Homeschooling With Kindle Fire

What I forgot to add is that the Kindle comes already rigged up with your Amazon account on it. Learn the parental controls first thing! I found my Kindle was set up according to my computer preferences, which means "one-click" ordering. Eeep! So I have mine set up so that I have to type my password in to buy anything (even buying "free" things requires a password). That makes me more confident in allowing the younger children to be over an arm's length away while they're watching Moby and Annie during school time. Hopefully the video is helpful.

The Weather Song

I have about 50 half-sung songs still on my camera!  I finally had to go ahead and ruin the first part of the movie by shouting, "Now!" at her.  Forget the waving cues; she'd wave back.  Ha!  But Rose is very pleased and proud to be able to present this song to you today.  She and her little preschool friends sing it before they peek outside the front door to see what the weather is like that day.  I hope you enjoy it as much as she enjoyed being the star today.

Homeschool House Tour!

Do you know how long it took me to get everyone reasonably quiet, shoot 5 minutes' worth of video, and upload it to youtube?  A fair while, I'll tell you that!  I hope you enjoy it.  I wasn't as brave as Blondee, posting a vlog about myself, but this is more interesting anyway.

Tornadoes.

In the summer, it's tornado season. A friend of mine had no idea about tornado sirens! I thought everyone had those, but maybe not. So I'm posting some pics of our closest one and chatting a little bit about our "season" so far.

When the siren goes off, it means to get into your basement or best cover right now. It could be the result of a county-wide warning, or it could be specific to where you are. Just get into the basement and tune in to your radio from there to see what's up.

 The siren goes off every Wednesday at the same time. Eeeven though it was a Wednesday yesterday, I knew it was a for real siren. It was turned super loud as if to tell everyone that people, this is not a drill. And it went on for I'm thinking an hour and a half or so.

Emperor was already freaked out about Joplin. He understands. He is very, very afraid. I distracted him by making him match my huuuuuge collection of single socks. I mean, why not. I told him I would give him a nickel for every pair he folded together. I'm tremendously bad about matching socks with this size of a family. PLUS, there is the fact that G has until recently only worn one sock at a time, being in a cast/boot and all. (BTW, he is still in a brace. So... not done yet.)

Emperor was very nervous and upset but the job helped a bit. When he was done it was eeeeerie quiet, odd whistly outside and he sat with me. Little tears in his eyes.

"Momma, if I live, you owe me 70 cents," he whispered as he got in my arms. I held him close and even Woodjie and Rose sat and were suddenly still next to me for a minute. They have no clue, but they were still a bit. I don't know what could have caused it because usually they don't stop and crouch like that even when there is shouting and upset in the house. They remained down a good ten minutes. Was it a tornado nearby? I still don't know.

After a long time, it didn't sound eerie or even angry outside any more and the sirens stopped. Emperor had a hard time being coaxed out of the basement. Poor guy.

There is some photographic evidence on a major news channel of a funnel cloud about a half a mile from our house yesterday. One neighbour of mine (who is not given to hysterical fits of exaggeration) reports that the tornado passed OVER our houses. Why she went outdoors to look, I could not in a million years tell you.

If you are interested,  here is a YouTube video of a tornado siren in action. Promise it is louder in real life.

The Internet STAR.

Well. Not long ago, he was just a friend of my older children, discussing graphically how he'd like to torture and kill small animals. My children were somehow not all that available to play with him after that. We just get so busy! I know, I should have just out and told his mom the real reason but there you go.

But now this child has grown up and become an internet STAR with actual fans and admirers. Really. He even has his own YouTube channel and gets PAID when he posts dumb crap. This kid posts whatever he wants. And he has THOUSANDS of people following... some crazy number like 265,000 views. He's there to answer YOUR questions. You know, questions like, "Can you fold your **** when you get a boner?" The answer is no, in case you were wondering.

Just as a side note, yep, I do feel a twinge of jealousy that the ****-folding guy has more viewers than my homeschool blog ever could. I do try to make my blog interesting but apparently it is not interesting *enough.* Really what SHOULD be happening is that this fellow should have about six people watching and the comments below his videos should read something like, "How puerile," or, "The boy needs a haircut."

But why am I writing about this star?

Recently I've been tryyying to reason with some local kids to PLEASE not post stupid crap online... it only leads to trouble... and then I see that dudes like this make it look like it's all glamourous to be disgusting.

Siiigh. I know at least one child of someone I know has made unfortunate youtube upload choices. Like most parents, I did occasional checks on the computer history - the things my child was watching? - and - whoaa. Stuff that's way out of line. STUFF THAT HE MADE.


Anyway, I know that those of you who have smaller children and are reading this are thinking, "NO WAY I would let my children post disgusting things! And they would never look up anything I didn't pre-approve except a few tutorials about how to pray properly. *I* am teaching my children to walk in the ways of the LORD and we read the Bible together and attend Sunday school and blah blah blah..."

Well, I would never wish that sort of trouble in your household, but we did all that and more until very recently. Children will - they WILL - grow up and choose what they will. Sometimes those choices are doggone dopey.


And if you have smaller children, you (thankfully for you) do not need (yet) to realize that our children grow to be more savvy - and start to leave the house more often! - as they age. It's not something I'm happy about, but it's just a given fact that my children (and yours, now or someday) could easily set up a gmail account on a friend's computer. From there, they could have access to youtube, facebook, and about everything else you can imagine. All it takes is an hour away from parents and a willing friend.

I'm not going to go into detail. I am simply stating that it's far easier to set these things up without parental contact/awareness than one might think. I check my computer history, and um, some other stuff. But there are ways around that. I'm sure most teens know what they are.


I guess I wonder whyyyy certain teens can't wait until they are adults and can have real "freedom of speech." And I suppose this star's internet videos are interesting to the teen set, but I'm having trouble understanding why they beat out classics like the video results you'd get from searches like "bad renters" or "hornet nest."

Really. Search that stuff on youtube and you will be watching in horror for hours. :)

Snug Blanket of Homeschooling? Damn Straight.

This superintendent is FED UP with bad treatment and decreased funding for public education. He IS, however, content with leaving paddling on the books in his district. You won't see a demonstration against that! I'm sure the teachers realllly care, though. They've lobbied against corporal punishment in the schools soooo consistently. I mean, the NEA website is just riddled with calls to activism against -

What? It isn't? Ohh, my. How surprising. Just look at me jumping out of my seat with amazement. (whoo.) I'm so amazed. Here I thought so many of the teachers were concerned about homeschoolers because they, you know, might be abused at home. Locked in a closet or something. You know... like my son was at school. That's the reason we started homeschooling. Ohh the irony.

Parents like me enjoy wrapping our children in the "snug blanket of homeschooling." Watch the video. He said it. I imagine that he means we overcoddle our children and protect them from the normal, everyday things like the homelessness, poverty and drug addiction that HE is dealing with in the public school. If I've overcoddled my children, I figure the snug blanket will be removed soon enough. The guy's speaking from TEXAS, though. Nobody wants a hot, fluffy blanket in 90-degree weather! What kind of analogy is that?

Not to mention the insults this superintendent throws at his own schoolchildren. He has the gall to get up in front of God and everybody and say right off the bat that public school students are NEVER really going to be as shiny and new or "scrubbed clean" like privately-schooled kids or homeschoolers. Yeah. I'd be danged insulted if I had a child in this guy's district. My kids are clean enough and I resent the implication that just because I'm lower class, that I need to learn what this "soap" thing is. Hey. My kids' clothes are stained and threadbare because they are old and we can't afford new ones every week. But they are *clean.* Maybe I spent my money BUYING BOOKS for my kids like the private school kids he's busy deriding.

But... you have to admit, it IS nice of him to be a fighter and march into that school building every day, all bleeding and bruised (did you hear that insane talk?? He really said that!) **sniff** but those valiant teachers... they're not gonna give up on the kids. You can cut this fella's pay back to minimum wage and he'd still be there fighting. Oh, yeahhh. Know why? Either the benefits are dang good, or he's lying as some sort of stage gimmick for emotional effect during his speech. I'm thinking lying, but his benefits are still probably better than mine. See, but I don't feel his money needs to be redistributed to my pocket "for the kids," though. That's the difference between us.

Get Effervescent With It.

I know parent-teacher conferences aren't until March, but it can't hurt to start thinking about them a little early.

OUTRAGEOUS!

Patrick recently discovered the old Grover "waiter" episodes on YouTube, so I started watching them as well.  Then I found this OUTRAGEOUS video and thought I'd share it with you.

Death Metal Rooster

I know most everyone's on vacation, so I thought I'd provide some farm-y entertainment for the rest of us who are too poor to leave home for anywhere interesting. I'm pretty sure there's a way you could download this from YouTube onto your MP3 player or Nanoprobe (tm) attachment so that you can listen to it during those times when you need a little relaxing musical refreshment.

The Harvest Mite Life Cycle

Emperor reacts badly to the bite of the "chigger," or harvest mite. Perhaps you've seen them. They are very small little red dots, almost microscopic. A trip to the doctor to find out why he was itching so badly was the inspiration for this little production, written by Emperor. Elf narrated and did most of the artwork.

Movie In Production

Be looking for a video in the next couple of days from our homeschool gang. Scripts are being written, and a few small paper props have been constructed. It's an historical fiction work, based on a true story. But we're counting it toward our science hours. Stay tuned.