Need Help With Homeschool Transcripts?

Fearing the homeschool high school transcript stage? I did, too. We got ours done, but I wish I had had access back then to the ebook my friend, Lee Binz, has recently published.

Lee is a homeschool consultant, owner of The HomeScholar and mom of two homeschooled sons. She learned how to convert four years of independent homeschooling into transcripts that earned both of her sons full-tuition scholarships at their first choice university! After many, many "How did you make such a great transcript?" questions, Lee has put this valuable information into a very reasonably priced ebook, available now.

I know Lee and can promise that she does top-notch, high-quality work. If you need to make a high school transcript for your homeschooled children, and you will, I would urge you to check out her book. Don't put it off; time flies so fast when you're homeschooling and you'll need this information before you know it.

Check out The Easy Truth About Homeschool Transcripts today!

Homeschool FAQ

I wrapped up my homeschooling career several years ago, but I still love homeschoolers and always will. There's just something special, probably the camaraderie between homeschooling moms, that I always want to be a part of my life.

Recently, in my "current life" on Squidoo, I met a homeschooling mom who has knocked the socks off me with her Squidoo lens (pages on Squidoo are called lenses) called, simply, Homeschool FAQ. If you have a question about homeschooling, Carma, or Tandemonimom on Squidoo, has probably asked and answered it.

I would encourage you to visit Carma's lens, bookmark it, and refer your friends and acquaintenances to it when they have questions about homeschooling. Her questions and answers are well organized and accompanied by relavent resources, books and more to benefit even the seasoned homeschooling family. If you like her lens, please leave her a comment, tell her that Susan52 sent you, then come back here and leave me a comment to let me know. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Delicious Words for Lexophiles

Love words? Then you're a lexophile. Here are some words and phrases for you and your young lexophiles to savor and digest.

• I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
• Police were called to a day care where a 3-yr-old was resisting a rest.
• Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
• The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.
• To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
• When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.
• The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
• A thief who stole a calendar got 12 months.
• A thief fell & broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.
• When the smog lifts in Los Angeles , U.C.L.A.
• The dead batteries were given out free of charge.
• A dentist & a manicurist fought tooth and nail.
• A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.
• A will is a dead giveaway.
• Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. (My favorite!)
• A backward poet writes inverse.
• In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.
• A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.
• If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.
• Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft & I'll show you A-flat miner.
• The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.
• A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France , resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.
• You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
• A calendar's days are numbered.
• A lot of money is tainted: 'Taint yours, and 'taint mine.
• A boiled egg is hard to beat.
• He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
• When you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.
• When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.
• Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
• Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
• Acupuncture: a jab well done.

(Just a note. This list is not my original work but something I received in an email. I suspect it's been floating around in cyberspace for some time but if you know its author, do let me know.)

P.S. Mother's Day is May 11th. To receive a collection of quotations about mothers, send an email to RetiredHSMom (at) gmail (dot) com (formatted the usual email way). I'll send it to you via an attached PDF file, no cost, no obligation.

I am Siamee, if you please.

I was looking at a picture of my friend Beth's Siamese cats (aren't they gorgeous?) when a tidbit from our family history popped into my head.

One of our sons (who shall remain anonymous) has always had a way with words. He talked early and often and barely stopped to take a breath along the way. When he wasn't talking he was listening, and when he'd talk again he'd usually have a new word in his vocabulary.

Somewhere along the way we must have talked about Siamese cats because once when we saw one, he said, "That's a Siamee!" He was old enough to pronounce the word right, so we corrected him, explaining that it's a Siamese cat. Well, he corrected us right back: "But there's only one, so it's a Siamee. When it's two of them, they're Siamese."

Made sense to me.

Teaching Life Skills with Playing Cards

Does your child like dogs? cats? horses? airplanes? boats? Here's a great idea for starting a collection of some of your child's favorite things, a collection that can be fun, educational, and last a lifetime. Now, before you start worrying about where you're going to build the airplane hanger or what you're going to feed all those horses, don't worry. I'm not talking about real animals or airplanes, not even toy animals or airplanes. I'm talking about a two-dimensional collection. Why not start a collection of playing cards with and for your child?

My friend Sally collects playing cards. Not decks of cards but single, collectible playing cards, the kind with pretty pictures on the back. She started collecting as a child, then took a number of years off from collecting until after she was grown up and became Dr. Sally. Now her collection numbers in the thousands and she trades with collectors all over the world as well as sells her extras on eBay. Sally really is an authority on playing card collecting and collectibles and her enthusiasm is contagious. (Ask me how I know and I'll show you my cards!)

So, why should you get your child started with collectibles and collecting? Pride, organizational skills, letter-writing (in case they do trade with others), history, research, budgeting (to buy the next treasure) are just a few reasons. But all you have to tell them is that collecting playing cards is fun!

Sally just started a blog about collecting playing cards, she has a Squidoo page that her dog Bashful wrote, and you'll find thousands of cards to give you ideas and get your collection started in Sally's eBay store. (If you buy something, tell her Susan sent you.) If you want to read more about how to help your child start and maintain a collection, there are books such as this one that can help.

Does your child have a collection? I'd love to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know why you believe your child's collection is a good thing.

Organizing Your Homeschool for the New Year

It’s that time of year – time for New Year’s resolutions. Have you resolved to revise your lesson plans? Are you ready to regroup and reorganize? That’s okay; you’re not alone. In fact, it’s a good thing, something I always did and something I think most homeschoolers do at this time of year.

It’s always good to step back from homeschooling occasionally, to take a break and reassess what you’re doing, to look at your schedule objectively and see how you can improve. Mid school-year is the perfect time to do those things. Nice how that time tends to coincide with the Christmas break. There’s just something about the last week of December that demands an improvement, a change for the better – a New Year’s resolution.

If you’ve resolved to figure out a better way to run your school day or to keep your kids and their records better organized, I’d like to encourage you to take a look at The Full-Year Notebook System. If you feel stressed out about your children’s schoolwork or have doubts about your ability to keep proper records, this truly is a system that can work wonders for you. In just a few days, you can have a great notebook system set up such that both you and each of your children will know exactly what to expect on any given day of the school year.

If your homeschool is perfectly organized and your lesson plans are perfectly intact and working out well, then you don’t need this system. But if there’s room for improvement, and especially if you feel like you need a major overhaul of your plan – or if you don’t really even have a plan, don’t be discouraged. Instead, take a look at The Full-Year Notebook System. It may be the answer you’ve been praying for – and have resolved to find.

P.S. For additional help with homeschool planning and more about homeschool planners, here are some great additional resources.

P.P.S. If you need a smile today, take a minute and check out this homeschool family.

What? You Don't Have a TV?

It must have been Super Bowl XXII, January 31, 1988. Washington Redskins and Denver Broncos. In my mind's eye I see a picture of our little family huddled around the stereo speakers, listening to the big game on the radio. Yes, the radio. We didn't own a TV.

Our boys were Redskin fans and I'm trying to remember why and how they even knew about the team. It was probably because of where we lived; in Virginia all the stores were stocked with Redskins fan stuff year-round. Partly it was because of Brett, the little boy who stayed with us before and after school. Brett's dad was a huge football fan and so, quite naturally, was Brett. When he'd come to our house on Monday mornings during football season, football was his favorite topic and our boys loved to hear all about it. Brett's excitement was contagious.

Since we didn't have a TV, our boys used their imaginations and our dress-up closet to create all sorts of costumes and scenarios, including football helmets and great game plays. They read prolifically and library books contributed unlimited fuel for the imagination bonfire. I love to look back through our photo albums to see some of the costumes they came up with. (The face guards on the football "helmets" in the picture were made from taped-on drinking straws.)

Living in Virginia Beach gave us lots of opportunities for short family field trips to historical sites, places rich with wonderful stories that the kids would continue to study and read about and act upon when we were back home. (It helped that we home-schooled.) Visits to places such as Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown were just the beginning of both our sons' lifelong interest in history. Visits to coastal North Carolina, home of Blackbeard the Pirate, led to our older son writing and acting out stories about his own pirate characters. (When he dressed up, we called him Pirate Frecklebeard.)

Maybe if we had had television back then our sons still would have done well in school and grown up to be fine young men, but I can't help believing that allowing their young brains to fill first with pictures from their own imaginations gave them an excellent start in building their thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as their character. If I had it to do over, I'd do it the same way with lots of books and field trips, a big dress-up closet, some great radio shows, and lots of time for their little brains to mix it all together.

By the way, the Redskins won that Super Bowl game, 42 -10. I'm sure the Lone Ranger and Tonto thought up a great way to celebrate!

(Read more about nurturing imagination.)