them extremely jealous that they weren't allowed it and with George's plan working perfectly he pretended to give in to their pleas for it and thus his entire ship's crew was eating something vital to keeping scurvy at bay :) Pretty smart guy!

I hope you had fun following along with our Voyage of Discovery field trip :)

Blessings,

TONIGHT ~ Universal Pre-K on 20/20 with John Stossel

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:07:00 -0500

Just in case you are interested, the 20/20 news program on ABC is airing a show tonight discussing universal Pre-K with John Stossel.

Dianne Flynn Keith of the really great Carschooling website & book helped put together the panel of moms that John Stossel interviews. Looks interesting and you can watch a mini trailer for it also that aired earlier this morning on Good Morning America :)

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=7070646&page=1

Below are some of the points that Dianne has made as to why Universal Pre-K would be harmful to your children. Now while this is an American program there has also been recent talk of the same sort of Universal Pre-K type program being started right here in Canada and there were even articles in some of our local papers supporting it!!

She is asking that if you have time to please leave a comment after you view the trailer voicing your opposition to this plan and I don't think it would matter if you are an American or a Canadian, we should voice a strong opposition to this!

Universal Preschool will:

*Increase government debt

*Extend the already failing public school system

*Threaten the existence of private preschool programs (many of
which are owned and operated by women and minorities)

*Harm the intellectual, physical, psychological, and social
development of young children through forced academics that
includes standardized curriculum and testing of 4-year-olds!
(See http://www.allianceforchildhood.org)

Nevertheless teacher's unions and corporate interests are
teaming up with government to institutionalize young children
in this mega feat of social engineering that will grease their
pockets with tax-payer dollars.

UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL IS BIG BUSINESS. It is NOT about quality
early education and it is NOT in the best interests of MOST
little kids.

We have a rare opportunity for opponents of universal
preschool to be heard. Please, TAKE ACTION NOW! Watch the
program and post your comments TODAY.

Blessings,

NO MORE Free Shipping to Canada From Sonlight

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:09:00 -0500

That's right. I am very sad to say that Sonlight will no longer be offering Canadians the free shipping option that we have all appreciated so much in the past.

You have until March 31st, 2009 to order all of your new books and materials from them and any order over $100 will be shipped free. So don't delay!!! Large orders for complete cores of $700 or more will cost you more than $100 dollars come April and I know that I for one can't afford that so I'm going to be digging out my catalogue and shopping up now.

I'm not sure what this will do to the future of my orders to them or for many other Canadians for that matter, but I'm not sure that I will be able to continue buying all of my books with the already high exchange rate on our dollar and now the astronomical shipping costs :( I love their books and IG's but I think I will have to try and find most of it used from now on and buy local to get more for my dollar.

Below you can find the info on the new shipping changes, how to calculate what they will be and contact info if you need anymore help figuring out what to do next.

Blessings,

Shipping fees for 2009 and following will be calculated at the time you place your order--in order to properly reflect current costs.

Considering how wildly energy prices fluctuated this past year (the fuel surcharge at this moment is down to only about 2.5% of an order's value!), John and Sarita said they would like us to take the reduced-cost base fees we have been able to negotiate with our shippers, subtract a subsidy equivalent to what we pay to cover domestic shipping in the lower 48 United States, and then add whatever the actual fuel surcharge is at the time the order is placed.

You can find the base fee (minus subsidy) in the chart below. Beginning April 1st and throughout the coming year, you will be able to find the then-current fuel surcharge online at http://www.sonlight.com/shippingcalc.

In case you didn't know: We have diligently negotiated extremely favorable shipping rates with FedEx to offer you quick, insured, and trackable shipping at a significantly discounted rate.

To repeat: beginning April 1st, as we enter the 2009 sales season, when you place a new order, Sonlight Curriculum will charge you a shipping fee based on the chart below plus the current fuel surcharge.

2009 Sonlight Subsidized Base Shipping Rates (SSBSR) to Canada (to calculate final cost, add Fuel Surcharge to SSBSR)
Order Total ($)	Subsidized Base Shipping Rate
0-50.00	$13.00
50.01-60.00	25% of Order Total
60.01-70.00	23% of Order Total
70.01-80.00	22% of Order Total
80.01-90.00	21% of Order Total
90.01-99.99	20% of Order Total
100.00-149.99	18% of Order Total
150.00-199.99	17% of Order Total
200.00-299.99	16% of Order Total
300.00-699.99	15% of Order Total
700.00 +	14% of Order Total

And why am I telling you about this?

If you place your order before April 1st, you can still enjoy last year's shipping fee structure.

Heirloom or Core Club Member from this past year or before? Your free shipping benefits are being grandfathered in. They will last until your Club Membership expires--i.e., for Core Club Members, until one year from the time you place(d) your order this past year.

If you place an order by Midnight (Mountain Daylight Time) March 31, 2009, we will honor our 2008 shipping rates and provide free shipping to you for any order you place over $100.

If you have any questions regarding our shipping rates and policies, feel free to contact my Customer Relations team at 1.303.730.6292 or at main@sonlight.com. We will do our very best to answer any questions you may have.

The Science of Light & Color

Sat, 7 Mar 2009 02:55:00 -0600

I just have to share with you this really fantastic book that we are using right now for our science studies.

Super Science ~ Light & Color by Frank Millson has got to be the coolest little book that you could add to your bookshelves for studying light and color! At the bargain price of under $10 it has all the materials included to complete 10 great experiments sure to please everyone ;)

It covers topics like what light is and how it travels with easy to understand, illustrated and short and to the point explanations. K started by making a simple periscope learning about how light reflects followed by learning about shadows and their two shades: umbra & penumbra *grin*.

Then it was time to learn about transparent and translucent items, how they effect the path of light and refraction in action! Included with the book are 3 plastic lenses in concave, convex and flat shapes that are ready to be filled with gelatin and used to observe how they refract light and change the images you view with them. I think that this was our favorite experiment :)

We learned about white light, prisms and how they can disperse white light creating a visible spectrum with a pair of super cool prism glasses that come with the book and the above spectrum disk that when spun like a top really fast combines all of the colors back to a white color.

The final experiments in the book teach about how and why we see certain colors with the use of the three additive primary colors of light and how they differ from the primary colors (red, yellow & blue) that you use in art.

K really enjoyed working through all of the experiments and I was happy with the simplicity of them and the fact that everything was included! I could have easily given this book to K and he would have been able to do it on his own, but I wanted to join in on the fun *grin*. So if you are looking for something that your child can work on with minimal supervision then this is the one :) If you know of some great little science books like this one I would love to hear about them!

Blessings,

I'm Still Here!

Tue, 3 Mar 2009 11:34:00 -0600

Life seems to have run away with my days! LOL.
I actually didn't mean to have that long of a bloggy break *grin*. Dh came home from work just after Baby M's birthday and has been here ever since and that usually means that my computer time is limited at best, but I'm back!

Things have been busy around home. Dh loves to woodwork so we have made a couple of trips into town for lumber and right now he is building M's first 'big boy' bed since he has mastered the art of escaping from his crib and it doesn't seem to matter anymore if he has side rails or not :) Dh is getting really creative with it as well and has monogrammed the headboard with M's initial. It is sooo cute and he is beyond excitement waiting for it. Every time daddy comes into the house he asks if his bed is ready.

I've been tackling some of the sping cleaning issues that need to be taken care of. Yesterday I braved L's room and spent nearly 3 hours going through every nook and cranny, collecting old toys, illfitting clothing, trash and laundry that seemed to have found some very interesting hiding places *grin*. It is so nice to see the floor again! We've put in an order for gyprock as well and hopefully in the next couple of months will have her room all drywalled. The poor girl still has faux bricks on one wall and wallboard that has been covered with wallpaper and is now peeling on the others, so she is definitely due for a room makeover!

Blessings,

M's 3rd Birthday Party

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:04:00 -0600

Yesterday was M's 3rd birthday party :) He has been so excited about his birthday party since big brother's party 2 weeks ago *grin*. All he's been talking about is when was it going to be his party and that he wanted a Thomas cake :) Well the lucky little guy got his Thomas the Train cake....

and a super cool one at that! On top of it was a wind up Thomas that actually ran around the track. You should have seen his face when we came out with it singing happy birthday. I didn't think he was going to survive long enough to blow out his candles before he yanked Thomas right off the cake! LOL.

My mom got him one of his favorite movies, the Veggie Tales....

and I found a really cute wooden shape puzzle set for him. I just love wooden toys and this one is educational to boot :)

My sister and her husband were able to come up for the day which was really great. Unfortunately though the power decided to go out right when I was in the middle of preparing dinner. ACK! Luckily we have a generator though and I was able to finish getting everything cooked and the lights finally came back on just before 7pm :) Thank goodness that is the last birthday until summer now. We have been going in non-stop birthday mode twice a month since the beginning of December and I need a rest *grin*.

Blessings,

Canadian Bloggers ~ We Need You!!!

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:57:00 -0600

Calling all Canadian homeschoolers.... I know you're out there! *grin*
The next edition of the Canadian Home Educators Blog Carnival is due to be published Monday Feb. 23rd and it needs you. We would love to meet more fellow Canadian homeschoolers and see what has been happening in your school room :) Feel free to share anything, there are no weekly topics and it doesn't even have to be something that you just wrote. Dig out an oldy but a goody from your archives if you like but get it in by tomorrow night if you want to make the Monday list of links. To much pressure, no problem submit something next week and we'll catch up with you next time :)

Hope to see you there!

Our Valentine's Day Party

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:05:00 -0600

Yesterday we had a fun little Valentine's Day party at my moms house trading our handmade valentines with each other and enjoying a super yummy dessert that I had brought along to share :)

Mmmm, good to the last bite *grin*.

Blessings,

Happy Valentine's Day

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:05:00 -0600

Wishing you all a very special Valentine's Day!
Blessings,

FSA Testing ~ To Test or Not To Test... That is the question

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:34:00 -0600

There has been a lot of publicity lately regarding the annual Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) test that is administered to grade 4 and grade 7 students this month between February 2nd through February 27th. The BC Teachers Federation strongly opposes the testing because they feel it can be harmful to children, they threatened to not test, and even went as far as to offer a letter for parents to use to excuse their children from writing the test. Unfortunately they were ordered to comply, under protest, by the BC Labour Relations Board to continue to administer the FSA test for this year.

So what does this mean to us homeschoolers? Well a lot actually. Not only are all public and independent school students expected to write the tests, but all enrolled homeschoolers in a Distributed Learning (DL) program such as Ebus, SelfDesign or any of the others offered in our province are expected to do it to. All DL school boards sign an agreement with the BC government each year that requires them to try and get all of their students to write the test and since they are getting funding from the government for their enrolled homeschool students there is a lot of pressure to show that they are doing this and doing it very successfully or at least trying very hard to do it.

But... yes there's a but *grin*, DL students actually do not have to write the test if they choose not to. We are enrolled in a DL program which somehow I got roped into (silly, silly me) and last week I received a package with a test booklet and online sign in information for my oldest for this years FSA test. I was always under the impression that no matter if you were registered or enrolled you had the choice to be able to refuse participating, but when I posed the question to a Canadian homeschool list I belong to everyone told me I had to do it. So I contacted our DL contact teacher who informed me that I had no legal responsibility to participate. While they are obligated to push for it because the government wants that 100% compliance rate I can in fact refuse it if I want to. I just need to mail back the empty booklets that were mailed to me and let them know that we won't be participating and I am happy about that.

Now you may be thinking, what's the big deal with a little test?! It just measures how your child is doing in reading, writing and mathematics and doesn't hurt a fly! True enough and I'm not saying that it is damaging in any way. The problem that I have with it is that I put together my own curriculum, and a christian one at that which the BC Ministry of Education does not condone at all. I teach my children my own way on my own, and even though I am enrolled with a DL program and technically have a teacher supervisor that I only see when it's time to make sure we've had some form of productive learning happening and in no way 'teaches' my children in any form or shape.... I am expected to count towards their teaching statistics. I'm sorry that just doesn't sit well with me, but that's just my opinion.

I know that there are going to be some of you that read this and be completely against what I feel and that since we are enrolled in a DL program I should just suck it up and do it because as part of a government program we should have known we would be expected to do it, and you're right, I should have known but I guess I was naive. But naive I am no more *grin* and I wanted to share with other homeschoolers that may be in the same situation of being not sure of whether or not they actually have to participate in the FSA testing that they don't. As for us, we will be ending our relationship with DL programs so that there won't be anymore confusion as to what I can and can't do. I want to be free to test what and when I want without feeling pressured to do it :)

Blessings,