Great Article

I read this article on a homeschool forum. I enjoyed it very much. As a warning, it has fantastical elements to it, such as children walking calmly and orderly through the grocery store, wearing nice and even matching outfits. I would be interested in knowing what your children do through the grocery store in hopes that mine aren’t the only ones who run as fast as they can down the aisle, then drop to their knees and see how far they can slide. I would like to say now that they are older it is better, but it is just different. Now is it wrestling or spy games or seeing how fast we can walk. The benefit to them being older is that I don’t have to walk in the same aisle. ha. In their defense, I have very well behaved sons. If I tell them to stop, they will. But we would not look like this family in this article. When I read this, I couldn’t help but think of all the things my sons have tried and done in a store. Now I can laugh! What does your family look like when you grocery shop?

Here is the article- food for thought!

 

Home-schoolers threaten our cultural comfort 
Mon Jun 16, 2008 4:50 pm (PDT) 
*SONNY SCOTT*
 
6/8/2008 9:39:01 AM
 Daily Journal
 
You see them at the grocery, or in a discount store.
 
It’s a big family by today’s standards – “just like stair steps,”
as the old folks say. Freshly scrubbed boys with neatly trimmed hair
and girls with braids, in clean but unfashionable clothes follow mom
through the store as she fills her no-frills shopping list.
 
There’s no begging for gimcracks, no fretting, and no threats
from mom. The older watch the younger, freeing mom to go peacefully
about her task.
 
You are looking at some of the estimated 2 million children being
home schooled in the U.S., and the number is growing. Their
reputation for academic achievement has caused colleges to begin
aggressively recruiting them. Savings to the taxpayers in
instructional costs are conservatively estimated at $4 billion, and
some place the figure as high as $9 billion. When you consider that
these families pay taxes to support public schools, but demand
nothing from them, it seems quite a deal for the public.
 
Home schooling parents are usually better educated than the norm,
and are more likely to attend worship services. Their motives are
many and varied. Some fear contagion from the anti-clericalism,
coarse speech, suggestive behavior and hedonistic values that
characterize secular schools. Others are concerned for their
children’s safety. Some want their children to be challenged beyond
the minimal competencies of the public schools. Concern for a
theistic world view largely permeates the movement.
 
Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids,
and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is
coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in
California.
 
Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?
 
Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around
the home schooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around
the teetotaler.
 
Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an
indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render
unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at
their 
children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state
(and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act
of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in
return.
 
Just as the jealous Chaldeans schemed to bring the wrath of the
king upon the Hebrew eunuchs, we are happy to sic the state’s
bureaucrats on these “trouble makers.” Their implicit rejection of
America’s most venerated idol, Materialism, (a.k.a. “Individualism”)
spurs us to heat the furnace and feed the lions.
 
Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care
and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The
rationalizations begin. “A family just can’t make it on one income.”
(Our parents did.) “It just costs so much to raise a child nowadays.”
(Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing, pre-prepared food, join every
club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the
daughter’s wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made. We give
up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the
formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers.
We compensate by getting a boat to take them to the river, a van to
carry them to Little League, a 2,800-square-foot house, an ATV, a
zero-turn Cub Cadet, and a fund to finance a brand-name college
education. And most significantly, we claim “our right” to pursue a
career for our own”self-fulfillment.”
 
Deep down, however, we know that our generation has eaten its
seed corn. We lack the discipline and the vision to deny ourselves in
the hope of something enduring and worthy for our posterity. We are
tired from working extra jobs, and the looming depression threatens
our 401k’s. Credit cards are nearly maxed, and it costs a $100 to
fuel the Suburban. Now the kid is raising hell again, demanding the
latest Play Station as his price for doing his school work … and
there goes that modest young woman in the home-made dress with her
four bright-eyed, well-behaved home-schooled children in tow.
Wouldn’t you just love to wipe that serene look right off her smug
face?
 
Is it any wonder we hate her so?
 
Sonny Scott a community columnist, lives on Sparta Road in
Chickasaw County and his e-mail address is sonnyscott@…
 
Obviously, we wouldn’t agree on this post, least of all the stereotype of a homeschool family. That is what made me chuckle. I don’t know many homeschoolers who look like this woman and her children. I do however agree with the references of homeschooling being a choice, and one that has consequences and financial repercussions. It is not without a cost. Sometimes I think people forget that.

Enjoy the day,

Shannon

Pockets of Time for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

                                                          

 

I am SOOOOOO very excited about this Pocket of Time we just released. We changed up the standard format because this book was just screaming CHOCOLATE! Every chapter has a large candy bar to be cut out and colored. There are four labels for every candy bar. On these labels, you will find events that happened within that chapter. Color the border the given color, place the labels on the candybar in the CORRECT order. Every candybar has a golden seal to be placed around the labels to hold in their spot. All mom/teacher has to do is look at the color code of events to know if the reader comprehended and followed the sequence of events. There are pockets to hold sets of candybars. These are so adorable!!! Be sure to use this Pocket of Time product for summer reading or save it for school in September.

Here is what one chapter’s candybar looks like:

What Is A Classic? Part 3

As a reminder, this is not my article. I found this in the back of an old Walmart publication of H.G. Wells’ The War of the World. The author of the article is not named. I have researched and tried to find the author’s name to no avail. I respectfully post this article on FORTUNATELY FOR YOU BOOKS business blog. It is one of the best articles I have read on the subject of what makes a book a classic.

Part 3:

There’s one other reason that the classics have endured as long as they have. In fact, it’s the most important reason of all.

Books become classics, and stay classics, because they tell us something about ourselves. The authors whose worlds are represented in this series (Walmart line of classics) understand the human heart better than most of the writers working today. They might not have experienced the events they’re writing about firsthand, but they have the ability to put themselves in someone else’s place, and somehow convey what that sort of a person is feeling.

Stephen Crane was never a soldier himself. But in The Red Badge of Courage, he used his knowledge of human emotions to convey what it was like to be a green recruit facing enemy guns in a bloody war, praying he’d be strong enough not to turn and run when the battle began, not to disgrace himself in the eyes of his peers.

Although Mary Mapes Dodge was never a wold famous ice skater, she was able to express in Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates how it felt to be a gifted athlete for whom sport mattered more than anything in the world. She understood what it was like to be facing cutthroat competition, to force yourself to go on when your body was crying out for rest.

In Huckelberry Finn, Mark Twain used his writer’s gifts to make the reader feel what it was like to have a cruel and hurtful father, as Huck did, and to want to escape from a harsh existence. And he was able to convey what it was like for Huck’s friend, Jim, a runaway slave, to be hated and punished just because he was different from other people.

In Little Women, Louisa May Alcott was able to express what it was like to be a young woman in the last century, fighting for a place in the world dominated by men. She understood what it was like to have a dream so strong you would risk anything to make it come true, as Jo Marsh did when she decided to become a journalist.

When the world grows too difficult to bear, it’s sometimes helpful to get a bit of perspective, to see how people dealt with life’s problems, and its opportunities, in other times and places. The classics offer fresh view points on the human condition, showing how other people dealt with heartbreak and shame, greed and ambition, anger and terror. While you’re wrapped up in the dreams and fears of a pauper on the streets of sixteenth century London, or an awkward schoolteacher in eighteenth century New Your State, you may find a solution to your own worries and problems. Or, if not, you may at least find an escape from them that gives you time to take a breath and gather the strength to go on.

So the next time you see a book labeled a “classic”, whether it comes from this publisher or another one, you might benefit from taking a second look at it before passing on to the latest packaged series or television spin off. The world you’ll find inside the pages of that book is likely ro be richer, deeper, and more moving than anything else in the bookstore.

The important thing to remember is that it’s your choice, not anyone else’s. By choosing this book, you’ve become part of a process that makes books classics. If this story works for you, as it had for previous generations of readers, if you enjoy it enough to recommend it to your friends- maybe even to your own kids some day- you’ll be part of the chain that caused it to be here for you.

And if it turns out that it’s not to your liking,  you may recommend some newer book that does work for you, a work that stays in print and goes on to become one of the classics of the next century. It’s up to you to decide.