Just Say No To A Free Lunch!

When I was young I went to a public elementary school. Lunch was forty cents. Sometimes my mother gave me exact change. I remember carefully checking throughout the morning that my quarter, nickel and dime were still in my pocket. There were times that she wrote out a check and I had a punch card for my lunches. There were red cards and blue cards. For a long time it didn’t even occur to me to ask why there were two different colors of cards. One day in third grade I was standing next to my friend who had a blue card. I asked her why hers was blue when mine was not since we were in the same grade, same class etc. She told me that her card was free. That was all. No entitlement or embarrassment (that I could sense).
While I read about the school in Albuquerque , New Mexico that has begun to hand out cheese sandwiches to those children who owe the school for lunches. Parents cry out. Some to say thank you because tax payers grow weary of picking up the tab. Other parents of course are angry. The entitled ones are so quick to pipe up and complain. They call the school and radio stations crying out that this punishes their children for being poor. They should be thanking the school system for feeding their child lunch and then buck up and take more parental responsibility. If they don’t have money for school lunch and they are not eligible for reduced or free lunches then they could see if they are eligible for food stamps, WIC, commodities or even visit a food bank and make their child lunch. Of the complainers I would love to know how many have cable, cell phones, internet access and luxuries of that sort when they proclaim to not be able to provide their own child lunch.
Being singled out in school or seeming different from your peers is never fun but instead of blaming the school and spending time protesting the fact that someone fed your child for free maybe the parents in debt for lunches could pay off that debt by volunteering at the school. Given that option (that none of the complainers seemed to come up with) how many would work to pay off that lunch money owed? The amount of unpaid lunches in Albuquerque last year came to $130,000. That is a staggering amount of unpaid lunches.
We were not rich by any means when I was growing up but we made do. My mother did without and her children came first. Necessities came before luxuries and we didn’t always get what we wanted but we did get what we needed. My friend with the blue card? She grew up without much money but she never complained about it. Striving for more without wanting it to be handed to us can make us stronger. We went all through school together and she became a doctor.

Waste of Money? Si!

Lemon Grove Middle School located near San Diego California is shelling out ten thousand dollars per year to teach thirty five students Advanced Placement Spanish.

This sounds a bit frivolous considering the current economic situation in our country and especially in California. That is quite a bit of money for middle school but what makes it more ridiculous is that thirty four of the thirty five students is already fluent in Spanish. Yes. Fluent. Lemon Grove Middle School is taking the stance that this enhances the students natural assets and increases these students feelings of accomplishments and self worth.

Advanced Placement classes carry more weight, enough weight that can make a grade of B worth as much as an A. This can be valuable when trying to get the attention of college admissions offices .

This can also pad the GPA's of these students which in turn makes Lemon Grove Middle School appear to be perhaps something that it is not.

Spending tax payer dollars to teach students something they already know does not make them smarter or enhance their self esteem. There is a huge difference between working for grades and having them handed to you. If those kids don't know the difference now, they will. When the classes stop being handed to them on a silver platter and they have to actually work for the weighted grades of Advance Placement classes then what they will have learned is not at all what Lemon Grove intended to teach them.

teen absitenence not realistic at all?

Bristol Palin the daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin stated in a recent interview that her mother's view of abstinence for teenagers is not realistic.

Bristol then went on to say that she thought everyone should wait ten years to have children because it would be easier when one already has a spouse, a house and a career.

So then what Bristol is really saying seems to be,um, abstinence would have been easier (if not better?). She now wants to be an advocate for preventing teen pregnancy. Since no birth control is 100% effective and abstinence is unrealistic (in her opionion). I am curious to see exactly how she is going to advocate for that.

Socialization

To any homeschooler the term ''socialization'' is like fingernails screeching down a chalkboard. People who make assumptions about what social needs homeschooled children might have are of the same ilk of those who don't have children themselves but know all about parenting. They don't have the personal experience to back up what they are talking about. After having my son in the public school system until the beginning of ninth grade I saw first hand the type of ''socializing '' he had access to in school.

This past week we went on a ''Homeschoolers Field Trip'' hosted by the Durham Museum in Omaha. We have gone on these field trips before and have always had an enjoyable time meeting other homeschoolers from the area and learning more about history. This week though a public school group (for reasons unbeknownst to me) joined our homeschool group. There were six children and three chaperons. The very patient Durham employee who led the field trip repeatedly had to keep those kids in check. Constant reminders to not climb on exhibits, to not crowd in front of the other children, let other children look at the display case, take turns to touch the hands on display, keep quiet while she was talking, not touch the displays that were labeled ''do not touch '' , stay with the group and I seriously could go on and on. Meanwhile the three chaperons rarely corrected their children and mostly talked amongst themselves. They were such a distraction that after the field trip three of the homeschool families (including myself) went back through the exhibits so our children could see what they had missed out on.

I wish I had a video tape of this field trip. I would show it to anyone who ever misused the word ''socialization'' with me again.

Field Trip!

There are many positive reasons to homeschool and definitely one of them for me is taking field trips. This past week we went to the annual auto show at the Qwest Center in Omaha. The very nice gentleman at the ticket booth didn't charge me for my sweet smiling six year old so I just had to pay admission for Luke and I. Being sixteen Luke enjoyed the day more than Laramie and I but we all had a great time. We sat in incredibly small vehicles and Hummers. Ooohed and ahhhhed over the Mercedes and BMWs. It wasn't just a good time, we learned about sticker prices and options and the difference between economy and luxury cars. We enjoyed speaking to the representatives of the Smart Car and hybrid cars. The current economy has greatly affected the automotive industry and many of the representatives held different opinions as to where it was headed. Only one dealer questioned why mine were the only children there that day. When I explained to him that we homeschool and this was a field trip he asked if he could show me a minivan. I guess many people have that stereotype of homeschoolers as the uber-evangelicals with a passel of conservatively dressed kids.

So we learned about more than cars that day, we learned how funny and inaccurate stereotypes can be.

How High is High School?

http://www.ketv.com/news/18526297/detail.html

The above link is an article from the Omaha news website about a 16 year old girl in Iowa who brought prescription drugs (Xanax) to school that belonged to her mother and gave them to three other students. The girl also took them and for whatever motivation was behind it she took between four and eight pills which was enough to send her to the hospital. I didn't know that Xanax could be crushed and snorted like cocaine. It can also be disolved in water and injected like heroin. The news article doesn't give that info or just how the girl and the three other students took the pills. It is also easy to overdose on Xanax with symptoms of that being:

confusion
coma
impaired coordination
sleepiness
slowed reaction time
dizziness
slow heart beat
difficulty breathing
difficulty walking and talking
an appearance of being drunk
unconsciousness

Scary stuff. Medications that might be in the parents or Grandparents medicine cabinets could be trickling into the schools without anyone catching on like they did in this instance. The girl had 50-100 Xanax pills with her. She could have given them to far more student with far worse consequences. Thank God that didn't happen. As it stands the girl could face charges of some sort for the choices she made. Could? Perhaps that is the problem. Unless there is swift and measurable consequences the message it sends to that girl, the other students who were not afraid to accept the pills and anyone else considering taking drugs to school is that they might just get away with it. Surely that is not an effective deterrent! Not to worry though, the sheriff's office is getting right on the issue. They said in a statement that they plan to IN A FEW MONTHS assign a deputy to the Drug Awareness Resistance Education Program. Lets see, it is near the end of January so in three months it will be the end of April so for the last month of school there will be a deputy assigned to the DARE program. Hmmmm. Doesn't sound like protecting our kids is a high (pardon the pun) priority. Lack of action and consequences make me think that the DARE program really stands for Drugs Are Really Easy to get program.

Do Poker Chips Have a Place In Homeschooling?

I am not teaching my kids Texas Hold 'Em. I don't even know how to play that or any poker game for that matter. I have found though that the cheap , plastic , colored poker chips can be a great resource in my overflowing bookcase of nifty homeschool stuff.

Math: these chips are great for addition and subtraction. Using two different colors can help the child see what they need to do. Two blue chips plus three red chips is much easier than using 5 of the same objects such as mini marshmallows, baby carrots etc. (Yes, I use food too for math).

Probability: with poker chips and a brown lunch sack you can help your child understand the concept of probability. If there are 4 chips in the bag and 3 of them are red then there is a 75% chance you will pull out a red one.

Fun: with a sheet of paper draw out the tic-tac-toe (or use straws or uncooked spaghetti noodles) Pick your color of chip and play. Games are great fun, a good bonding time but can also teach your child strategy, sportsmanship and patience.

Air-ish hockey: tape a paper bag to each end of a kitchen or coffee table, don't block each other's shots but see who gets the most out of ten chips in the bag opposite of them with just flicking the chip with their finger.

Teaching your kids can be fun and cheap if you use your brain and things you find around the house.