That's my boy!

Yesterday Jack was just walking around playing with whatever was in his path. He came to some laundry and decided it was dress up time. This is one of Jayla's old swim suits.

Scrapbooking To Learn

As the year begins and everything starts to get more organized (HAHAHAHA!!!!....ahem), I am deciding on more details about how we are going to keep records of what we are learning as well as what and how we are going to learn. First of all, without exception I am planning to use the Bible as our textbook, as exclusively as possible! We might throw in a recipe book or a book of science experiments just for fun, or I may even get some ideas from other books, but our core "curriculum" will all be straight from the Bible. I am very excited about this and plan to record as much as possible so I can come back and blog about the days that worked especially well. :)

In addition to that, I also have wanted to do Scrapbooking To Learn for a while now. I think it is a great way to reinforce what they are learning, it is lots of fun, it is a great way to keep track of what we have covered and my kids love to scrapbook! It is also a great way in itself to learn certain things, like reading/writing/spelling/grammar (from journaling), basic math and spacing, various aspects of art, etc.

We are already going through Creation right now. We have a memory verse for each week in addition to reviewing previous weeks. We have only done a couple of days of the 6 day long Creation though, so I think I will have them scrapbook the first two days tomorrow. I'll try to get some pictures and post them soon. Our camera is not working though, so I'll do my best with my camera phone. (I don't like it as well, but at least I have it as a backup!)

Check out the Scrapbooking To Learn web site. It is full of great and fun ideas...like this one from another user! Isn't it awesome?! :)

Homeschool Academic Acheivement study!

From this site:

New Nationwide Study Confirms Homeschool Academic Achievement

Ian Slatter
Director of Media Relations

August 10, 2009

Each year, the homeschool movement graduates at least 100,000 students. Due to the fact that both the United States government and homeschool advocates agree that homeschooling has been growing at around 7% per annum for the past decade, it is not surprising that homeschooling is gaining increased attention. Consequently, many people have been asking questions about homeschooling, usually with a focus on either the academic or social abilities of homeschool graduates.

As an organization advocating on behalf of homeschoolers, Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) long ago committed itself to demonstrating that homeschooling should be viewed as a mainstream educational alternative.

We strongly believe that homeschooling is a thriving education movement capable of producing millions of academically and socially able students who will have a tremendously positive effect on society.

Despite much resistance from outside the homeschool movement, whether from teachers unions, politicians, school administrators, judges, social service workers, or even family members, over the past few decades homeschoolers have slowly but surely won acceptance as a mainstream education alternative. This has been due in part to the commissioning of research which demonstrates the academic success of the average homeschooler.

The last piece of major research looking at homeschool academic achievement was completed in 1998 by Dr. Lawrence Rudner. Rudner, a professor at the ERIC Clearinghouse, which is part of the University of Maryland, surveyed over 20,000 homeschooled students. His study, titled Home Schooling Works, discovered that homeschoolers (on average) scored about 30 percentile points higher than the national average on standardized achievement tests.

This research and several other studies supporting the claims of homeschoolers have helped the homeschool cause tremendously. Today, you would be hard pressed to find an opponent of homeschooling who says that homeschoolers, on average, are poor academic achievers.

There is one problem, however. Rudner’s research was conducted over a decade ago. Without another look at the level of academic achievement among homeschooled students, critics could begin to say that research on homeschool achievement is outdated and no longer relevant.

Recognizing this problem, HSLDA commissioned Dr. Brian Ray, an internationally recognized scholar and president of the non-profit National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), to collect data for the 2007–08 academic year for a new study which would build upon 25 years of homeschool academic scholarship conducted by Ray himself, Rudner, and many others.

Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled students from all 50 states who took three well-known tests—California Achievement Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 2007–08 academic year. The Progress Report is the most comprehensive homeschool academic study ever completed.

The Results

Overall the study showed significant advances in homeschool academic achievement as well as revealing that issues such as student gender, parents’ education level, and family income had little bearing on the results of homeschooled students.

National Average Percentile Scores
Subtest	Homeschool	Public School
Reading	89	50
Language	84	50
Math	84	50
Science	86	50
Social Studies	84	50
Corea	88	50
Compositeb	86	50
a. Core is a combination of Reading, Language, and Math. b. Composite is a combination of all subtests that the student took on the test.

There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on core scores.

Boys—87th percentile
Girls—88th percentile

Household income had little impact on the results of homeschooled students.

$34,999 or less—85th percentile
$35,000–$49,999—86th percentile
$50,000–$69,999—86th percentile
$70,000 or more—89th percentile

The education level of the parents made a noticeable difference, but the homeschooled children of non-college educated parents still scored in the 83rd percentile, which is well above the national average.

Neither parent has a college degree—83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree—86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree—90th percentile

Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.

Certified (i.e., either parent ever certified)—87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)—88th percentile

Parental spending on home education made little difference.

Spent $600 or more on the student—89th percentile
Spent under $600 on the student—86th percentile

The extent of government regulation on homeschoolers did not affect the results.

Low state regulation—87th percentile
Medium state regulation—88th percentile
High state regulation—87th percentile

HSLDA defines the extent of government regulation this way:

States with low regulation: No state requirement for parents to initiate any contact or State requires parental notification only.

States with moderate regulation: State requires parents to send notification, test scores, and/or professional evaluation of student progress.

State with high regulation: State requires parents to send notification or achievement test scores and/or professional evaluation, plus other requirements (e.g. curriculum approval by the state, teacher qualification of parents, or home visits by state officials).

The question HSLDA regularly puts before state legislatures is, “If government regulation does not improve the results of homeschoolers why is it necessary?”

In short, the results found in the new study are consistent with 25 years of research, which show that as a group homeschoolers consistently perform above average academically. The Progress Report also shows that, even as the numbers and diversity of homeschoolers have grown tremendously over the past 10 years, homeschoolers have actually increased the already sizeable gap in academic achievement between themselves and their public school counterparts-moving from about 30 percentile points higher in the Rudner study (1998) to 37 percentile points higher in the Progress Report (2009).

As mentioned earlier, the achievement gaps that are well-documented in public school between boys and girls, parents with lower incomes, and parents with lower levels of education are not found among homeschoolers. While it is not possible to draw a definitive conclusion, it does appear from all the existing research that homeschooling equalizes every student upwards. Homeschoolers are actually achieving every day what the public schools claim are their goals—to narrow achievement gaps and to educate each child to a high level.

Of course, an education movement which consistently shows that children can be educated to a standard significantly above the average public school student at a fraction of the cost—the average spent by participants in the Progress Report was about $500 per child per year as opposed to the public school average of nearly $10,000 per child per year—will inevitably draw attention from the K-12 public education industry.

Answering the Critics

This particular study is the most comprehensive ever undertaken. It attempts to build upon and improve on the previous research. One criticism of the Rudner study was that it only drew students from one large testing service. Although there was no reason to believe that homeschoolers participating with that service were automatically non-representative of the broader homeschool community, HSLDA decided to answer this criticism by using 15 independent testing services for this new study. There can be no doubt that homeschoolers from all walks of life and backgrounds participated in the Progress Report.

While it is true that not every homeschooler in America was part of this study, it is also true that the Progress Report provides clear evidence of the success of homeschool programs.

The reason is that all social science studies are based on samples. The goal is to make the sample as representative as possible because then more confident conclusions can be drawn about the larger population. Those conclusions are then validated when other studies find the same or similar results.

Critics tend to focus on this narrow point and maintain that they will not be satisfied until every homeschooler is submitted to a test. This is not a reasonable request because not all homeschoolers take standardized achievement tests. In fact, while the majority of homeschool parents do indeed test their children simply to track their progress and also to provide them with the experience of test-taking, it is far from a comprehensive and universal practice among homeschoolers.

The best researchers can do is provide a sample of homeschooling families and compare the results of their children to those of public school students, in order to give the most accurate picture of how homeschoolers in general are faring academically.

The concern that the only families who chose to participate are the most successful homeschoolers can be alleviated by the fact that the overwhelming majority of parents did not know their children's test results before agreeing to participate in the study.

HSLDA believes that this study along with the several that have been done in the past are clear evidence that homeschoolers are succeeding academically.

Final Thought

Homeschooling is making great strides and hundreds of thousands of parents across America are showing every day what can be achieved when parents exercise their right to homeschool and make tremendous sacrifices to provide their children with the best education available.

Fun at Zimms Zoo!!!

We had such a fun day today! We haven't really gone out much lately, so when my friend over at Zimms Zoo invited us over, I jumped right at the invitation! She had invited us to swim, but it was rainy this morning. She called to tell me that we could still swim if it stopped raining but the girls were planning a tea party and the boys could play with Legos if it didn't let up. So, I just sort of settled on the tea party and Lego idea since it wasn't very hot.

By the time we finally got over there though, it was bright and sunny and starting to get pretty warm! All the girls immediately started serving food and making tea for their party. They were so cute! They had made fancy cucumber sandwiches, shortbread cookies, cantaloupe balls and some marinated tomatoes with mozzarella cheese. Jayla and "Parrot" were all dressed up, ready for their fancy tea time together. :)


The boys were so excited to play with Legos, and "Brown Bear" has a TON of them! His personal collection is nearly as big as our homeschool group's Lego Club collection! They made some boats and then were ready to test them out in the pool. (Christy has some really great pictures of the older boys flipping into the water that I will add on here when I get them!)





So we had fun watching them swim for quite a while, then went back in for a little more Lego/tea party/Wii fun and some more chatting. It was nearly FIVE HOURS before we left, and I had no idea! I guess time really does fly when you're having fun!
Oh, and how could I forget to mention this beautiful little girl?! Koala is about 6 months old now and really lights up the room! She is so, SO CUTE! :)


Another great thing about our visit today is that I got to see two other friends who I have not seen in quite a while. A single man (Rocky) from the church we used to attend came over as well as Mrs. Troop, both of whom I have not seen in over two years! I only saw Mrs. Troop for a couple of minutes, but it was still good to see her. I have missed her a lot! She is so sweet and easy to talk to. Lots of wisdom! Her kids are all adorable too.

Rocky.....silly guy!
Thanks again for having us over, Zimms! I'm sure your house is a lot more fun than mine, but we'll definitely have to return the favor soon! And Jayla kept begging me to let her spend the night soon, so we'll have to have a couple of your girls over for that sometime too! :) Fun times!

Clever!

The kids have been on a Wii kick again lately. Jonathan finally beat MySims Kingdom. He still wanted to play it though, so in an effort to break up the monotony and keep things exciting, check out what he did.....


Get it? They undid the audio plug for the Wii and plugged another game into the audio. They chose a Pac-Man plug-n-play game. That was interesting watching the Wii game while hearing arcade sounds instead of the usual music and more advanced sound effects from the other game. I thought it was pretty clever though!

Jonathan's Baptism!

I am so honored that Jonathan was given to us and that he has chosen to make a public commitment to follow Christ, the most important decision anyone will ever make! We are also very blessed that Myles was able to baptize him. Thank You, Father God! You are awesome! May you get all the glory!!!