Earth Day is April 22, a week from tomorrow.  Here is a list of some online resources you can use to celebrate Earth Day with your kids.

Kaboose has Earth Day crafts and classroom ideas.

About.com: Family Crafts has some Earth Day crafts and other things to do.

Evan-Moor has Earth Day activities worksheets.

EarthDay.gov has a kids page full of links.

And DLTK’s Growing Together has lots of Earth Day activities, too.

This week, we are learning about decomposers - those organisms that clean up the dead plant and animal life that would otherwise consume the earth.

Yeast is one such decomposer.

Today, we started an experiment that compares the decomposition of a banana slice coated in yeast to that of a plain banana slice.

We placed each banana slice in a plastic ziplock bag. We then placed the bags in a warm, dark place and will observe them each day for a week to see what happens.

We will check back in tomorrow to see how the bananas are doing.  (Did I say tomorrow?)  The after photos are finally posted.

We began Home Education Week looking back, today, for the final day, we will look forward.

What are your goals for home education? What do you hope to instill in your children? Are you planning any changes to how you educate your children?

Looking ahead, my first thoughts are about next year. One big change is that Little E will be the age at which he could enter the local kindergarten. With him showing so much interest in reading, writing, and numbers, I will definitely start some more formal work with him in the coming months and for the next school year.

That is going to change the entire dynamic around here.

Right now, Little E just plays by himself, uses the craft supplies, watches TV (I know, bad mom), or plays “Curious George” games on pbskids.org, while I work with the older two boys.

Next year, I really want the boys to work more independently. I am grooming them for that now by pulling back a little from the help I usually give them and offering them more independent assignments or assignments they can do together.

With the older boys working more independently, I will have time to work with Little E one on one.

I am also planning to tweak the curriculum a bit. I want to add Latin (which we are going to start soon, actually) and maybe another language. Spanish seems like the obvious one, with the number of Spanish-speaking people in the US, but since we live so close to Canada’s French-speaking province, Quebec, we might do French.

I am also going to change our Language Arts curriculum. We have been using Learning Language Arts through Literature, which I love, but they do not. I figured that after using it for two years, I should change to something they might like more.

Beyond the next school year, my long-term goals for the boys are to prepare them for life. We all want to continue homeschool through high school and I am excited at the opportunity it gives them to gain some sense of what they want to do with their lives before they head out into the world. I want to give them the freedom to explore their interests and develop their passions.

While my reasons for homeschooling were not religious, family and home are an inextricable part of homeschooling, and therefore our faith, as well. I want to give my boys a foundation of biblical knowledge and character that they can carry with them into adulthood. Even if they turn away from God when they get older, I want them to at least have the seeds planted in their hearts from the lessons, the time spent just talking, and from seeing my husband and I model it ourselves. (We are still working on that last part.)

Oh, yeah, and I want to have fun. I feel so serious with all this talk of developing godly character and developing their passions. Don’t get me wrong - those are very important things. But what is also important is to love these little guys while I can, before they are all grown and gone.

So my final goal for homeschooling is to play games together, read them stories, do crafts together, let them help me in the kitchen, and occasionally ditch the school work for the day and go outside and enjoy their childhood.

Be sure to head on over to Principled Discovery to find out what other homeschoolers see when they are looking forward.

Today, Home Education Week contributors take a look at what their children think about home education.

This morning, I asked each child, “What do you think about homeschooling?” Here is what they said in their own words.

The D (age 11/grade 5):

It’s great.

He’s a boy of few words. Actually, he’s not; he’s a chatty one. He just woke up though, which leads me to believe that his favorite part of homeschooling is being able to sleep in late.

Big E (age 9/grade4):

I think it’s cool because I can work at my own pace - unless I am doing a timed quiz - and I don’t have to wait for the other kids to finish. And it’s much more challenging than the work I did at public school.

Yes, he really does talk like that in real life. We’re all a bunch of geeks around here. Part of the reason we decided to homeschool was that the boys were really bored in school though, especially Big E.

Little E (age 4):

Hmmm, pretty good. [Then, in teasing voice, while giving the evil grin to Big E,] because I get to play on the computer when they do school work.

Yeah, he is the classic little brother, always trying to get a rise out of his big brothers. He’s very good at it, too. He has his dad’s wit.

Head on over to Principled Discovery to see what other homeschooled children have to say in their own words.

Today is the Show and Tell day of Home Education Week, hosted by Principled Discovery, when homeschooling parents get to do what all parents love to do most - brag about their children.

I’ll start with the youngest student here at South Meadow Academy, Little E, our resident pre-schooler (age 4). He just read his first book all by himself. I mean, by sounding out the words. He has been “reading” books by telling about the pictures or re-telling a story from memory for quite some time now.

The book was “Mat” from the Bob Books series, written by Bobby Lynn Maslen and illustrated by John Maslen. He has also read “Sam” and “Dot.”

(Speaking of bragging, we just scored all three collections from Costco; that’s $75 worth of books for $30. Oh, yeah!)

Little E is also learning to write, by his own initiative. Over the past few days, he has learned to write words from left-to-right and memorized how to write a few words, including his name and both of his brothers’ names (4, 5, and 6 letters).

Our fourth grader, Big E, is an accomplished and published artist. His big break came when he won an honorable mention (that’s the two winners after first place) in the Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Contest, in 2006, for his story Escher’s Greatest Adventure.

Then this year, he won a Crayola art contest and his work will be featured in a book being published by Crayola this spring. And he scored a Crayola prize pack, too.

Our fifth grade student, The D, is an avid and accomplished reader. He likes to read books that our youth librarian recommends from her middle and high school reading list.

Last year, on his CAT standardized test, he scored near-perfect on the reading sections, getting just one problem wrong out of 40.

So, those are some of the great accomplishments from the South Meadow Homeschool Academy student body.

Be sure to head over to Principled Discovery for the rest of Show and Tell.

This week, we have been celebrating Home Education Week with Principled Discovery.

Today’s writing prompt is: Recipe for Success Think about what you do in the day, what helps keep it organized and you sane (or how you got past that need for organization and saneness!), and curriculum materials you find effective.

I am not so sure about being organized or sane, so I will share with you some of my curriculum success secrets.

For me, having a curriculum that works for the boys and for me is key. I want to make sure that it covers the material I think they should know, but it also has to be engaging for them. This, of course, takes lots of trial and error.

Here is one of the curriculum choices that we have had great success with.

Our favorite history book series is The Story of the World, by Susan Wise Bauer, co-author of The Well-Trained Mind.

The series breaks world history into four time periods and there is one book for each. The stories are so interesting and engaging for the children.

It is designed for children in grades 1-4 to be read aloud by the parent/teacher, or for children in grades 5-8 to read to themselves. I like to read it aloud to both boys (grades 4 and 5).

We also have the test booklet, which contains a short quiz (fill-in the blank, multiple choice and true/false) for each chapter. This gives me something to put in their portfolios for the state and a way to track that they are actually paying attention and gaining some knowledge.

There is also an activity book available with review questions, suggestions for further reading, map activities, and other activities.

I have not used that yet, but I plan to get it for next year, since the boys are getting a little older and could use the added challenge.

This history series has been great for us.  For me, it provides the history content that I want them to become familiar with.  For the boys, they enjoy the “great” and “cool” stories.

Finding a win-win curriculum like that is definitely a recipe for success!

Be sure to head over to Principled Discovery to discover other home school recipes for success.

Today’s prompt for Home Education Week is: Share your greatest challenge. Or one of those terrible, horrible no good, very bad days where the only thing there is to do seems to involve moving to Australia.

My greatest challenge homeschooling, which has led to too many terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days to count, has been dealing with my 11-year-old son, The D, since his mental health took a bad turn.

Our first year of homeschooling was three years ago. The D was entering 3rd grade and Big E was entering 2nd.

That year was wonderful. The kids loved it. I loved it. And, boy, did they flourish.

The D has always had some difficulties with his emotional/social development, and he has a mild sensory processing disorder, but homeschooling was like the magic pill that cured, or a least dramatically decreased, his problems.

The kids were happy and things were going well, for what seemed like the first time in a very long time.

Then that summer, some thing happened that sent The D into a tailspin. Afterward, he was depressed, agitated, belligerent, aggressive, and sometimes even violent.

He does not have an official diagnosis yet, other than depression (and the sensory processing disorder), but he is a lot like this, in addition to dramatic mood swings and all that comes with those.

Since then, homeschooling has been very different than it was that first year.

I never think about sending him back to public school because I know that would do more harm than good, but needless to say, this has tried my patience, my strength, and my faith in ways I could have never imagined.

Just a note here, we are dealing with professionals about his problems, everyone here is safe, and he is receiving the needed care.

But these things take time. A long time. And in the meantime, well, I am dealing – we are dealing – with the biggest challenge of my life (so far).

Every day holds the potential to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The thing is, I never know until I am in the thick of it.

On the worst days, just making it through the day is an accomplishment in and of itself. If we get to do even a bit of school work, it’s gravy.

Even as I share this, I can’t help but find the good in it all. I guess I kind of have to in order to survive. At the same time, they say through adversity comes growth, and we have all grown so much, as individuals and as a family.

We have learned to let go of our “shoulds” and our “oughts” and “what could have beens,” and learned to accept that things do not always turn out the way you dreamt they would.

We have learned to be flexible and take into consideration others’ needs and limitations.

We have learned so much about forgiveness, to forgive each other and to forgive ourselves.

We have learned about loving each other, even when one becomes nearly impossible to love, and the amazing healing power that love has for even the most broken of hearts.

And we have learned just how unlovable we ourselves can become when we succumb to the anger and ill will, and how only complete surrender to a loving and forgiving God can make us whole again.

Perhaps most importantly, we have learned to trust God though the bad times and the good. And we have learned that His plan is not always (if ever) on our timetable.

We have learned to say, even after the most terrible, most horrible, most no good, very worst day ever, that God is good – and actually mean it.

Be sure to head over to Principled Discovery and check out what other homeschoolers had to say.

Today’s writing prompt for Home Education Week is: Describe yourself, your family or one of your children. What is it like to be home educated in your family? What is “normal” for you?

If I were to sum up what it is like to be home educated in our family, I would have to say that it is the constant struggle between my desire for academic excellence and the children’s desire to watch movies or play computer games all day, which usually falls somewhere in between, with me thinking they should have learned more and them thinking they should have had more screen time.

I am a firm believer in learning things just because there is virtue in being learned. That means, yes, we do have to read this even if it is boring and, yes, you do need to know your times tables and, no, I don’t care that the public school no longer teaches them. Oh, and my favorite, I don’t care what the public schools do, I said no calculators.

At the same time, I am a firm believer in keeping the joy in learning, which means that I am cautious not to force too much at any one time and I spend most of my efforts trying to teach things in a way that is interesting to the boys, which can be hard, since they are so very different from one another.

I have a curriculum, partly because my state mandates it and partly because of that academic excellence thing, but I also have a lot of fun learning stuff - arts and craft supplies, books, learning games, math manipulatives, educational computer games, science DVD’s from the library, puzzles, and so forth - that the kids can just do on their own when the mood strikes them, which it often does.

How our day looks depends a lot on The D’s mood. He has some mental health issues, which are still in the process of being diagnosed, and when he is having an episode, it turns our day on its head.

Big E usually gets up ready and willing to “do school.” The D wakes up crabby and tired, claiming that school is “stupid.”

Typically, I tell him that he does not have to do it and I start to work with Big E. Nine times out of ten, if he is not in a really bad way, The D will get curious about what we are doing and join in.

This winter we have been sick more often than not. It is really getting old. Very old. I cannot remember a day when I did not have to modify some part of my plan because someone was sick.

So, a typical day for me means having a written plan of everything that I would like to ideally get done and fitting in as much as I can, while working around illnesses, mental states, and general life circumstances.

In short, there is no such thing as a “typical” day, just a family going through life together, living and learning, and trying to love each other through all of our struggles.

Be sure to head on over to Principled Discovery and check out what other homeschoolers had to say.

This week Principled Discovery is hosting Home Education Week.

Today’s writing prompt is: Share your personal history…before you were a home educator. What was life like? Think about things you miss and things you and your family have gained.

Was there life before I was a home educator? Maybe it is lack of sleep, but I can’t seem to remember that time.

I had my oldest two children while I was still in college, so I never had a real career to speak of. I did work full-time until my oldest was 5, but I was still in the process of finding myself, whatever that means, so I changed jobs a lot.

In the couple of years before I started homeschooling, I was home with a pre-schooler, then a baby, so I was not working outside the home.

The closest thing to having a non-kid oriented life was the two years leading up to homeschooling when I started freelance writing (and actually getting published).

I did have to stop doing that when I first started homeschooling because it was so demanding, but now I have my blogs, so it is like I am writing again (except I don’t have to spend time on the phone fighting with the editor over the content).

Long story short, I don’t really have things to miss. Although, lunch breaks were pretty nice, now that I think about it. Wouldn’t be great if we could get a daily lunch break?

The trade-off has been more than fair. The children have benefited tremendously from home education, from the personalized curriculum to sleeping in to being able to move about when they need to.

And my husband and I can not imagine the hectic pace of everyone getting home from work and after-school care at the same time, with only a few hours for dinner, homework, bathing, and bedtime. Not to mention how we would ever fit in family games.

All in all, I wouldn’t trade homeschooling for all the lunch breaks in the world!

Be sure to head on over to Principled Discovery and see what others wrote. 

I have had the flu for the past 10 days, so I have not been on the computer much.  (You should see how full my feed reader is!)

We have been working on our final push to get our homeschool lessons done, though.

I have also been reflecting on my homeschool methods and what I want to accomplish with home schooling.  So, I have quite a few things that I want to post about, hopefully soon.

I am also going to participate in Dana’s Home Education Week, so I will have posts on her writing prompts next week, too.

I just wanted to fill you in on what is going on, since it has been dead around here for a while.