Annette has a well thought out post at her National Charter School Watch Blog that looks at the charter school at home, homeschooling issue.

She writes:

At NCSW, the goal isn’t unity between two groups of parents to strengthen educational choice. The goal is understanding what polarizes us with our focus on our two different educational options. We want to know answers to questions such as:

• Is homeschooling being negatively impacted by public school at home programs?
• How might homeschool parents and home-based public school parents work together in ways that are beneficial to both of the two educational options?
• Why it is that online homeschool discussions have the tendency to deteriorate when the topic of public school at home arises? What can we do to prevent this from happening?
• Are the two educational options able to comfortably co-exist, side by side?
• What things should we understand are not going to change among the two groups
• How might our differing perspectives be a stumbling block for communication?

Visit here to read the rest of this interesting blog post.

I spoke with Deborah and Susan about their upcoming Central Illinois Homeschool Conference. You can listen to it here.

It was great to hear about the many workshops they have planned and I even learned that one of the speakers is a 14 year old homeschooler. Here is her bio from the site:

Katherine Boehle, 14, has been homeschooled since she was seven. In her blog, Science on the Farm, she combines her loves of writing and photography with her interest in science. Her animal photography has been featured in Ruminations Magazine and in the 2005 calendar of the Nigerian Dwarf Goat Association.

The other featured speakers are Margaret Boehle, Mike Boehle, Elizabeth Cameron, Laura Flynn Endres, Lynn B. Hocraffer, Rebecca Jaxon, Deborah Niemann-Boehle, Dr. Sally E. Parry, Vada Repta, Andrea Rice
Susan Ryan and Dr. Maria Schmeekle.

After we learned about the conference, Valerie Bonham Moon visited with us as well. You can listen to the podcast here:

 

 Central Illinois Conference [29:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Educating your child yourself: What it takes to be a homeschool parent produced by the View from the Bay featured Debbie Schwarzer and her sons in a piece about homeschooling on a local afternoon show on May 1st. The View from the Bay can be accessed here. (Their feature can be clicked on without watching the entire show.)

Kudos to Debbie, her boys and the View from the Bay for producing a great feature!

Posted by Mary Nix

In To Push or Not to Push, Kristin Podemski explains how sometimes an unschool mom needs to know when to push and when to not push. Here is an excerpt:

Unschooling can be hard on me, though. Oh, I certainly love our lives: learning and exploring the world together. However, I was traditionally schooled straight through law school, and I’m anal-retentive to boot– a bad combination for an unschooling parent. The difficulty is knowing when to push, insist or leave the decisions entirely up to the children. Die-hard unschoolers and critics of unschooling claim an unschooling parent never insists nor pushes but lets the child make every decision. Since I’ve pushed and insisted as well as abdicated my parent authority, I belong a bit to the right of die-hard unschoolers on the homeschool continuum but still consider myself an unschooler.

I enjoyed reading this article and think others will also.  This is not one HEM’s online “free” articles, but is only accessible in the printed version. If you don’t want to miss these great resources, you can purchase this copy here (link is on the bottom left) or you can subscribe to the magazine here.

Join me live this Thursday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time for a teleconference call with HEM Guest Editor, Susan Ryan and Deborah Niemann Boehle host of the May 17th Central Illinois Conference . We will be talking about the upcomiing conference and homeschooling in general.

This teleconference is free, but IF you do not have unlimited long distance, you will have to pay your long distance provider if it is a long distance call for you.

If you want to participate, you can dial in at any time. We will be conducting the interview first and then will open it up for questions or comments.

To participate, call the Dial-in Number: (712) 432-1680
Then, add the Participant Access Code: 430304# (be sure to hit the puond sign)

Here are the Participant Feature Keys on your touch tone phone:
*3 Exit - exit the call
*4 Instructions - conference instructions
*6 Mute/Unmute - caller controlled muting

We hope to hear from you, but if not, we will be sharing this conference as a podcast as well HEM Support & Networking - http://www.homeedmag.com/blogs/groupnews/

Mary Nix

It’s a Big World by Karen Kirkwood, is featured in the March-April Home Education Magazine. Karen writes:

“Last March, I visited my niece, who homeschools her three children. The kids were just finishing their workbook exercises. My niece commented that the weather was too nice to stay inside, so they all would be relieved when the school year was over.

Later, I thought about how to homeschool outside and enjoy the weather, but still feel like you have accomplished some academic goals. My college-age daughter and I brainstormed the idea and within 20 minutes, came up with plenty of ideas to take academics outside.”

Karen goes on to share seventeen wonderful activities and includes a list of twelve books that will help.

If you don’t want to miss these great resources, you can purchase this copy here (link is on the bottom left) or you can subscribe to the magazine here.

Posted by Mary Nix

In her article, Paying Attention, that was featured in the March-April 2008 issue of HEM, Lorraine Thomas writes:,

On a gentle day that begs us to be outdoors, my 12-year-old son and I abandon our books and head to the nature park. Not many cars fill the parking spaces on this weekday morning, and we walk briskly into the trees, feeling like we are on a new adventure though we have been here many times before. once inside the forest we slow down to listen to the birdcalls and the creak of the Pacific tree frogs. The ever presnt roar of cars and planes is muted here, and it feels as thought we’ve entered a fressh and sacred place where we feel both at home and new tot he rhythms of the forest.

Ms. Thomas continues on with this wonderful tale, telling us how she and her son did pay attention as their adventure continued. Her article reminded me of the many different articles I’ve read and families that I’ve had the joy of learning about over the years in Home Education Magazine.

This is not one HEM’s online “free” articles, but is only accessible in the printed version. If you don’t want to miss these great resources, you can purchase this copy here (link is on the bottom left) or you can subscribe to the magazine here.