Archive for November, 2008

Being a homeschooler means that your children “go” to school whenever you want them to.  Often, we have days off when others don’t, and the reverse is often true as well.  There’s been plenty of Winter “Vacations” that we’re vacations at all for my boys.  That’s one of the nice things about homeschooling, we’re free to do what ever the heck we want, WHEN ever we want!

So today, as I was working in my office (by working I mean sitting at my desk doing pretty much nothing, because it’s a dead day for oversized transportation permits), I noticed that the kids that live behind us were still bouncing on their trampoline at 9am.  Then I noticed the boys next door were in our yard playing soccer.  What the heck was going on???

So I went to our lovely school district website to see what the heck was going on.  Right on their front page they have a little tiny news snippet saying ” Nov. 4th District Wide Staff Development Day”.  Of course there’s nothing saying what they heck that means or why it just happens to be on Election Day.  So I went surfing around the web to see if there were other school districts conveniently taking today off to vote.  Low and behold, they are!  I don’t think that they ALL are, but I think a huge majority of schools are taking today off.

The question is, are they taking today off to vote?  If they are taking today off just to vote, why are they doing this?  I mean, don’t the rest of us have to work during the day and squeeze in voting around our busy schedule?  And what about the burden this puts on parents who’s children aren’t in school?  How understanding are all those businesses going to be to allow their parent employees the day off to allow the local schools to send the teachers out to vote?

Voting is extremely important, but the polls are open pretty early and stay open pretty late.  My specific voting poll is open from 7am – 8pm.  So no matter when I decide to go vote, I’ll be able to.  I don’t see why teachers can’t do the same thing.

What do you think?  Do you think the teachers are taking today off to vote or for actual “Staff Development”?

Whether you voted for Obama or not, he is now our president elect, which means he will have a huge affect on our lives as citizens and as parents.  However, we do not know how his administrationn will affect us as homeschoolers.  I went scouring through the internet and posted querries to the twitterverse to see if I could find something that could give us a firm grasp at where our next President stands on Homeschooling.

Unfortunately there is little to no actual information about where he stands on this issue.  There are lots of conjectures, opinions, and speculations about how his views on education and his ties with the Teachers Union will influence his stance, but there is no actual facts backing any of these assumptions up.  So instead of reposting these opinions, I’ll post the website addresses, and you can decide for yourself if they are correct or not.  In the meantime, I will be trying to contact President Obama’s staff and see if I can get a definitive answer from them and will let you know how that goes.  And if you, dear reader, find anything that might give us all a better glimpse into our new Presidents view on homeschooling, please let us know with a comment!

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My oldest son has gone through many stages and come out of them just fine.  He takes the “normal” amount of time going through these different stages.  I always hope that my younges will do the same, but he’s very different than my oldest.  He starts the various stages and phases at about the same age that my oldest son did, but getting through them is the troubling part.

Jack’s been in the stage of whining about schoolwork for 2 years now, well 2 school years.  I know he’ll grow out of it eventually, but in the mean time I”m frustrated. Of course when I get frustrated, it only makes things worse.  I know this, but it doesn’t help either of us to know and understand.

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With all the preparations going on today and tomorrow for family gatherings and the big feast, I thought I’d share some of my resources that I’ve collected throughout my homeschooling journey.  All of these items I have gotten through various websites for free.  If the site still exists I will post the link to the site directly.  I hope that these things will give you and your children some fun things to do over this holiday weekend.

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