School Troubles and School Successes

I will start off with the bad so I can finish this post on a good note. The bad news is that Amanda brought home a note today asking for permission to see a rated R movie- The Patriot. This is the second note (third movie though due to two movies being on the same note last time) I have received asking for permission to see rated R movies in school. In only three months!

The educational system here in Kentucky is heinous! As previously stated, I have already taken my middle school children out of the schools. The elementary school FAILED the state exams given last year and the high school has tried to pass three rated R movies as educational in that many months! I simply can't believe how horrible the schools are here. No wonder Kentucky children have a reputation as being stupid. How can they expect to get an education when this is all they have? I am going to the high school first thing in the morning and I will post the results of my meeting with the principal soon.

On a good note, we have now completed three days of home schooling and so far- so good. The kids are reading Summer of the Monkeys. They each have a blog (listed on the right hand side of my blog) and through both the blog and through conversations about the book we have been able to talk about the Ozark mountains, the intelligence of primates, different types of guns, the difference between teens in the 1800s and today, the value of a dollar then and now, prohibition, mash, physical disabilities and tolerance. The kids are also each doing a report on the author.

Every day we also discuss items that happened this day in history. Each day we try to pick out two things and spend thirty minutes on each one. We have studied Marie Antoinette's life and her beheading (which also led into a conversation about John the Baptist and Laban), Benedict Arnold and treason, yellow fever/cells/epidemics/mosquitos, and the USS Cole attack. We learned that when the USS Cole was attacked it was in the Gulf of Aden. Did you even know a place existed? How exciting for Aiden to find out he has his own Gulf! We looked it up on a map and found Aden, Yemen and the Gulf of Aden. Kinda cool.

I am finding every thing we discuss leads into another discussion- which turns into more knowledge. For example, while we were talking about Marie Antoinette today we saw she was married to Louis the XVI. Alexis and Aiden wanted to know why X,V and I were used as numbers instead of J,L and K. So we began looking up information on Roman numerals and how they came about. In talking about boats one day the discussion got around to Noah and Dallas had a good conversation about being prepared BEFORE an emergency strikes- backing it up with scripture.

We have only done home schooling for three days now so please take this with a grain of salt, but so far I like home schooling. Now, don't throw that back at me in the future when I say I hate it- because I am sure I will post something to that effect sooner or later. However, for now- this works for us and I am enjoying it.