Home School Fragments (and a Puppyism)

Half Past Kissing Time presents Friday Fragments.  Today I will share some Home School info that might not otherwise make it into it's own post.

SB 136 footnote.

Last year a state senator from Illinois made a name for himself in the homeschooling community by proposing that all home schools and private schools would need to be registered on the state level.  The proposed bill showed no understanding of Illinois  state law.  One reason for this is that Home schools in Illinois are considered private schools.  That means that the wording of the bill was redundant because  merely requesting that all private schools register would require home educators to do the same.  Alas private schools were never really the target of the bill and the wording was quickly changed to refer only to home schools.

The senator Ed Maloney introduced the bill and there was an instant reaction of the negative kind.  Home Educators after flooding their representatives with phone calls,  stopped what they were doing and headed to Springfield in the thousands to discuss the bill.  Ed Maloney was never able to give sufficient proof that homeschoolers were "falling under the cracks" and the bill was tabled without ever being voted on.

I wrote several pieces on the matter here and have become very interested in the career of senator Maloney.  He has decided not to seek reelection.  I did some research and found that one of the candidates running to replace him states that she is a  strong supporter of homeschooling at her campaign website.  Thanks again Mr. Maloney for bringing the people of your district a potential advocate to the institution you sought to alter.

Speaking of Frivolous Laws

One of the main reasons I opposed SB 136 besides the total lack of need to "fix" something not broken was the additional cost to taxpayers in doing so.  This is one of the reasons why I am opposed to SB 3259 which is a bill being considered to raise the compulsory school age in Illinois from 17 to 18.  The law is sponsored by Kimberly Lightford and co-sponsored by 6 other senators from her party.  Lightford like Maloney and 4 of the 6 co-sponsors received significant campaign funding from teachers unions.  I mention this because teachers and their unions are the direct beneficiaries of this law as more teachers will need to be hired if the age is increased. 

I am opposed to the bill for 5 reasons.

1. The proposed law will not be able to do what it says it will as there is no proven correlation between dropout rates and compulsory age.

2. It should be the job of parents and not the government to decide when their children should end their schooling.

3. By my reading it seemss the law would require home educators of 18 year olds to register with the state; and I think we all know how I feel about that.

4.  While the law would benefit teacher and unions and not neccesarily the students it purport to help (see objection 1) it would increase the tax burden of parent affected by the law.


5. It is a law that was conceived by lawmakers who didn't even consult with school superintendents to see if a law was needed.  There was also similar lack of reasoning for Sb136.  It has been told that Senator Maloney conceived SB136 after learning of a homeschooling relative while at a Holiday party.  Our tax dollars are certainly at work.

Mount Rushmore

I am teaching 2 classes about the Mount Rushmore Presidents at our home school co-op.  If you wanted to teach about one object in American History that encompasses more time than Mount Rushmore you might be hard pressed to do so.

The history of Mount Rushmore and the presidents thereof, goes back to the colonial period prior to the French American war and goes though to Depression Era works projects.  This has been a very enjoyable process for me and hopefully my students as well.

Non Home School Related Puppyism

Puppy sometimes pretends she's a wolf named Wolfina.  Just like when she used to play with pretend puppies on the bed she now brings pretend wolves everywhere she goes. 

On Wednesday we were visiting my Dad who is recovering nicely from a very successful prostate cancer surgery.  On the way home Puppy was sitting in the back seat and we had this conversation:

Puppy/Wolfina: Dad I left one of my wolves at Grandpa's house. 
Me: One of your Pretend wolves.
P/W: That's okay we don't have to get it.  He likes it there.

The funniest thing about the exchange was the was that Puppy said her last line as if I had fully intended to turn around and get the missing wolf.  When actually at about the same time she asked we had just passed a gas station selling it's wares at $4.52.9 a gallon.  (I had only paid $4.39.9, so that's a relief.

Well that's that for Fragments for this week and probably for a while.  I am participating in Blogging A to Z starting Sunday and if I think of a fragment idea, I will probably figure out what letter it starts with and share it on it's given day.

For more fragments click here.

Spring Break So Far

Not all homeschoolers take a Spring Break.  But since Amy is employed by a local  school district and gets the week off, we take the week off. 

We are not going away anywhere this week.  Here is what we have been doing. 

Our co-op met on Monday, so Amy went in to work. Only a handful of people were there, but it is one less day that she has to work once school is out of session.  We had a major tire blowout as we were travelling from co-op to dental appointments.  Not 5 minutes after we pulled over on the side of the road, a man who works at the same tire company we bought our last tires pulled up behind us and assisted me in putting on the spare.  A family from our co-op noticed us on the side of the road, dropped most of their kids at home came back and drove Amy and the kids to their dental appointments while I got the tire changed.

We have been watching movies this week as part of our break.  We watched Hugo and it is certainly worth all the hype.  I found it very enjoyable.  (Not everyone in the family enjoyed it.)

My father had a surgery to remove his prostate last Tuesday, as it was cancerous.  He is now cancer free and after being releases from the hospital last Friday on his birthday he is getting back to normal life.  Today we visited him and my Mom and he had fixed an old computer and gave it to Spider Droid.

Tomorrow my brother is coming over and he, SD and myself are going to do a little work in the bathroom.  We have been without a bathroom sink for almost a week now.  I bought one at Menard's yesterday and we are going to put new floor tiles in while we were at it.  The girls will have an action packed day at Lincoln Park Zoo and Navy Pier while us men beat the bathroom into submission.

We have other day trips planned on Thursday and Friday.  I am also trying to write a few blog posts for next month's blogging A to Z which starts this Sunday.  We are relaxing and enjoying.  This accounts for no posts since Saturday. 

Hope you all are having a great week.

Occasional Rants: Primarily Speaking

A few months ago the website Teacher Certification Degrees put HSD on their list of the Top100  homeschooling  blogs.  In their description of my blog they described me by saying, "Dave is the “Home School Dad”, White Sox fan and movie buff whose sense of humor shows in creative nicknames and occasional rants;"

While I appreciated the mention, I was especially tickled by the phrase "Occasional Rants".  I thought that would make for a pretty good segment here.  So here is my rant for the occasion of political primaries.

The Illinois Primary was last Tuesday.  I voted in it, as I do in most elections.   I voted in every contest listed on my ballot.  I tried to do as much homework as I could in deciding who to vote for. I even took Spider Droid to see one of the Presidential candidates speak. 

Because I have been asking for a Republican ballot in primaries for better than 2 decades,  I get targeted by Republican pollsters and candidates come election time.  For example, I received no less than 15 calls from representatives of one of the Republican Presidential Candidates in the 4 days prior to the Illinois primary.

Not once in any of these calls was I told why to vote for this candidate, a former governor whose name fits him like a glove. I was only told repeatedly why not to vote for one of his opponents, Rick Santorum. 

It has been repeatedly said of this robocalling Republican that since he has run a successful business, he will know how to use our money.  I don't think so! He doesn't even know how to spend his.  He outspent all the other candidates in the Illinois election and not once with all that money spent, did he tell me why to vote for Him. 

It turns out that all the spending did not get my vote.  If the calls were enough to dissuade me from voting for Santorum, I would have simply voted for another one of his opponents.  He  had 15 opportunities to tell me why to vote for Him and failed each time.  This candidate, okay, okay you dragged it out of me, Mitt Romney, ended up winning in Illinois by a pretty good margin.  On Tuesday I heard his victory speech on the radio and when he finally got around to telling me why I should vote for him  he had some convincing reasons why I should support him.  They might not have swayed my vote, but I would much rather heard them before I voted rather than 14 hours after.  Sure, I could have researched him on my own, but if a guys gonna call you 15 times shouldn't that provide you with all the information you need to get about Him?

Following up Romney's victory in Illinois, one of his top advisers was asked about his social policies.  Here is what happened . . .



I found this particularly disturbing as every one of Romney's 15 calls were about Santorum flip flopping to the left on social issues. It seems Romney's plan is to outspend his opponents telling voters why not to support his opponents.  His adviser's comments make me wonder if the reason why he doesn't tell social conservatives why to vote for him is because he doesn't have anything to say.

Change of Face

Puppy has been obsessed with the beginning of Spring for almost a month now. Each morning she checks her calendar and announces how many days until Spring.



In honor of the start of Spring tomorrow I decided to shave of my beard. As you may recall, I grew my present beard because my having facial hair was a previous obsession of hers.



So, after dinner and a pleasant stroll with my beloved Amy, I transformed myself from this to this

This

To This

Pandora and other Fragments

It is time once again .  Yes Half past Kissing Time and time for Friday Fragments. 

1.  I heart Pandora.

I have a very eclectic taste in music.  Show tunes, Pop, Rock, Christian, folk, country.  You name it I like it.  I don't even mind listening to many genre's at the same time.  That'w why I like Pandora.  I have about 50 different channels and when the mood strikes me, I hit the shuffle option and get my eclectic on .  This is what I am listening to right now.  I can go from that to Under The Sea from Little Mermaid.  (Which, incidentally just happened.) From there maybe Bowling For Soup or Barry Manilow to Bing Crosby or Puppy's favorite, JJ Heller.   This musical journey may contine with music from Journey or the musical saga may continue with The Saga Begins by Weird Al.  Like I said, eclectic.

Sure, I could do and  do the same thing with my IPod and Itunes.  But, the songs I listen to, I have to own.  With Pandora it often plays songs I not only don't own but am sometimes not even aware of.  I just listened to 5 O'clock world by the Vogues from my Beach Monkeys(Beach Boys and Monkees are the seed artists)  channel on Pandora.  I may have heard it before on an oldies stattion but I would never be able to ask for it by name.  That's why I like the music genome project employed by Pandora.  It takes what you like and plays music similar to it.

2.  A to Z coming soon.







Earlier this year I joined up for the A to Z blogging challenge for this April. March is 1/2 way over and I hope I am up to the task of 26 letters in 30 days. We get each Sunday off except the first Sunday, which is the first of April. It seems a little NABLOPOmish to me. Click here to review my love/hate with Nablopomo. I don't have a theme or even a plan yet. But I do have a little inkling of a system. I love systems, so it may still work.

Here is a cool promotional video for the event.



3.  I owe I owe so back to blog I go. 

I am so behind in my blogging for promotional items  I have received.  There is a math program that Spider Droid and I used last month that I need to write a review of.  There are almost a half dozen books I received that I owe reviews for.  Hey I think that's a good future Friday Fragment post!
I also owe the host of Home Spun Juggling a review of her fabulous book of cartoons. 

Bunny did  her own review of this fine Tome of Homeschool wit and wisdom.  So in lieu of my  review here is a link to hers.  Hopefully, I'll catch up soon.

4. It's not a test, it's Iowa

Did you ever take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills? I did a few times as a kid.  I really enjoyed it, because it was a day or 2 off from the routine of regular school.  I also brake for scantron.  Next week I will be proctoring an Iowa Test for a bunch of home school kids.  Spider Droid and Bunny will be among those taking the test.  I will spend the next few days of school just getting them  familiar with the world of testtaking in a classroom setting.

I'm not out of fragments but I am out of time.Click here   For more fun filled fragments of Fridaytude.