As I am sure you all know we home school our children.

A lot of celebrities home school or claim to home school with private tutors but we found Angelina Jolie’s recent interview on this interesting.  A lot of the time they home school due to personal scheduling reasons or for privacy concerns.  That doesn’t seem to be the case with Jolie. They also focus more on a semi unschooling style, which is unusual for celebrities.

You can read about it at Your Celeb Source.

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This is not surprising at all but KTAR is reporting more Arizonans are homeschooling because Governor Jane Brewer is destroying the states education system so as a parent you have to home school.  We of course have been homeschooling prior to Jane Brewer took office anyway but still it is getting much worse under her.

One parent in Phoenix decided to home school her four children because she was turned off by what she calls the “institutional nature” of schools.

“There’s so little flexibility in schools, and so ability to individualize education to the child,” one parent says.

“You learn to teach by teaching,” she added. “That’s just as true with someone who has a four year degree as it is with a Mom.”

The Daily Press also recently ran an article on homeschooling in general.

“I liked the idea and we tried it out,” she said. “I really didn’t know anyone who did it.”

One parent said she has many reasons to home school her children. She wanted to be the one influencing them and also wasn’t ready to give up the time with them when they turned school age. Flexibility was another factor.

“The beauty of home school is really that individualized instruction.” That really sums it all up.  You don’t have to work on someone’s scheduling doing what someone else wants you to do and not even being able to decide how you want to do it but told you must do zyx even if it makes more sense to do it xyz.

I found an interesting statistic that an estimated 1.5 million children are schooled at home in the United States, which is about 3 percent of the school-age population, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

I am not sure how accurate that is or how they got this data but 3% is more than I would have guessed.

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If you ever spent more than 10 minutes with our family, you WILL be subjected to a conversation with Drama King. He loves to talk. He can talk about anything. With anyone. Anywhere. Anytime. And he absorbs knowledge constantly.

Welcome to DK’s Words Of Wisdom!

DK (talking about Mario from the Super Mario games): Mario’s a plumber. And he beat a huge hairy guy named Donkey Kong. Who could be awesomer than that? No one that’s who.

DK: I am a toad talker because I can understand toads. That’s why they {insert toad croak sound} at me.

DK: I want a Nintendo DS for Christmas. That’s it.
Me: Really a Nintendo DS. That’s it.
DK: Oh, and a Mario game. What’s the point of a DS if you don’t have a Mario game to play.

DK (at a fast food joint): Why don’t they have water for me to drink? You know I don’t like soda. I guess I’ll get an apple juice or maybe a lemonade. But I’d rather have water. In a bottle. You know, the good stuff.

DK: Mom, I don’t need your help. I can make my own snack.
He proceeds to take out the salad mix, cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots, bacon pieces and Italian dressing. He puts a handful of salad, tomatoes and carrots on his plate. He sprinkles a few bacon pieces on the salad and a few on the side for good measure. Then he grabs a little dipping cup and pours some dressing.
DK(to himself): The perfect snack.

DK: I need cookies. 3 cookies only. I’ll get the milk.

DK: Did you know that the uglier the bad guy is, the more powerful he is?
Me: I didn’t know that.

And that brings us to the conclusion of DK’s Words of Wisdom. Until next time, share those words of wisdom from your child in the comments.

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Angi ran across this great video of a Valedictorian speech at a high school graduation.

We both agree with the points made during the speech but it is just a little surprising coming from a Valedictorian of a public high school.

It is sad but true all public school aims to do now is prepare you to pass the tests.  As long as you can pass the tests you will be okay.

Take a look at the speech below:

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Some of Suri Cruise’s recent outfits she has worn to school has caused some controversy on cable news and online websites.

I don’t see any issues with this outfit. It is not something you would see at your every day public school but that is not where she is going either. What do you think about her outfits?

You can read about the school she is going to at New Village Leadership plus another article about Suri at Your Celeb Source.

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It shouldn’t come as a surprise that our boys like to help in the kitchen. Sometimes, it’s a simple as putting together their snack or making their own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Sometimes, it’s a little more involved like when the boys helped make semi swedish meatballs with me.

They took turns using the meat baller and putting the finished meatballs into the pan. This process was longer than if I had made them myself but they had so much fun and subsequently ate more of these than when I make them without their help.

Drama King loves to help out when I use our slow cooker because he can do most of the work on his own. He asked me to put together a video of him making steak stroganoff to share with you guys. This was his first time in front of the camera with the intent of sharing it with the world so he made a few minor oops. This was also my first time behind the camera as Tim is normally our camera man so it contains things I’d change, too.

Grab the recipe here for steak stroganoff and get your kids in the kitchen cooking. They will thank you when they’re older and can make something to impress their friends that doesn’t consist of picking up a phone or pushing a button on the microwave.

And have a safe and happy 4th of July! Don’t forget to watch Independence Day starring Will Smith. It’s my favorite 4th of July movie. What about yours?

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For being our first year gardening in our new home, we’re having strange experiences. Some of our plants are not doing well and we suspect it’s the soil which is out for analysis at the moment. We mistakenly assumed that our soil would be good garden soil because we’re surrounded by farmlands.

But it seems that are last-minute potato plants are thriving. Take a look. A good close look. You might just see a surprise!

Ignore the sticks that blew in during our last big wind gusts and you might just find a long and fat surprise hiding. Do you see it? Take a long look, I’ll wait.

{waiting

is

hard

work}

Do you see it? No. I guess a hint is in order. It’s big and yellow.

Ok, not that big. Let’s look from another angle, shall we?

Still no? Ok. I’ll spill.

A snake. A pretty yellow and brown spotted snake. Tim startled the snake when he began watering the potato plants and it started to move away. He stopped watering and moved into another section of the garden, the snake moved back to the large stick he was hiding behind. He doesn’t have a big belly so he hasn’t eaten lately. My guess is that he’s hunting whatever little creature has dug up sections of the garden.

We did some image searching and it seems that the snake is a western fox snake which is a rare sight as it’s on a handful of endangered species lists. We used this as a teachable moment with the boys. Respecting wildlife, endangered species preservation, and maybe if we cross our fingers, we’ll catch it in the process of constricting or eating prey for another lesson.

Have you ever had a snake is your garden? What endangered species have you encountered in the wild?

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Yes, we speak geek. And our boys speak it, too.

Lots of kids have play phones but not many play “tech support” on them. It’s hilarious to watch them pick up the phone and say “Tech support” and then intently listen about the pretend callers problem. Of course, they have learned that rebooting your computer can fix everything. I don’t know where they would have learned that.

{eyes diverted elsewhere}

Then comes the “right-click and do that” and “the button on the right side of your mouse” and “No, the other button” and other hilarious tech situations. Sometimes I wonder where they picked this all up but then I realize Tim and I help others out and complain whine talk about our experiences with the non-tech savvy among us.

And just the other day, I caught our boys talking about goombas, you know the little mushroom looking character in a lot of the Mario games, and Koopa Troopas, the turtle-like creatures. They have never played a current Mario Brothers game but Super Mario Bros 3 on the Nintendo NES is a top request around these parts.

And it’s no surprise to hear about proton packs and not crossing streams (Ghostbusters), aliens in disguise (Men In Black and Independence Day), and many other geek worthy stuff.

We’re also amazed on a regular basis with Little T’s movie making skills. He has a webcam on his computer and has made hundreds of movies on it. I’ve thought about sorting through and picking out a few of the best moments to share.

Drama King has expressed an interest in coding because he wants to create games for his friends to play. He is fascinated by the inner workings of games and how the story lines change in some of the games depending on what decisions he makes early on in the game.

I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

What geek qualities do you or your children have?

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Yesterday, I asked you to guess what we did. Here’s some hints…

Drama King has been covered in mud head to toe. Tim wore a hat for the first time in … oh, I dont’ know, forever maybe. Little T has had more baths in a weekend that any other weekend in his life.

Shoes are dirty. Water hoses may have been used to clean our muddy children’s feet.

Did you guess?

As you may recall, my word of the year is Health and I mentioned that we were planning on growing some of our own food this year and about the composting we were already doing. So this weekend, we planted our first crop. And we planted a lot. And multiple varieties of most of these:

• Pepper
• Tomato
• Squash
• Onion
• Corn
• Carrot
• Cucumber
• Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Radish
• Peas
• Parsnips
• Lettuce
• Dill

Soon we’ll be planting some herbs to sit on the kitchen porch so we can add fresh herbs to our food.

Oh, and have I ever mentioned that our neighbors across the “street” have a hive of bees? Those little guys surely figured out that some of our trees are budding because the bees have been over every day by the hundreds gathering nectar. And we get to eat that wonderful fresh local honey because our landlords are friends with our neighbors. I can’t wait to taste the local honey here.

Did you pick a word for the year? What about a resolution? How are they going?Are you planting anything this spring?

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Mondays typically bring a recipe post and a link up but we had a very busy weekend so I didn’t get the recipe up and done in time. What have we been up to? I’ll give you a hint.

Stay tuned tomorrow when I reveal what we did over the weekend.

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A few weeks ago, Tim and I skimmed through the clearance toy section at our local Wal-mart as we always do when shopping at Wal-mart. We found some great items for under $5 to help restock our diminishing gift box. We picked up some art projects, holiday and birthday gifts, and a few household items. One of those art projects was a gummy making kit like this one but in a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme.

I pulled it out the other afternoon when the boys wanted a snack. They had so much fun making gummies that they want to do it again. After they added each color to each set, they combined what they had left into one squeeze bottle which created a black goo. They proceeded to put a drop of black on each of the gummies they made. After an hour or so of drying time, they devoured only a few of them. They put the rest in a baggie and continued to eat a few each day until they were gone.

This post was listed at Hip Homeschool Hop.

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Today, the boys and I pulled out a handful of the Dr. Seuss books we own and picked out a couple to read. Some of our books are older because they are from Tim’s childhood collection. Some we picked up from library sales, and some have been bought or given to us a gifts. The boys adore Dr. Seuss books. They love making up words so it’s nice for them to see make believe words in a book.

Together we read If I Ran the Zoo, If I Ran the Circus, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!, and Hop on Pop just to name a few. We talked about the style of writing and how a lot of the ending words rhymed with other words on the same page. Of course, that led to the boys making up their own words that rhymed with the ending word.

I saw this quote in my TweetDeck feeds yesterday along with loads of other brilliant quotes from him.

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” ~Dr. Seuss

What is your favorite Dr. Seuss book? Favorite quote?

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Moving to New Mexico has brought on some challenges for our homeschooling. In Arizona, record keeping is not required in any fashion. New Mexico requires keeping attendance and maintaining a minimum amount of school days. This has made me think about the best way to keep track of not only attendance but what the boys have done and learned each year of their life.

A few years ago, I printed a small photo book for Little T that had photos from birth to age 5. I’m in the process of converting that into pages that I can put into a binder to track their schooling journey. I plan to go back and do one page for each child for each school year they have done. I’ll also make some pages about their preschool years and maybe some about the various vacations we’ve taken over the years. I’ll probably throw in a few samples of their school work so they can reminisce when they’re older about how funny they were or how weird they wrote the letter e. Yes, one of my boys writes his e in the cutest fashion. He can write it correctly but prefers the cute method right now.

How do you keep track of your school days?

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Hope everyone has a happy holiday season.

We’ll be back soon.

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PrintableGamesAtoZ.com offers a large number of printable games for parties to holidays. You get unlimited prints of an entire package of games for 90 days (one year on non-seasonal packages).

At first, I was taken back by the 90 day print policy. My initial thought was if I pay for the games, I’d like to print them out at any time. Then, I started thinking about it. How often would I truly print out a Christmas game in April? 90 days in more than enough time to plan and print out copies that I’ll need. Plus, I can set one aside as a master copy.

After coming to terms with the day limitations, I skimmed through the vast collection of winter games. While some of the are Christian themed, a large number of them can be used in any setting. I printed out some of them and set them aside for the holidays.

I was quite impressed with the Bingo Generator that created as many unique cards as I needed. Some of the games can be customized with your own text and/or words.

Buy the complete set of Winter Holiday Games now for only $19.95 for over 60 games. That’s less than 50 cents a game plus you can print as many or as little copies as you need.

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