Please join me today at Blissfully Domestic for Fun with Science: Owl Pellet Dissection!

Parents often harbor unnecessary fears at the prospect of homeschooling high school, thinking that their kids will miss out on sports, extracurriculars, graduation, and the prom. In my experience—and we’ve just graduated our second homeschooled student—that just isn’t the case. It may require extra time, driving, and dedication on your part, but with our numbers growing and homeschooling increasingly recognized as a viable and successful educational option, the possibilities are endless. Today I’m going to focus on one of these areas.

Sports and Related Extracurriculars

More sports teams are popping up as the number of high schooled homeschoolers continues to rise. Most of these teams are started and coached by parents who are passionate about these sports and want their kids to be able to participate in them, too. Bonus for the coach: you don’t have to teach classes all day at the local high school in order to experience the joy of coaching what you love!

Depending on the number of homeschool teams in your area for a particular sport, you may play against other homeschool teams or in conferences that also include private or Christian schools. We’ve done both.

Our kids participate in a band/choir program that works with local home and privately schooled students. Because we have homeschool high school football, two of our kids are able to perform in the halftime show at home games. Our 14-year-old son plays clarinet in the marching band and our 12-year-old daughter is on the flag team.

I love the absence of labels: our son’s dream is to play major league baseball, but he’s in the band. There’s no “jock” or “band geek” label attached to him.

If you don’t yet have homeschool sports teams in your area, maybe you are what it takes to help make it happen.

Here are some photos from our first varsity football game last night. The halftime show featured music from Pirates of the Caribbean. [Note the awesome costuming, especially from the student band directors. How often do you see a pirate directing a band?]

[This post originally appeared at The Homeschool Post.]

I’ve got four things to share with you:

First, I bought the coolest easel picture frame at T.J. Maxx today with room for five 8×10 photographs. In a surprising degree of promptness, I have already printed photos from Bouchon, the ultra-fab restaurant where the speaker dinner that I attended at the Type-A Mom conference was held; framed them; and set it up in my dining room.

Although I cleaned the glass, it’s obvious from these pictures that the frame needs a once-over with some furniture polish. I can’t wait to see how surprised my bunch is when they see it in the morning!

Just ignore how blurry this first one is. I was standing on a chair after midnight taking it. Enough said?

Second, I discovered the most fascinating cookie recipe in the Real Simple cookie email newsletter: Earl Grey Tea Cookies. The cookie recipe contains not only one cup of butter (that’s two sticks), but the pulverized tea leaves from six bags of Earl Grey tea, one of my favorites. Anything with two sticks of butter has to be divine, right? I can’t wait to try these.

Third, my six-year-old daughter joined the church last weekend and will be baptized on Sunday. Our church sold our building and is in the process of building a new one; in the meantime, we are meeting at an interim facility. We don’t have a baptistry, however we do have a family at church with a pool and hot tub. How many people can say they were baptized in a hot tub? My daughter will be the first that I know. She is so excited!

Last but not least, I’ve got an A B See Photomeme post up at The Homeschool Post. Stop by and link up a picture post of your own; it doesn’t matter what letter you’re on, it’s just fun to play.

Disney has released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the beloved original Disney classic, for the first time in high-definition Blu-Ray. The Diamond Edition combo pack offers both Blu-ray and DVD format. Years ago we owned Snow White on VHS, so our oldest son was familiar with it, but the new edition has been a treat for my younger children.

This hand drawn cartoon is a pleasant change from a lot of today’s fare, which is often not particularly kid-friendly. I had forgotten how charming and childlike the dwarfs are, surprised at discovering an intruder in their home who cleaned and cooked in their absence. The scene where Snow White makes them wash their hands before dinner is one of my favorites, reminding me of my kids.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has become part of my survival plan for this busy school year. I have carried my laptop with us on days when we have outside classes, and used the movie to entertain my little ones in the car!

If you’re unfamiliar with the Blu-ray format, here are some highlights about Blu-ray discs and players:

• Up to 6x better quality than DVD
• 7.1 Surround Sound
• Games and special features
• More scratch resistant
• Plays both Blu-ray and DVD discs
• Also plays on Sony Playstation 3 players

Save $10 if you upgrade from a VHS or DVD to the new Diamond Edition combo pack.

[Product provided for review.]

I have a photo essay posted at (in)courage today, inspired by photos from an afternoon walk at the beginning of fall with my daughters. Please visit me there!

If asked, I can quote the exact dictionary definition of hypothesis; a conversational dialogue from the first week of high school French; and the most difficult to pronounce sentence assigned to me in college Russian. Why? I had to memorize them. Young children have fresh and powerful memories; they are capable of progressing from crying newborns to speaking their native language in such a relatively short period of time.

Sometimes rote memorization gets a bad name in the realm of homeschooling (or schooling in general). We taken a different approach this year as we participate for the first time in Classical Conversations, a one-day per week classical model homeschool program designed to complement your studies at home. My four-, six-, eight-, and nine-year-old children are learning lots of memory work, often through song.

My four-year-old daughter has a habit of waking in the middle of the night and coming downstairs to crawl in bed with us. One morning last week when I was trying to wake her, she kept mumbling something. Finally I understood: Colossus of Rhodes—she was naming the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in her sleep! Her next words were, “Artemis, Diana,” the Greek and Roman names for the goddess of the hunt in Greek mythology.

Just in case you think I’m raising a little genius, honesty compels me to admit that her first words this morning were Krabby Patty.

Visit 5 Minutes for Mom or Wordless Wednesday for more Wordless Wednesday participants.

This week’s themes at iHeartFaces is “Halloween Dress Up” and the guest judge is Pete Lacker!

This picture is of my youngest daughter, my favorite purple googly-eyed monster.

I’ve got four contests that are closing today, and random.org has chosen the following winners:

1. The Best Camera is the One That’s With You goes to Candi at Eye Candi Photography
2. The two $25 Macy’s gift cards go to Christine and Lynn at The Beehive
3. The 3 bundled sets of Noble Rose Press Daughters of His Story Historical Paper Dolls go to Christin at Journey to a Gracious Woman, Hannah at Rose in the Wilderness, and Shannon at Thoughts and Thimbles
4. The Harry Connick, Jr. Your Songs CD goes to Tye at Durbin Digital

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who participated!

Nominations started TODAY for the Homeschool Blog Awards. GO NOMINATE YOUR FAVORITE HOMESCHOOL BLOGS! Don’t waste your votes on any of us on the team because we’re not eligible to win. We are knocking ourselves out to bring in some mighty fine sponsors, though. It’s a wonder we haven’t all quit just to be eligible to win some of those fab prizes.

Who do I love? Michael Bublé. More accurately, I love Michael Bublé’s new Crazy Love CD. Check out the album trailer for this awesome collection.