31 August 2012

House Rules

(A post by an Elf, without correction and edited only for brevity.  I had no idea our household had so many rules!)

1.  Do not dissobey Parents
2.  take off your shoes at the door
3.  Clean your room, every-day
4.  Do not complain
5.  If you're not sure, ask Mom.
6.  If Mom or Dad are eating, do not ask them any-thing.
7.  You must have socks when putting on shoes.
8.  Help your yonger siblings
9.  Help your older siblings.
10.  Do not lie.
11.  Ask before you do.
12.  Do not resort to violence, Tell Mom or Dad.
13.  Do not buy things without Mom/Dads premition.

Special Rule AKA Purple Dinosour

Do NOT correct Mom on ANY-thing.

(Editor's note:  This one is a real rule at our house!  If Mom tells a school worker/ doctor/ other stranger something that doesn't sound right, eeeeeven if she claims that a purple dinosaur came by and did a dance in our living room, do not correct Mom.  You will get into soooo much trouble for making Mom look like a liar and you do not always know the whole story like you think you do.)

14.  Do not punish your younger siblings, tell Mom/Dad
15.  If Mom/Dad tell you to do something, do it!
16.  Do not run away.
17.  acsept punishment.
18.  Do Not leave the Doors un locked
19.  Do not Ignore Mom/Dad
20.  If Mom and Dad are both gone, obey the oldest sibling in the house.
21.  If Mom and Dad dissagree, Obey Dad
22.  If Dad/Mom are talking to a sibling, do not step in.
23.  Do not make unnesesary noises.
24.  Make your bed every-day.
25 Brush your teeth every-day
26.  Do not mess up the house.
27.  Do not Insult your siblings.
28.  Do not steal

30 August 2012

Stop Out-of-School Suspension!

Kids can't learn unless they are in the building with a certificated teacher (tm), so when they misbehave, we should use "restorative" justice and give the kiddies counsellors so they can talk about their feeeeeelings on school time instead of staying home and getting lectured/punished by Mom.

Really!

Joanne Jacobs blogged about this recently.  Of course the teachers' union is noted in the story as wanting more power to punish unruly children during school hours.  Somehow being able to lock kids into closets and paddle them in 21 states isn't enough. Shh.  We're not going to talk about any of that stuff when we discuss school discipline. 

So what should be done?  Hmmm.  The comments were rife with really great ideas from teachers, like giving the children detention and Saturday school.  Like I'm really going to drive my kid to detention on a Saturday morning, and what are you going to do about it.  Um, I wouldn't suggest going there if you want good community relations.

One suggested an entire team - including a psychologist - watch a kid and note all of his errant behaviours.  Then they'll determine whether his problem is "academic, lack of basic skills, home problems, etc."  I wonder what this person would suggest the team do if they think there is a "home problem" going on.  How would you like an entire team to evaluate your home life based on a classroom evaluation?

"Kids love freedom," another wrote. "If you want to punish someone, you must destroy what they love."
 

28 August 2012

News Roundup!

A deaf preschool child can't use sign language for his name in school because it looks like a gun.  His name is Hunter.  Duhhh.  I have a sign for them myself, but I guess they won't allow that in school, either...

**
Obama wants people on the coast to be prepared for Hurricane Isaac.  It's not the time to tempt fate, he warns.

Ok, so when is the proper time to tempt fate? Perhaps the president will issue the following statement next week:

"People of America, now that tropical storm Isaac has passed, scientists have determined that optimal fate-tempting time is NOW."

Yep.  It will be time to plug in all your hairdryers and use 'em while you soak in the tub.  Car surf.  Get a body piercing from some unlicensed dude in the alleyway.  Lick an angry bear's nose.  ALL those things you never wanted to do, time to do 'em.

**
A Louisiana school is marking children's right hands with the mark of the beast when they buy their lunches.  Ok, it isn't.  But some extremely paranoid and fearful parents are afraid that scanning a child's hand as a method of identification is somehow the same as "marking" the hand with the 666 of end times prophecy.

This article actually interviews parents who will pull their children out of school if other people even try to use the scanning machine in the cafeteria. Ha ha ha!

I love Jesus, but His little Christian friends?  Maybe not all of them so very much.  Because they make me look stupid for believing in the same God.  Do I really have to hang out with these people in Heaven?  Fer reals, I would just like a condo with the normal people.  A beachfront one.  We can yell phrases like, "Iris scanner!" at the sunbathers in the morning and then have the beach all to ourselves for the day.






27 August 2012

A Typical Homeschool Day

Welcome to our homeschool!  This is our usual daily schedule.  I have it posted right by my computer so that I'm sure we get a full day's work in and not forget anything important. In Missouri, "Reading" and "Communication Arts" are two different subjects, but I have popped them on my overall schedule as "English" and do what I feel needs doing that day.  Often, "Reading" happens on my nook when we have appointments somewhere and we have to wait.  Emperor is laughing his way through Aesop's Fables presently.  This isn't the exact order in which I do every class, but generally speaking, everything on the list gets done each day.

Good morning!  Emperor is up and working on his chess well before 7 am.  He spends two hours every weekday on this subject in addition to his other classwork.  He usually finishes around 1:30, but has a break for lunch in there somewhere. 

Only Emperor homeschools so during the morning, some of the other children are getting up and ready for their day and leaving for school.  Here's Woodjie asking for "take ME pictures!" because he saw I had the camera out near Emperor.  Woodjie is always so cute.  He's had a few bumps in the road this year, but he loves kindergarten and his super-awesome teacher.
Emperor isn't sure why I take his picture while we're working on Science and English.  English and writing work is the most difficult for Emperor so despite the fact that he is a very big boy,  I have to help him quite a bit.
We finished early today, so we drove to the park to see how the frogs at the local creek were doing.  It seems that Nature thinks it is now autumn.  The creek is nearly dry.  Instead of seeing well over a dozen full-grown frogs and many big bulgy bullfrog tadpoles, we saw one sad half-grown tadpole hiding in the water.  We had brought a towel and old ice cream bucket for catch and release time, but we decided to leave him alone.
Yay!  Haven't been able to get anywhere close to the local Chick-fil-A place since the latest silliness.  Literally lines for about a mile to this place for a good while.  Once when I was driving earlier this month, I saw one fellow pop the sunroof and hoist - I swear - a five foot pole with an American flag through the top of his vehicle.  Well, sorry I couldn't take a picture while I was driving about town, so you'll have to imagine it.  It was quieter today, and on a hot day like this was, a great time to get some ice cream and spend time together.  Want to see how other families do their schoolwork?  Pop by the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop!




24 August 2012

Our Family

After I took this picture, Rose wrote her (long) name all across the top in black marker.  She is very proud of being selected to share about her family with the preschool class next week. 

23 August 2012

All About Emperor

After seeing several physicians over the course of the years, I finally found one that agreed with me that something was wrong with Emperor's legs.  See that lump near the couch seam?  That is evidence of his "fibular abnormality."  I googled it and um, I guess Emperor doesn't have as much of a "fibular abnormality" as other people do, but it's bad enough that he doesn't quiiiiiite walk correctly, or run well.  There is nothing you can do about it, the doctor said, and he will have it forever.  He has sort of a strange walk and I feel badly for him because he will never be a college athlete, win running races and so on.

So when we got home I tried to sit down and talk to Emperor and process his feelings about this news.  He told me that he was very busy with his science, but he can make me feel better some other time. Here he is goofing off for the camera with "lehhhh" sound effect.  He is not too traumatized, I guess.

In other news, Emperor was supposed to make some sort of spaghetti and marshmallow structure and test it against an "earthquake" that you make yourself in science class.  Here is his diagram of what his building ought to look like.

 Even with multiple noodles, they'd either break or sag as you see here.

Why can't our experiments turn out just like in the textbooks?  They just never do.  We also did the experiment of hanging a paper cup from a spaghetti noodle and seeing how many pennies could go into the cup.  It really depends upon how close together you place the chairs that the noodle is balancing upon.  Really.  Put the chairs closer together, and the noodle holds more weight.  Further apart, and the noodle snaps under fewer pennies.  I feel like instructing Emperor to write "it depends on a lot of things" as an answer to every science experiment question.

22 August 2012

Cower Before Your Neighbours.

You'd better.  You'd better be realllllly nice to them and not anger them in any way.  You are at their mercy, you know, if you want to homeschool.

HSLDA recently sent out an email to members to tell them of a distressing situation in which a family was called to the police station immediately to answer for the lack of school enrollment of their children. HSLDA further warns member families that it's somehow their job to educate everyone within their circle of influence about homeschooling (read: let yourself get grilled and make sure you look good and pass their test!).

Ok, so the mom gets the call.  She freaks out.  On her way to the police station, she speed dials the legal beagles and they settle it.

"The district said the contact with the family was initiated because of a complaint from a neighbor, and that they have closed the matter," J. Michael Smith writes for HSLDA. "It’s unfortunate that homeschoolers are at the mercy of their neighbors. It’s important to establish good friendships with neighbors to educate them about the benefits of homeschooling."

As for me, I feel pretty secure about my right to homeschool.  I have my records up to date within about a week.  I wouldn't intentionally anger my neighbours just because I have to live near them, but if they don't like it?  Too stinkin' bad. 

Easy for me to say, as I live in an area where my rights are pretty secure.  I can afford to be cranky with concern trolls.

21 August 2012

Punished for Not Liking Jayhawks

Oh seriously.  A kindergartener refuses to colour a stupid Jayhawk picture, and she gets into trouble.  WHO CARES if she doesn't colour the picture?  Give the kid a blank piece of paper and have her doodle a sunflower if you're doing Kansas Pride exercises. 

Kindergarten.  We're going to dig our heels in with kids in kindergarten, pitch a fit and punish kids who don't want to do pointless assignments, and then get all surprised when they lose all respect for their teachers by third grade.

Hey.  I get that we need to listen to our teachers and we're not going to like every assignment.  But sure seems this little girl had some strong feelings about it.  They couldn't let her flip the paper over and draw something else?  Every kid has to love the Jayhawks?  I bend a little on things when I see my child flipping out about stuff, if I think he is not doing so to be manipulative.  And I expect my children to defer a bit when they see that something is very important to me.

But I think what bothered me most about the story was the social commentary I got from some "friends" from my old church who think that it would be a good idea to give that little girl the belt for her sassiness.  Also?  Soap in the mouth.  Yeah, that'll teach her.

I am so, so glad I left church in general that I can't tell you how much I regret not doing it sooner.  I'm sure there is a church out there that is not filled with such utter stupidity but frankly I'm not in the mood to even look for it right now... maybe later... there are some things I miss about going but dealing with stupid people is not one of them.

I swear I'm just going to hide everyone's statuses so I don't have to read anything from anyone any more.  I will have 643 friends and only read updates from like, two of them. 

Anyway.  I really think your average five-year-old simply hasn't learnt to say "no" politely yet. The comments in the original blog post about the incident are pretty interesting as well.


Akin, Quit Now...

I'm in Todd Akin's district and I sure hope he quits by 5 pm tonight.  At this point, it's selfish of him to even continue running.  I'm seeing some of the mega-big banners around town even still.  People do still support him here. I suppose there are a great many people who would still vote for him.  I'd have to consider it myself, being as how he's running against the Most Evil Claire McCaskill.  She'd be handing out condoms and teaching sex-ed to three-year-olds if she could have her say in it.  Of course this chick is going to say that she wants the democratic process to move forward as-is so she can have Akin as an opponent.  Sure, why not...

She actually might lose, though.  That's the thing.  Patrick and I were talking of it.  What would our district in Missouri appear like to outsiders if Todd Akin won?

The Republican Party is run by a bunch of nitwits here.  Remember a couple years back when that Norris fellow said that he had a degree from William Jewell College and all this other stuff, and he was found to be a total liar?  Party did nothing... and the guy was freaking ELECTED. 

Yes, I voted Democrat in that election.  It sure seems that the conservative vote is taken for granted.  The party can run some Mormon dude for President and I still get notes from the American Family Association about how I reallllllly need to vote for him.  A vote for him is a vote for "family values." 

Good grief.  I might just stay home.  I'm telling you, I have absolutely no clue what to think of all these crazy people who think I should vote for 'em.

20 August 2012

Classroom Rules

At the beginning of each school year, you'll find them posted in your child's class if he goes to school.  I have to say the classroom "rules" are much more child-friendly than they were in the past.  In the past?  You just had better obey the teacher at all times and be a good kid.  "Good kid" is undefined.

Now, the rules are at least nominally much kinder.  Sometimes teachers have the children suggest rules for the class.  Which is a joke but it does help give the appearance of "buy-in."  It would be fun if an entire class demanded that they got to eat their own lunches on the playground each day and that school now ends at 1 pm.  Or if they were smart enough to declare that they did not want ANY rules, thankyouverymuch.  I'd be just the sort of kid who would ask for this stuff and find no one would back me up.  :/

Woodjie goes to a school with a shark mascot.  So everyone's classroom rules are already laid out.  Sharks are Safe and so on down the acronym.  Every morning when Woodjie gets up he asks, "I are being a (schoolname) shark?"  Yes!  You are going to school today.  He has a really awesome teacher and I'm enjoying his going and learning.  (It's next year I worry about when all those supports are gone.)

Does your school/class have a list of "rules?"  And if you're a homeschooler, do you even bother with them?   I'm sure I have a bunch of rules, but they're not written down.  Emperor is in a very good habit of going to do his schoolwork right away every weekday morning.

16 August 2012

Homeschooling is Not the Devil

... that public schools used to think it is.  A recent Education Week article posits that it may do a better job than Jesus Christ Himself.  Jesus, by the way, teaches in public school:

"The question is, can a reasonably competent person do a better job one on one—in a loving relationship where you own that child’s time—than someone who walks on water but comes into a room full of 30 kids? ... It would seem to me the evidence would suggest this is a reasonably positive effect on kids.”

Can you believe this is a pro-public school type of publication implying Jesus couldn't do as well as we could?  I guess I'll just let them go ahead and think that.

15 August 2012

Product Recall: Bumbo Baby Seats

Before, the seats were recalled because there wasn't a warning label on the seat to prevent stupid parents from putting the chair on high countertops and wondering why the children fell.  Now, the seats have to be recalled because parents are too stupid to realize when their children are too thin for the chair and can fall out.

Really.

We've used our Bumbo and were happy with it.  In fact, all our children before the Bumbo couldn't sit up no matter what you did until the age of about 10 months.  With the Bumbo, you can pretend they have this skill. 


This was my thinnest child at 6 months.
As you might surmise from the picture of Woodjie Pumpkin, our children start out extremely fat.  The Bumbo was sooo perfect for Woodjie.  Only problem was, when you'd try to pick him up, the Bumbo would be stuck.  Woodjie and Rose actually stretched the Bumbo out a bit.  If they were thin and there was too much space in the chair, I wouldn't use it!

All children are different.  I wish all parents had some common sense, though...

14 August 2012

Next: The Little Hitler Clothing Line

Because why not, right?  It's already really cute and funny when someone makes Hitler wine.  Big collector item.  Best part: no pesky people from the estate suing the winemaker for a share of the profits.  You know they wouldn't dare do this with Elvis; the lawyers would swarm before the ink was dry on the label.

Hitler wine is part of a series on the great dictators. You can collect them all!

"Hitler wine should taste like ashes," one commenter noted. "Che wine should taste like a credit card, since he's become an ironic merchandising icon among the overprivileged young."

Well, there you have it.

No Irish.

The signs used to say "No Irish."  Then they said, "No blacks."  Now they say, "No unemployed."

This is interesting.  It's not illegal to discriminate against the unemployed.  Patrick cannot even find a minimum wage job and yes, he's trying very hard.  I'd sure like him to get a haircut and wear some decent clothes to help his chances, but yes, he's trying.

He's never had a job before, so it's going to be hard for him to get a job.  Makes lots of sense. 

This economy is hitting young men especially hard.  I don't think Patrick even figures into our nation's unemployment statistics as one had to have had a job and then lost it to be unemployed, right?  :/

12 August 2012

Your Humble Home

Hey, it's not much, but it's where you live.  Where you go to sleep, what you work hard for.  You're raising your children in this little place and while the news reports might feature your neighbourhood on occasion, it's your home.

How would you like your child's teacher to roll past your place on a bus tour so that she could cluck about the deplorable conditions?  And be "inspired" by local police officers yammering on about what happened on this or that street corner nearby?  Or hear a narrative about what some guy on your street is likely up to today?  What if your son were on the street corner minding his own business, but the cops just went ahead and made up a story about him dealing drugs to entertain the teachers? 

I'd be furious if I saw a bus like that pass by!  True, the schools have my address and teachers can figure out where I live easily enough with mapquest.  But a guided bus tour complete with microphoned police officer guides?  Despicable.  And yet, that is the sort of "cluck-cluck those poor people" attitude families in Kansas City School District are facing.

Here's the article, complete with a picture of teachers gawking out the windows at the slums and commentary from cops and administrators about the yuckiness of the neighbourhood and the parents of the children they are serving.  I just can't believe this.

Do you know what this article reminded me of?  Those trolley tours you get at the zoo.

09 August 2012

Bye-Bye, Tree.

My computer just died.  Won't even power up.  All my computer-saved tree-ly good pictures of my fave tree are gone.  Ah, well, here's a random shot of it through my kitchen window.  It will have to do.  The tree started becoming hollow up under, bark began to fall off and branches were dying.  The whole tree was in the dying process for a while, but I'm sure the hot, drought-y weather did it no favours, either.  So it was time to go before it fell and did some major damage.

Not the sort of thing you just do yourself, though.  The tree is absolutely immense.  I could squat down and take a picture straight up even from this angle, and the tree will still be up up up there.  We had to hire the professionals at Prentice and Bush to come out and do the job.  Jason climbs up the tree like a spider with nothing but a rope and a pair of spiky cleats.  He takes a chainsaw and a drink along, but it's almost like watching Avatar to see him scurrying about so high up.

A view from my driveway.  The tree branches are halfway down in this picture.  This picture does not give the size of my tree justice.  The websites I've encountered say "mature" pin oak trees are 70 feet tall, and the ones I have left on the side of my house are about that, but this one was a bit taller and closer to 90 feet. (I am guessing that 70 feet is an average and not a world record.)   Oddly only the trees on the west side of my house remain.  Others got sick or were dying and had to be removed over the years.  They would probably have been planted in 1964 when the house was built.

The bad thing about having to have this work done is now I have an in-your-face view of 1960's power wires, complete with squirrel nest and some glass-looking doodads.  Sometimes the squirrels electrocute themselves to death because they keep running about on the wires, but that doesn't stop the stupid things from building the same old nests year after year.  Kind of like the let's build a condo on the Florida coast mentality.  Whenever they do this, we lose power for a while.

Speaking of losing power, most of our town was in total darkness overnight because of a very large and sudden thunderstorm.  The silence during the outage was just amazing.  You never realize how much electrical humming and other noise is about you until it is hushed.  Our area was one of the very last to be up and running power-wise, so sleepy children had to find ways to light their way in the morning and stay safe.  Jason had been telling me when he bid our job that really, things were slow, they could sure use the work, etc.  I'm so glad the tree came down just before the big storm hit.  Right now, all the local tree service people are going to be VERY busy for a while.  Just saw six tree trucks going up and down our street doing work today.  Meanwhile, my newly-trimmed trees have just been rained upon so it's perfect timing.



08 August 2012

Disability Discrimination: Another Denied a Transplant

--A guest post by KWombles.

Another disabled person denied a transplant because of his disability. Another petition in hopes of changing the hospital's decision (go sign it, please).

After the last time, with Mia Rivera (click on her name to read the good news that her mother will get to give Mia a kidney), the disability community came out in full force to support the Rivera family, and it's happening again, thankfully, with blogger after blogger writing about Paul Corby's story.

Will this outpouring of outrage make the same kind of difference this time? We can hope. But one thing's certain, if we don't, as a community, come out strongly and forcefully for families going through this kind of discrimination, it will never end, never stop, and it will be someone we know and love.

Yes, resources are often deemed "scarce" and the costs of transplantation are high, but people have intrinsic value, and autism and other related disorders SHOULD NEVER BE the determining factor as to whether a person gets on the transplant list.

For other bloggers covering this, please see the feeds on the autism blogs directory.

06 August 2012

Back to School...

Elfie has a long list of stuff he needs, including Kleenex for the teachers.  I think this is now standard for all children:  bring your teacher Kleenex, hand sanitizer, and Expo brand dry-erase markers.  Then the gods of learning will smile upon you.  A few years from now, I will be packing a twelve-pack of toilet paper and a liquid soap dispenser in with the school supply goodie bags the teachers get each year.  Seriously.  Is anyone else old enough to remember being given essay notebooks and pencils in school? 

I spent more on G's stupid ID fees and "senior fees" and "elective class fees" and the like than I did on the entire trip half of our family took to Kansas for three days last month.  Yep.  One semester's worth of basics.  I didn't even get any senior photos ($35 for two 3x5's?  No.).  And I didn't pay for him to play sports, or park a car, or get an "activity pass" to see the football games my taxes are paying for already.  That would have run me... a lot more. 

So anyway.  Fees.  They're expensive.  Though I have to say that school-supply wise once you pay the high school level fees, it's good.  I just threw about $5 worth of notebooks and pencils into G's backpack.  That means I am done school shopping for him (yay).

Woodjie's class is really special and perfect and neat, but my.  I must buy five different coloured plastic binders, and they must have brads and pockets.  I can do this, you know, and it's not a big deal to spend 50-cents each on a list of stuff along these lines... but I tell you, I had to run to about three different stores.

And Evil-Mart is crazy!  We had trouble even getting in the door.  You take two steps, bump into someone, scoot over two more steps, somebody wants to get by, and so on.  Interestingly, there were no crowds or lines near the pet food section or the dairy department.  Or the books.  Really.  No one wants books during back-to-school sales.  You make of that what you will.  :/

02 August 2012

Are We in a Depression?

"Nearly one out of seven Americans receives food stamps, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's more than 44 million people. If they all stood in a line and someone photographed them using black-and-white film, they easily could be mistaken for people from the 1930s. Instead, they go to a grocery store and spend their credits like money. There isn't even a social stigma to make them stand out as any more glum or destitute than anybody else."  Article.

I'm not sure.  I think we may well be in a depression, but it's affecting our young workers more than anyone else.  I've heard tale after tale of people with master's degrees flipping burgers or worse, they can't even find a job.  Patrick cannot even find a minimum wage job, and he's been filling out two applications a day. 

Do you know how bad it is out there for our young men and women?  Panda Express has "calling hours" for its minimum wage jobs.  You know, like casting calls?  Where everyone and their dog lines up, gives a good song and dance, and hears, "Don't call us; we'll call you."  That.

The drought has caused our giant tree in the back yard to begin the dying process.  Its bark is peeling back, and it's being hollowed from the inside out by ants and termites.  Some of the branches no longer have green leaves.  It needs to be cut down.  It's over a power line and being 90 feet tall or so, is going to take some specialized work. 

It's the same all over the neighbourhood; I see plenty of trees that plain old look hazardous.  But the tree man said our business is a godsend to him.  No one is calling to get this work done, even though they really obviously need it done.  That's concerning, that people won't spend the money they really need to to keep their own homes safe.

Even our local plumber says you know, you'd be surprised how people put off calling him.  They'll wait until two or three of their toilets are out of commission, or until a problem becomes too big to be ignored.

What's your experience?  Are people hesitant to spend any money at all where you live?  Are they reluctant to hire new workers?

Bringing Garbage Home

Some people up the street were throwing this table away. It was in pretty bad shape and one of the legs was off. I've glued the leg back...