Check it out! It’s my “Reading Challenge”, which appears in the sidebar, but a little more complex. Click on over if you have a chance!

To any homeschoolers in 9th, 10th, 11th grade – START NOW!
To you procrastinatin’ 12th graders…no, hope is not lost. We can get through this.

Your best choice is to create your own form using several examples. My favorite example can be found here. My mom and I created one kind of like this using Microsoft Excel and Word.

Now, you really have to think here. TOne of the things colleges love about homeschoolers is the huge range of knowledge we have. If you can make a website for class, put a web design class on your transcirpts. If you’ve been training horses since you were 10, create an Equine Science Class. Think about everything you’ve done since 9th grade. Write it all down, and make it into classes.

Most colleges require 3 years math, 4 years english, 3 years science + 3 labs, 3 years language, and sometimes 3 years history. SOME COLLEGES REQUIRE MORE. That means you should take as many classes as possible.

Your transcripts should include:

• Full Name
• Parent’s Name
• Your SSN
• Address
• Phone Number
• Email Address
• GPA (calculate it here)
• Credits
• Also, if you create your own transcripts, you should put them with an offical school header (create one) or place a watermark in the background. (Super easy instructions here)

That’s about it. Save it on your computer and you’ll be ready to send it off with your applications. Just remember to have a parent sign and date it.

Good luck!!

In honor of the “holiday”, I thought perhaps I would share with you the origins of this grossly misunderstood day.
Here is a great article explaining exactly where Halloween came from, and how it has evolved into the celebration we know it as today.

Now, a couple of stories to scare you out of your pants.

Over 200 hundred years ago, a family of seven lived in this barn. One brutal night, six of the family members were shot with muskets, while the seventh died, hiding in a closet. The family now haunts the house in the exact locations of the murders–the closet, the windowsill, and the doorway. In these places one may hear the screams and cries of young children. On the staircase, the third step has been broken for more than two hundred years; every attempt to fix it has failed.
(http://www.realhaunts.com/united-states/barn/)

If you know about Haussmannization, the grand remodeling of Paris in the 1860s, you may or may not know that the Catacombs of Paris were reconstructed in order to support the sprawling housing developments and massive boulevards that would come to define the city. Underneath the beautiful façade of Paris is a structural support system built of human bones. In order to strengthen his structure and alleviate the sanitation issues that were being caused by past improper burial, Haussmann had his team of workers dig up the remains of many of Paris’ graveyards and use them as working materials for his project. And what, if anything, do we know about disturbing graves?  Though only a small part of the catacombs are open to the public, there are many secret entrances and tourists and trespassers alike have attested to its haunting with stories and sightings of run-ins with ghosts of a bygone Paris. Expect to see apparitions ranging from the ancients to the revolutionaries and don’t forget your flashlight if you go hunting. It’s dark down there.
(http://inventorspot.com/articles/13_real_haunted_places_2532)

Those should keep you shakin’ for a while.

Happy Halloween! And Happy All Saints Day as well!

 In the book “Seeking Peace”, by Johann Arnold, you will learn that peace is not when everything is going right in the world. Peace isn’t even when you are happy with your life. Peace is being able to find God in our often God-less world.

Published in 1998, I found that the book is just as relevent now as it was ten years ago. Written in short, easy to read essays, this book seems less daunting than it’s “self help” counterparts.  My favorite sections in the book are title “Hope” and “Humility”. I’m gonna be one hundred percent with you – I don’t like anything some days, and I get really full of myself. Yet this book gently reminds me that I am nothing – nothing without God.

Through stories of his own life, his father’s, and the members of his community, the author shows us that no matter how unhappy with your life you are, no matter how far you’ve fallen, peace is always yours, if you just know how to take advantage of it.

You can buy the book here (on amazon), or check out your local library. I highly recommend geting yourself a copy, though, as you can go back and read a certain section when it most pertains to your life.

 I highly recommend this book. No matter your religious beliefs, this book can help guide you through your life, and come to terms with yourself.

Just a little bit of something I scribbled in my book last night. I was writing about how awsome thrift stores are. think it kind of describes my love of books. (:

…but it was the books that I loved the most. Oh, the beautiful stacks of fading leather and torn pages. There was something strikingly magical about opening a book and finding an inscription, gifting the book to a child long grown. Or turning the withered pages to reveal a yellowed newsclipping, carefully tucked away as a bookmark.
But not only in the dusty old novels did I find peace, but also in the almost new, barely opened versions. Parents had bought these beautiful editions for their children, perhaps, and they had sat on a bookshelf, never opened for three or four years, until the child maneged to smuggle the book out of the house in a bag of give-away clothing.

After I had payed for my treasures, I was free to arrange and rearrange the books on my shelves. Sometimes I stacked them by the color of their cover. Other times, the author’s name, but most commonly, by size.
No matter the seating arrangment, I was then free to step back and gaze with satisfatction at my ever-growing collection. There sat Mrs. Marple and Perry Mason, chatting on a table top while Oliver Twist and Tom Sawyer stirred up trouble on the top shelf.

But the best part? They were all mine. I could pull out Black Beauty when I needed to feel the wind in my hair, or Narnia when my world would not suffice my taste for adventure.
My collection quickly grew to a vast size. It currently tops out at only 297, as of 10:32 pm last night. My prized possesion right now is a copy of “A Tale of Two Cities” from 1904. But who knows? Perhaps as my collection tops 300, even greater treasures will reveal themselves.

I was recently struggling through making a PowerPoint, when I my Dad took pity on me, and intoduced me to Windows Movie Maker.
It’s so easy! I made this video for one of my Mom’s classes (check her out at tugatnature.wordpress.com), in less then a half of an hour.

A quick how to on making  a movie:

1. Click “Import Pictures”
2. Drag your picture into the desired slot:
   

   Do you see where I’m dragging the picture? It’s going to end up in that first big white box. The little white box next to it is for a transition. That’s just a fancy effect to get to the next picture.

3. Repeat and repeat and repeat until you have a long enough movie. To add music, do almost the same thing;
4. Click where it  says, “show story board”. Then, drag the clip down a little lower, to where it says “Audio/Music”

Voila. You’ve created yourself a youtube worthy movie.

Have fun!

I have noticed that many homeschoolers have trouble finding a good math for their teens after Algebra. There’s LOTS online and in books to teach Algebra at home…but then it kinda falls off. :/
There’s a little bit of help for teaching Geometry, but virtually nothing for teaching Calculus.

So I thought that maybe I could share my Calculus course with you. It’s set up with around 5 questions per ‘chapter’, and homework after every segment. It even corrects you and shows you where you went wrong  answer a problem incorrectly! There are 46 lessons in all, making for a complete credit course.
So check it out on archive.com. And while you’re there, check out their other free resources, great for homeschoolers and public schoolers alike!

Happy learning!

Here I am, with yet another old article that I find new.

On February 26th, this article was posted on the “Examiner”s web page. The article predicts that homeschoolers will be enrolling in Public Schools, due to the increased cost of homeschooling.

When I read the article, I was confused. Very confused. Homeschooling? Expensive? What were these people doing? Buying new textbook sets every year?

I am here to let you know, (after you read the article, of course!) that it is totally possible to homeschool for free, or at leat, a very small amount of money. Check it out.

• Need a course is Classic Literature? Check out Librivox.org, where you can download books in the public domain – for free. You can save a book, chapter by chapter, onto a CD or an MP3 player, so the whole family can listen in, or you can personalize each child’s taste with a book of their own.
• If you child has decided they want to be a computer progrmmer when they grow up, head over to alice.org. Your child will have the chance to animate his own personal 3D world.
• Try networking! Join a homeschool group. Many offer co-op classes. That pretty much means that you teach what you know, and other will teach your kids what they know.
• For a free language course, click on http://www.word2word.com/course.html. From Abenaki to Xhosa, they have it all.
• Quality Geography awaits at Xpeditions. It’s from NatGeo, so you know it’s great!

The moral of the story? You don’t need to send your children to public school just because of money woes. All you need is a little time, the internet, and some printer paper. Heck, you don’t even need to buy notebook paper! Look here and here for two great handwriting sites!

Check out the links over >>>>> there in my sidebar for more great resources.

Happy schooling!

After a two month wait that felt like two YEARS, Nona has finally had her babies!

The birth was, thankfully, complication free, and in the middle of the night. So I didn’t have to watch.

Un named

Sassafrass

Bolt

All three babies are tri-coloured, and they are all quite fiesty. Two are un-named, and any suggestions for names can be left in the comment section.

I’ll add a post with baby guinea pig care later this week.

While going through an old pile of papers, I came across a bulletin from our church. It’s date was July, 2007.

Nestled in the bottom corner was the Holy Spirit Prayer. Obviously, when we got the bulletin, I did not need to use they prayer. But when it caught my eye this morning, I was surprised.
Why had I missed it nearly two years ago? Was it not as relevent to my life then as it is now?

As I move closer to college, my relationship with the Lord deepens. I find that I am more open to learning new ways to praise Him. New prayers catch my eye, I spend more time quietly with the Lord, and I try (oh, how I try! ) to deal with other with kindness, patience, and understanding. It’s a challenge, but it sure feels good when you speak with kindness.

Holy Spirit Prayer
Holy Spirit, grant me the gift of Wisdom,
To see the world through You eyes,
The gift of Counsel, to make difficult decisions,
The gifts of Knowledge, and Understanding,
To use your mind to know You and to love You,
The gift of Fortitude
To have the strength and courage to live in faith
Despite difficulties and idsappointments,
The gift of Piety, to be able to express my special love and commeitment to You,
And the right kind of Awsome Fear
That makes me pause to wonder and to revere Your love.

Amen.