Homeschool mom and author Mary Potter Kenyon wrote an enthusiastic review of a history book for kids, The Smart Aleck’s Guide to American History by Adam Selzer, and her excitement is contagious:
“This book, this children’s book, has me enraptured. It is this irreverent style of writing that I have searched high and low for that has me picking up the book over and over the past few days. And I am learning! I am learning about historical facts and figures (figures being people, in this case) that I never knew, or if I did, I had long forgotten about. And I care! That I actually care is amazing to me. Could it be that for all these years I was just reading the wrong books?”
Tags: Adam Selzer, curricula, curriculum, homeschool resources, homeschooling, homeschooling and history, homeschooling families, homeschooling resources, Mary Potter Kenyon, reading, The Smart Aleck’s Guide to American History, unschooling
Carol Topp, CPA is offering an on-line workshop on Paying Workers in a Homeschool Organization on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 4 pm EST/3 pm CST/2 pm MT/1 pm PST
Topics:
* Volunteers. Can you pay a volunteer? How to reward volunteers.
* Independent Contractors. What are they? What IRS forms need to be
filed?
* Employees? How are they different from Independent Contractors?
What forms does the IRS require?
There is no cost for the workshop but Carol does ask those interested to register so she can send call in information, a handout and reminders.
Tags: Carol Topp, Homeschool CPA, homeschool organizations, homeschool volunteers, homeschooling and money
The Jan-Feb, 2010 issue of HEM features an interview with Maria Berkestam, whose family homeschools while exploring the globe. Articles cover selecting curriculum, a college student reflecting on homeschooling, homeschooling’s “good days and bad days,” and experiences with a theatre production for homeschoolers. Also: Helping new homeschooling parents trust their decision, and a homeschool mother’s encounter with her state’s written standards of education.
Columns topics: Questions and answers about Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and grammar, saving the U. S. Postal Service, research on families, film clubs as a learning resource, what kids like – and don’t like – to eat, and Linda Dobson asking, “Has the creation of consumers in institutionalized schools led to today’s addictive pursuit of instant gratification?”
Check out the all-new Home Education Magazine – full color glossy throughout – and check out our online subscription specials, too!
Tags: HEM subscription, Home Education Magazine, subscribing to Home Education Magazine, subscription specials
“As homeschoolers we need to find ways to reach out to teachers and parents who don’t want to see childrens’ 12 years of compulsory schooling reduced to skills training for big business. Nurturing the human capacity to learn through love and intrinsic motivation is as important to life — to me, more important — as ‘learning for earning.’ Art, religion, music, science, math, literature, and so on have made significant strides throughout human history because of our intrinsic motivations for learning, not in spite of it! Shutting off all the avenues to these subjects and reducing them to one toll road is the blight of educational hubris. By ‘educational hubris’ I mean as Ivan Illich defined it in Deschooling Society in 1972 (to paraphrase): ‘doing what God himself cannot do: namely, manipulate others for their own salvation.’”
From An Interview with Patrick Farenga, by Helen Hegener for Home Education Magazine, July/August, 1997
Tags: Deschooling Society, Helen Hegener, home education, Home Education Magazine, homeschooling, homeschooling and public school, homeschooling families, Ivan Illich, Patrick Farenga, reasons to homeschool





“A new acquaintance, this one a mother with grown children, learned that we had homeschooled our kids. Her most burning concern: what about socialization?
Rethinking Everything Magazine is a new magazine with an ad-free, page-turning, online format and deeply personal stories that push the envelopes of societal norms. Co-publishers Barb Lundgren and Sarah Parent explain: “What we’ve created is an inspirational, international, quarterly compilation of true stories from real people who have stepped far outside society’s normative boxes and found freedom-to-be and deeply relevant, empowered transformation.”



