Monthly Archives: April 2015

Exothermic and Endothermic Reactions

Homeschool 2 Comments

In an exothermic reaction, heat is released and the temperature goes up.
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We mixed hydrogen peroxide with yeast to create an exothermic reaction.
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Fritz was pretty freaked out by it because the bubbles were heaving like it was alive and breathing.
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The temperature of the mixture went up quite dramatically.
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The cup got very, very hot.

In an endothermic reaction, heat is absorbed and the temperature goes down.
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We mixed lemon juice with baking soda to create an endothermic reaction.
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It bubbled up a whole lot and Cameron had to run the cup to the kitchen to avoid making a mess.
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The temperature of the mixture went down and the cup got very, very cold.
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What Homeschooling Moms Want You to Know

Homeschool, Thoughts 1 Comment

Anyone can homeschool.
There is nothing special about people who homeschool. I often hear, “I just couldn’t homeschool.” In every case, if they wanted to, I have no doubt they could and would be great at it. Homeschooling does take dedication and a lot of time. This is true. But especially nowadays with so many curriculum options, it’s easy to put together an excellent, well rounded education for any age student.

We’re not all superwomen.
Let’s face it. All moms have to juggle where kids need to be when. Homeschooling moms just keep their kids home and do a few hours of school while moms of public schoolers get their kids to and from school, help with or direct homework, volunteer, and do all sorts of other things related to their kids’ schooling, too.

We’re not all ridiculously creative.
I have two friends who are seriously creative. The first puts on these elaborate parties for her girls every holiday complete with themed food and decorations. The other made these incredible t-shirts for her kids to wear when they went to Disney World recently. Every craft she makes turns out amazing. The first friend is a homeschooler. The second is not. Just like some moms of public schoolers are ridiculously creative, some moms of homeschoolers are. And some moms are not creative, and others are everywhere in between. As far as creativity goes, homeschooling doesn’t make us any different from other moms.

We worry about our kids’ education like crazy.
While the proliferation of curriculum choices makes it easier to homeschool, it also makes it easier to second guess what we are using and feel paralyzed about making the “right” choice. We worry that we’re not covering everything and that we’re leaving huge gaps. We worry that the choices we make for curriculum aren’t the best ones for our kids, or if homeschooling at all is the right choice. When it comes right down to it, if something is missed or goes wrong, it is our fault. There is no one else to blame. There’s a lot to worry involved when you’re completely in charge of your kids’ education.

Sometimes we get burned out.
Sometimes we wish that big yellow bus would stop and pick up our kids. Sometimes we are tired of the worry and time homeschooling takes. For some reason the most common time for this to happen is February, but burn out can happen at any time. Burn out, though, does not automatically mean the kids should be put in public school. What it means is a little break or switching to doing something fun (like a unit study) for a few days is needed and usually we’re ready to get back to it when the break is over.

We don’t think you sending your kids to public school is bad.
Just because we homeschool, it doesn’t mean we are judging you for sending your kids to public school. Yes, we think homeschooling is the right choice for our own family. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be doing it. It does not mean we think it is bad or wrong that homeschooling is not the right choice for your family. I’ve been homeschooled/homeschooling for a lot of years and I’ve only encountered a handful of truly anti-public school, all people should homeschool are terrible if they don’t, type people. They are definitely the extreme (albeit often vocal) minority.

We are not all super organized.
Like creativity, this is another one that varies. You will find incredibly organized homeschooling moms who have their schedule planned for the whole year before the year even starts (that would be me) all the way to moms who fly by the seat of their pants. A couple homeschooling mom friends of mine were looking at my “brain” (bullet journal) and weren’t sure whether to be horrified or impressed. When they saw I have days off school pre-planned months ahead of time they decided horrified was probably the right response. The thing is, pre-planning like that works for me and I’d go crazy if I didn’t. Other homeschooling moms would go crazy being so completely planned out. But, no matter how organized (or not) the moms are, the kids still get a good education.

Not all homeschooled kids are super high achieving geniuses.
Some are. That is true. And some are behind or have learning disabilities (actually, that’s a big reason people pull their kids out of school to homeschool them). Most are average, just like in the general population. Because they can go at their own pace and one-on-one schooling takes less time than educating a whole classroom of kids, however, many average homeschooled kids do end up above grade level in one subject or another.

Homeschoolers are a pretty diverse group.
When my parents started homeschooling me, most homeschoolers were whitem middle to upper class, conservative Christian families. It’s not that way anymore. You’ll find all races, classes, and religions (or lack thereof) homeschooling. You’ll find some who believe the earth is 6,000 years old and some who think it’s several billion years old (never, ever engage a group of homeschoolers in an “old earth/young earth” debate! – just trust me on this one) and some who aren’t sure. Some are conservative, some are liberal, some are moderate. Pretty much, when it comes right down to it, we’re just regular people who choose to educate our children at home (and the reasons for that choice vary widely, too!).

Things Homeschoolers Say That Aren’t True

Homeschool, Thoughts 1 Comment

Just back off if your child is struggling to read. They’ll get it eventually.
Okay, if the kid is 5 or 6, yes. But if the kid is 9, 10, 11, or even older and especially if there are other warning signs for a learning disability, definitely not. Early intervention is important in the case of a learning disability. Always assuring a concerned mom that the kid will pick it up eventually is not helpful. Better advice would be saying that sometimes just backing off works, but if the mom feels like something is wrong in her gut, go with that feeling and dig deeper.

If you leave them alone kids will eventually learn everything they need to know.
Generally this comes from unschoolers, particularly the extreme unschoolers who eschew anything that looks remotely schooly. It’s just plain not true and I’ve seen results of this way of thinking and it’s seldom pretty. It’s usually rather disastrous (think kids, with no learning disabilities, unable to multiply single digits at 13 years old because they never found a reason to learn how). Sure, some kids will indeed learn everything they need to know. Some kids are just driven. The majority are not.

All public schools are horrible.
Nope. As much as some homeschoolers hate to admit it, there really are positives to public school, even public schools that aren’t highly rated amazing ones. There are things that can be done in a public school setting that are difficult to do at home, such as high school lab sciences (which is part of the reason so many homeschoolers do those things in co-ops – sometimes set up quite like public school classrooms – or pay for other outside classes). Is there room for improvement in public schools? Most definitely. But room for improvement does not equal completely bad.

Even if your kid is just reading books all day, they are getting a better education than they would in public school.
Or, the similar statement, The worst day of school at home is better than the best day of school in public school.
Just… no. Kids learn lots in public school. Yes, you hear about the horror stories, but there’s a reason you hear about them: they are unusual and so they are noteworthy. These things are usually said to make moms who mostly are not schooling feel better. This does a disservice, particularly since neither statement is true.

Socialization doesn’t matter.
Homeschool long enough (and by long enough I mean 5 minutes) and someone will say, “What about socialization.” Most homeschoolers brush it off. The thing is, it’s not true that socialization doesn’t matter. What doesn’t matter is the fake socialization imposed by public schools. School is the only time when you’ll be in a room of 30 other kids born within about 12 months of you, being instructed by an adult, told to be quiet and not talk to your neighbor, and maybe even get punished for talking too much by not being allow to talk even during lunch (i.e. no socialization allowed!). What does matter is the real life socialization that most homeschoolers are very careful to expose their kids to. Situations with multiple ages, kids and adults. Yes, there are unsocialized homeschoolers. You know, the stereotypical awkward kid who can’t hold a normal conversation with others. But, you’ll also find awkward kids who can’t hold a normal conversation in public school, too. For some reason, though, the ones in public school are deemed quirky or odd while the homeschooled ones, well, it must be caused by where they are educated.

X curriculum/homeschooling method works for every single child.
I’ve heard this from many people about various curricula or methods, but I’ve heard it most from people who do Thomas Jefferson Education. I am very glad each person has found what works so well for them and their child. That is wonderful. However, just because something works for one person, does not mean it will work for another. Plus, if one thing worked for every kid, the public schools should be clued in because I’m sure they’d be thrilled to find a one size fits all approach to education (spoiler alert: it simply doesn’t exist).

Everything is awesome!
Sometimes everything truly is awesome. Sometimes everything is going great. And sometimes it just isn’t. Unfortunately, as soon as a homeschooling mom talks about her hard days, whether they have to do with education choice or not, or feeling a little burned out, invariably someone will come along and say, “Just put your kids in [public] school, then.” For some of us, homeschooling is actually the thing that brings stability and normalcy to our lives. It’s not something we want to give up, even on the worst days. It’s okay for homeschooling moms to have hard days, weeks, months, or years. We’re moms first and foremost, for goodness sake! We shouldn’t have to pretend everything is perfect just because advice to make things better always seems to focus on the way our kids are educated even when the problems have absolutely nothing to do with it.

FAILURES This School Year

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On Tuesday I listed the big wins from this school year. Now for the failures.

Beast Academy and Art of Problem Solving – No matter how popular they are, they just didn’t work for us. Frustrating for parents and students alike.
Math Mammoth – Another wildly popular math curriculum. A definite “not a match” for us.
While it wasn’t a complete failure, I picked way too many vocabulary words for Fritz when he read some chapters (particularly in Five Children and It). Looking up words in his personal dictionary was great. Having more than 6 or 8 at a time was too much for him.

Honorable (Dishonorable?) Mention goes to Discover the Latter-day Prophets mainly because of misspellings (Woodruf instead of Woodruff, for example) and Hands-on Church History because their website still says volume 2 is expected late 2014 but still isn’t out. I even e-mailed at the beginning of the year to be sure the remaining two volumes would come out and be usable during the school year. I was assured that would be the case. Here we are 6 weeks from the end of the school year and still only volume 1 is available. I had to change my plans for religion partway into the school year because of that.

WINS This School Year

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We’re on the downward slide at the end of the school year. We can see our three month break looming just a few weeks away. I’ve been thinking about what we used this year and what worked best. So, the 2014-15 school year big wins are:

Writing With Skill – Hands-down the number 1 winner for the year
Writing With Ease – I love how I can see this leading to Writing With Skill (though we are sad that we’ve moved on from the copywork and do all dictations and narrations now)
Math-U-See – All three boys are loving their math finally!

Pandia Press REAL Science Odyssey Chemistry and Early Modern History get honorable mentions. We don’t LOVE them, but they are both very good and we’ve learned a lot.

Cameron’s Digestion Composition

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Digestion

Digestion is a strange process which some people may not know about like what happens once your food gets in your intestines.

Your small intestine is around 20 feet long. It removes the nutrients from the mash of food that comes from your stomach. It does this by slowly passing over ridges that extract the nutrients from the sludge.

Your food gets into your stomach through your throat. It doesn’t fall straight down into your stomach. It is pushed down through your throat into your stomach, which digests the food into a mash that is mixed with bile from the liver and other fluids. It is then passed to your small intestine which takes the nutrients from the sludge into the bloodstream where it is brought to wherever it is needed.

This may sound gross, but it is an important thing and without it you would DIE. This process happens to everything you eat.

It amazes me how much his writing has improved since he started Writing With Skill!

Young Women Scripture Reading Chart

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A few weeks ago during young women, Ani decided scripture study needed to be more of a priority among the girls in our ward. She had a giant brainstorm about making a poster to keep track of the total number of days scriptures are read in our ward’s young women organization.

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She made the poster so the names can be moved or changed as girls move to other classes, move away, or move on to Relief Society. It’s on a foam core board. The names are on strips cut from 3×5 cards with holes punched on either end. They are attached to the board using brads threaded through holes cut in the board using a sharp knife. She made sure to include the leaders so we get to participate, too!

There is a dry erase marker attached so every week as the girls arrive in the young women room, they can write down the number of days they read at least one scripture that week. They can count assigned reading for seminary, reading for completing Personal Progress value experiences, or any other personal scripture reading they do.

Every month Ani will tally up the number of days the young women read scriptures and write it in the Last Month section. She’ll also keep a running tally for the number of days over the previous year they read their scriptures. The girls want a treat after they reach a certain number of days read as a group. We haven’t decided on what that magic number or what the treat will be.

At the bottom of one side, she put a pocket that she is planning to keep filled with little slips of paper with seven scripture passage references, usually ones that apply to value experiences, and they can read one passage per day during the week. She printed the Young Women torch from lds.org and a quote from Elder Scott’s fall 2014 conference address.

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Ani presented her poster to the girls on Sunday and explained what to do and how to record the number of days they read each week. While she explained, I handed out wallet size cards we had had printed at Costco with Elder Scott’s quote on them:

Don’t yield to Satan’s lie that you don’t have time to study the scriptures. Choose to take time to study them. Feasting on the word of God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do it!

I Gave Myself a Time Out

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This weekend my mom, daughter, and I went to Time Out for Women and Time Out for Girls San Antonio.

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We stayed downtown Thursday and Friday nights. We ate a late lunch Friday at the Rainforest Cafe. The chef came to talk to us about what we could eat that was gluten free before we ordered. It was delicious.

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After lunch we made our way to the Convention Center.

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We were early and just happened to be at the right place at the right time when John Bytheway arrived. I got to speak to him and told him how when I was a youth, we’d drive long distances to multi-stake dances regularly. We often listened to some of his talks on the drive. I told him that I, too, can draw both my first and last names in Pictionary. He gave me a fist bump (twice). It was truly awesome getting to talk to him.

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After waiting in line for well over an hour, we got into the ballroom and grabbed seats on the fourth row right to the left of the stage. Soon after, Time Out for Women, day one, started. We began by listening to GENTRI. They are truly incredible. They talked to us and sang some more between the speakers and at the end.

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Emily Watts spoke to us about the gift of an imperfect mother. She was so funny. She reminded us we don’t have to be perfect as long as we are trying and doing our best. My favorite part was where she talked about helping her grandson put together a Lego kit. After 30 minutes, she was getting frustrated and figured it would be easier for her to just put it together for him. Then she realized it wasn’t about the perfectly completed Death Star. It was about the process and learning and growing on the way to the end product. Just like everything in our lives.

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John Bytheway spoke about charity. He was just as awesome as I remember him from when I was a teenager. He began by telling us that as a kid he wondered if charity, the pure love of Christ, was love for Christ, love from Christ, or love like Christ. His answer? Yes. He reminded us that while we have our to do lists (and I do love my to do lists), we need to have to be lists. In among this he told the story from a book he read, Mafia to Mormon (I added that one to my to read list!), and was just so tickled with himself when he told us he had just given his oldest son’s e-mail address to the 350 girls in the Time Out for Girls room (Ani e-mailed him, he e-mailed back… he’s a good sport even when pranked by his dad).

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We were up not-so-bright and early Saturday morning and headed to the Conference Center for the second day of Time Out for Women. We got seats in the third row to the left of the stage this time. 1500 women were in attendance.

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Our day started with a performance by Mercy River. Their music is beautiful. And Whitney made me realize that, like her, I’m Dance Party Mom. Impromptu dance parties with the kids are the best! They continued to sing and talk to us throughout the day between the speakers.

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Elaine S. Dalton spoke to us about becoming an elect woman. She was the Young Women General President when Ani turned 12. She taught us to be PROS. Pray morning and night every day, reading in the scriptures at least 5 minutes a day, be obedient to the standards, and smile, first thing in the morning, at yourself in the mirror. We are the virtue ladies!

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Lisa Valentine Clark talked about how we’re all in this together. She told us our biggest strength is in our differences. Her brother is the lead guitarist in Maroon 5, another brother is a doctor, and a sister has been on Project Runway twice. Pretty impressive, but their talents and what they bring to the party doesn’t in any way diminish her own. Each of us are important. After all, the woman who figured out how to add clearanced Halloween candy sealed in number 10 cans to her food storage is going to be pretty popular at the gathering after the apocalypse. The most important thing we all need to ask ourselves is am I doing the best for me and my kids. If so, we are doing the right thing whether or not someone else seems more amazing.

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S. Michael Wilcox spoke on the majesty of forgiveness. He was, by far, the most serious of the presenters. His talk had so much in it. He told the story of Susannah Cibber and Handel’s Messiah. At the end of the amazing performance given by this scandal-ridden outcast of a woman, Reverend Patrick Delany jumped to his feet and yelled, “Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven!” He, like the Savior, saw the woman, not the sinner. He begged us to do the same for all our fellow men (and women). He reminded us that after forgiveness has been sought or given, we should bury our weapons of the past and never dig them up to wound ourselves again.

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We had almost an hour and a half for lunch. We went to Fuddruckers. They give the option for a burger on a bed of lettuce (which I got) or on a gluten free bun (which Ani got). We managed three days and two nights away from home without getting glutened! I think we’re getting the hang of this gluten free thing. When we got back, Ani filled out a tag with a promise for what she’d do to make the world a little bit of a better place (you know… decrease world suck). Mommie and I had done that on Friday. We got to choose the color of ribbon we wanted to tie our tags up with and they gave us little dandelion pins to wear.

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Early in the day Hank Smith had asked that we appoint someone in each of our groups to be the designated person to get us back to the ballroom on time after the lunch break to be sure he wasn’t speaking to a room full of nobody. He congratulated us on the success of that assignment. He spoke on experiencing our plan of happiness… even when that plan changes or varies from what we wanted or expected. Happy people surround themselves with other happy people, choose to be happy, spend money on others, laugh, have deep in-person conversations, exercise and have a healthy diet, unplug and go outside, use the power of music, get enough sleep, and take time to meditate. He reminded us it’s all about our attitude and accentuate the positive. I’d never heard of him before this weekend. I am SO glad we got to see him. He was definitely one of my favorites!

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The final speaker was Emily Freeman. She talked about finding God’s fingerprints in our lives. She reminded us that instead of asking God why, be willing to go through the fight. It might be our preparation for whatever God wants us to do and become. She told us we are evidence of God’s hand in our lives and we are living proof of His fingerprints everywhere.

Speaking of fingerprints, on Friday evening in that mass of glowing, beautiful women, we ran into a women I grew up with in Maryland (her family moved to San Antonio about the same time we did). She was with her sister and mother. Our moms hadn’t seen each other in about 10 years and were so happy to see each other again. About 3 years ago, Jamie was on travel to the city where my friend’s sister lives and the sister fed dinner to my husband one Sunday. How cool that we all ran into each other!

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After we wrapped up the day, I noticed the women from Mercy River were standing near the front so my mom and I went over to talk to them for a couple minutes and take a picture with them. Nice wrap-up to an incredible weekend!