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So how much email have you received about this California case?

I would say that at least half of my inbox lately has had something to do with the case. Either well-meaning friends asking if I had heard about it, or messages on my support forums discussing the worries that people have over it. Everybody seems so concerned that if it could happen in California, it could happen where we all live.

But I don’t think so.

You know, I used to worry about folks wanting to hear justification for my son being “out” of school whenever we went places during typical school hours - or even when he was out in the yard. But nowadays I find so much more acceptance from everyone: museum guides, store clerks, and especially the elderly (who used to be so skeptical).
Most of them tell me wonderful experiences that they’ve had with homeschoolers. And talk about how much they admire the dedication it takes for parents who decide to homeschool.
Even my parents and in-laws have come around……. Shocking!
So, I’m thinking that there is no way that this California case is going to have the impact that people worry about. I think homeschooling has become such an accepted form of education that state and local governments will really try to provide MORE for homeschoolers, not less.

And here comes the cynic in me: I only worry that by signing these petitions, we are creating a Nationwide master list of homeschooling families. Not that I want to be secretive about my homeschooling adventure. Because, obviously my blog is an open window into our lives. But I also would hate for this list to come back and bite us in the butt.  What do you all think?

This article appeared in our local paper this morning. It’s really nice to see homeschoolers portrayed positively in the news, isn’t it?

For home-schoolers, a place of discovery

Pocahontas State Park hosts programs that fit nature lessons

Saturday, Mar 08, 2008 - 12:08 AM Updated: 01:02 AM

Christen Miller (above), an interpreter at Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield County, works with children during the winter/spring series of Discovery Programs for Home-Schoolers. Photo By: MARK GORMUS/TIMES-DISPATCH

By KATHERINE CALOS

TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Think of kids running down a hill at Pocahontas State Park as raindrops starting to flow toward the Chesapeake Bay, and you’ll begin to understand how fun can be used to teach a lesson about the watershed.

The sunny-day romp was one of the ways a group of children worked off some energy and learned about pollution during the winter/spring series of Discovery Programs for Home-Schoolers.

Groups of home-schoolers have used the park as a resource for years by requesting programs that fit in with the children’s lessons.

Now the park is making it easier for home-schoolers who aren’t part of a group to take advantage of the resources. Programs — on insects, fish, a pond safari, vascular plants and nonvascular plants — continue into May. Previous topics included geology, birds, reptiles and amphibians.

A watershed, explained park naturalist Christen Miller on Wednesday, is the area that drains into a river or larger body of water. In Virginia, the land east of the mountains is generally in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Richmond area is also in the James River watershed.

To show how pollution flows downstream, Miller brought out a plastic landscape called an Enviroscape.

The home-schoolers sprinkled cocoa and powdered-drink mix on the landscape to represent soil erosion and chemicals. Bits of styrofoam became litter. Chocolate milk represented sewage or oil.

Then they created raindrops from a spray bottle and watched as the runoff into their lovely lake made it look disgusting.

A few preventive measures kept the lake cleaner on a second try.

Vegetation “planted” with sticky tape along the edges of streams helped keep silt from washing into the water. Fences kept cows out of the streams so they wouldn’t stir up the water and deposit manure in it.

Earthen berms made of clay contained overflow from the sewage treatment plant. Farmers and homeowners had learned not to overfertilize, keeping excess nutrients out of the streams.

“Let’s make it rain and see if it looks quite so bad,” Miller said. Even though “it’s not possible to keep 100 percent of the pollution out of the lake,” the modifications made a difference.

Talking about watersheds tends to make people’s eyes glaze over, said Miller, referring to her experience on summertime canoe trips on the park lake. She keeps talking about it anyway because it is important.

“We’re all connected,” she said. “The watershed is a way to see that connection.”

GB was disappointed that the photographer didn’t get him in the newspaper. But never fear, because MY camera was near. These were my pictures from the same day.

The kids run down the hill, representing raindrops converging on the lowest point.

GB was a bit of pollution within the raindrops

Here, he shakes powdered cocoa to represent soil erosion, and it’s impact on pollution. Other kids sprinkled red, powdered Kool-aid to represent fertilizer. There was also chocolate syrup to represent sludge from cars and factories.

GB produces ‘rain’ with a squirt bottle.

Here you can see the pollution running into the unprotected Chesapeake Bay.

This is how polluted the bay would look if there were no protective measures in place.

Thanks to State and Federal environmental protections, we have ‘wetlands’ (represented by the green felt) and restrictions on factories and fertilizers. These protections should help the health and safety of the bay.

My friend, Dana, from School for Us, has been having some trouble with her daughter. She doesn’t know if her daughter appreciates how good it is to be homeschooled since she has never been to public school. I think Dana also worries, like a lot of us, about whether she is providing a quality education that would stand up to what the public schoolers get.

GB did go to public school for kindergarten and first grade. So we have an advantage in that area. He never asks to go back to public school. He has very negative feelings toward public schools. And his memories are still vivid. So after reading one of Dana’s emails, I asked GB what he specifically did NOT like about being in public school. And I thought I’d post his list because maybe other kids would share his opinions or like to know what his opinions are about ps. Plus, I thought it could help some of the blogging moms whose kids constantly pester them about going off to school like the other kids.

This list is from my email to Dana:

1- He hated waiting for everybody to finish their work before they could start something new, because he always got in trouble while waiting. He just couldn’t stay quiet and still.

2- Every time something outside the classroom was happening (like resource, lunch or recess), they had to clean up, get in a line and then stay in that line while they walked to the activity. Kids would push, or whisper, or fall out of line and then get in trouble for that. **GB always felt like a bad kid in school because the teacher was always punishing the kids.

3- He hated silent lunch. One hundred fifty kids per grade level is a lot of noise, so the cafeteria ladies always wanted silent lunch until 5 minutes before the bell. I got pretty peaved when I went to the school to eat lunch with my child and I was not even allowed to talk to him.

4. GB eats slow, so he hated the fact that lunch was only 20 minutes.

5. Public school kids are gone ALL day. Our kids leave at 8:40, which means you have to get up around 7:30, and they don’t get home from school until 4:20.

6. They have homework, which is supposed to take 5 minutes, per subject, per grade - for example: GB is in 4th grade, so 5 minutes X 4th grade = 20 minutes per subject. That is what is assigned, but if it takes you longer, you still have to do it. And with GB’s disgraphia, he has a hard time with his writing assignments. So that’s a minimum of one more hour of school work. If they have after-school sports, it leaves no time for playing with toys, video games, or just watching a favorite TV show.

7. They move from subject to subject whether you are ready or not. Since GB writes so slowly, he would often miss recess because he hadn’t finished writing. OR he would have to take it home and add it to his homework assignments. OR he would cheat and do crappy work just so he could be done with the writing.

8. If he was really interested in a subject, he wanted to keep talking about it. But the teacher wanted to move on to the next subject. I can understand this from the teacher’s perspective because it’s hard if all the kids want to have a say in what they discuss. But from GB’s perspective, he likes focusing on ONE subject until he gets tired of it. He’s kind of the opposite of ADD…LOL!

9. He did not like it when the teacher would decide what they would play during recess. She would tell them that they were going to play kick ball, then divide the teams herself. GB would have preferred to chose his own recess, like playing Star Wars or something. Sometimes he just wanted to play by himself. That’s the kind of kid he was then.

10. He hated the bus! It smelled terrible, it was too bouncy and he got a stomach ache each day, and the big kids picked on the little kids. And the bus driver ignored it all. GB got his head smashed against the bus window when a kid swung his back-pack up to the front of the bus. The bus driver never noticed.

11. He hated having a music class! He despises singing and got in trouble each week that singing was required because he would refuse to sing….. even in first grade! He’s THAT stubborn. I really got tired of them acting like he was a bad kid because he wouldn’t just do what they told him to do, like singing. And you can forget him dancing, too! That just cracks me up to think about! With homeschooling, we just skip the singing stuff. I’m hoping some day that he’ll enjoy music more.

12. GB did not feel safe in school. He was victimized by bullies (yes! even in first grade!), and felt like the teachers and principal could not be relied upon for help.

Dana and I are hoping to hear from other moms who have taken their kids out of ps. And out of curiosity, I’m wondering about families whose children never went to ps.

So…. Questions….

1) If your child has ever attended public school, did they like it, or dislike it?

2) If your child has never been to public/private school, do they want to go?

3) If they’ve never been to school, do they understand the differences between the educational approaches?

4) Do you think your children are satisfied with the opportunities they’ve been given.

I can tell you positively that GB is much happier as a homeschooled child. And I’m much happier having him home. I wish I’d done it for my older kids.

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In another post I’d like to address how I felt while my kids were in school, and the interactions I had with the public schools and my children’s teachers. Because that’s a whole other ballgame.

My Dad’s friend sent these photos on for us to look at from San Francisco’s Fleetweek and I thought they were so spectacular, I just had to share. I’m including my favorites, but you can see them all on his site, here.

I love this picture with the San Francisco Bridge in the background.

And I like this one because it has Alcatraz in the background…. Very cool!

Look how close he is to the water! I hope the folks in the boats are wearing earplugs.

This is what he says about the above picture, which I thought was so cool!

A closeup of the above pic, notice the visual distortion caused by the shockwaves… cool huh?
The jet itself is not yet supersonic, but is in the transonic region. The air itself is accelerated to supersonic speed when it encounters an obstruction (like a bump on the fuselage). When it slows back down below supersonic speed, it creates a pressure wave which causes the visual distortions. Those pressure waves can be seen radiating from specific points on the aircraft (including the canopy). Someone sent me this explanation…I filed the note away, but can’t seem to find it at the moment! I’ll properly credit it when I find the name.
Forget the Oblique shock wave theory…doesn’t apply in this case since it’s not in the supersonic region.

And this is a very short video of a transonic pass performed by Blue Angels Soloist John Allison over San Francisco Bay during Fleet Week 2007.

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Cool, huh?

If you’d like to see more of BZ’s photo collections, you can click here.