Homeschool Education Wiki
Posted on February 2, 2008
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I have added a wiki to the Christian Home Education website.
This is available at http://www.homeschool.co.uk/education and you would hardly know it was a wiki. One of the primary benefits of using a wiki is that it facilitates easily adding and updating information. So the three main sections of CHE are as follows
http://www.homeschool.co.uk/index.html - Static and Dynamic Pages, since 1999
http://www.homeschool.co.uk/blog - This Blog
http://www.homeschool.co.uk/education - Education Wiki
A Present from France by Kim Hoffmeister
Posted on July 7, 2007
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Home Educating in France
In October 2003 we moved our family of five, our furniture, belongings and the cat to a quiet but quaint little village in the Cotes d’Armor region of Brittany. We had always wanted to live in France and in 2003 we felt that it was ‘now or never’, and to our family and friends amazement we actually went through with the plans which had talked wistfully about for most of the thirteen years of our married life. My husband left a well paid steady job as a music lecturer, and the children and I gave up our home education together, as it was decided (after much deliberation), that they would go to school in France to help them learn the language and make friends.
The first year in school went relatively smoothly for our two older children. They were somewhat of a novelty in their little primary school with its three teachers and sixty children, but as the year drew to a close it became obvious that our eldest was struggling a little. He had spent most of the year trying to get to grips with the language, and most of the other things ‘taught’ to him had gone largely over his head. His teacher suggested another year in primary school instead of moving up to the secondary school with his peers, which is quite normal practice in France. The second year at school only confirmed that whilst his French was now virtually fluent, his ability to concentrate in a classroom situation was a problem. All the reasons we had turned to home education in the first place were rearing their heads again. Owing to his Dyspraxia his organizational skills were lacking, and he would frequently loose books, pens, homework, or do the wrong class work or homework altogether and he was very easily distracted by anything else that went on in the classroom. His teacher spoke to us many times of the necessity that he ‘get himself together’, and organise himself “or else”, she warned, “He will never cope at the secondary school”. These were to prove to be prophetic words. Less than a term into his new secondary school and we were being regularly called in to speak to teachers to be told he was lazy and unorganized and finally, one weekend after a long ‘family conference’ we decided that we would waste no more time – the following morning we would recommence home education. Three months later, his brother and sister, also now fluent in French, joined us at home and we reestablished our rhythm of daily life as a home educating family.
Now that they are not at school every day, and with the French education authorities always close on our heels, the children have to keep up regular French lessons, and it was out of this necessity that our new business was born. ‘A present from France’ has been developed to provide resources for all children to learn French through games, music, stories, audio CDs, books, worksheets, posters and lots more. The ‘present’ idea is designed to capture the imagination of the children and we have been careful to include something for all learning styles; audio, kinesthetic and visual. The carefully chosen learning tools in the ‘present’ are likely to appeal to children around the ages of 6 - 8, although older children and even parents might learn something too!
The boxes are dispatched every two months and each ‘present’ includes two themed subjects, for example ‘Les Couleurs’ (colours), ‘Les chiffres (numbers) or ‘Salutations’ (greetings).
We are a musical family and are lucky enough to have a recording studio and a live music room fitted in the house. This means we have been able to produce our own audio CDs (stories and music), and we have been able to draw on the local talent of French teachers, speech therapists and singers to ensure authentic French voices and accents on our CDs.
So far, our efforts have been enthusiastically received and we hope to continue to expand our repertoire to enable us to continue our lives, home educating, here in France.
You can visit our website at http://www.apresentfromfrance.com ________________________________
This article was kindly written by
Kim Hoffmeister
Moncontour de Bretagne
France
Jonas Alexis talks about his new book.
Posted on June 6, 2007
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After several published reports by the Department of Education on the decline of education, Jonas E. Alexis felt compelled to do a little detective work of his own and discover what has caused the political, social, moral, educational, and spiritual malaise of our time. The book includes discussions on everything from slavery and Darwinism to world depopulation and the effect of rock music culture on a dwindling moral base, as well as solutions to the educational crisis.
“Why is education in crisis?” queries Alexis. “Because we concerned individuals are letting weird–and detrimental–ideologies infiltrate our schools.” He quotes classicists Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath in their book, Who Killed Homer? “‘And why did we do it? For our own very short-term gain, for a few paltry offices and titles, some small sense of self-importance, the pathetic smugness of belonging to the latest esoteric sect, a bit of money–all the usual companions of sloth, greed, and arrogance.’”
In the Name of Education seeks to answer questions that have plagued concerned individuals for decades. Armed with a bevy of historical facts, Alexis takes on the challenge of addressing the problematic situations in education today–including a discussion of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, a book that has sold more than forty million copies
Youth Group
Posted on June 3, 2007
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We have over the past 5 months or so been supporting a local youth group. In fact, together with another family and their church we have been part of the initial set up of the youth group which takes place on a Saturday night in the local village. Admittedly I have a very small part which is to turn up and to help out however it has been a lot of fun and has reminded me of my own experiences as a youth in the youth group I attended.
Here are some games we have played which have been successful:
Name Game No. 1
Gather everyone into a circle, facing inwards. This probably works best with 10 to 20 youth although it would quite possibly work with more but may be quite difficult to learn so many names at once. Once everybody is in a circle, each person needs to identify themselves by calling out their name and enacting, for instance I might introduce myself as rowing Roland and pretend to row my boat. Jack might introduce himself as jumping Jack and hop around for a few seconds. The rest of the circle need to listen attentively as each person introduces themselves and enacts an aspect of their name. Crazy Carol may pretend to be insane. Once you have gone around once or twice you may pass the token to someone else whose name you remember, for instance I might say “rowing Roland to crazy Carol”, Carol would continue “crazy Carol to stinky Steven”. Each person enacts their own name association and the association with the person they are calling to. This is a fun way of introducing yourself and surprisingly easy way to remember other people’s name and it is also a pleasant ice-breaker.
Name Game No 2
Get everyone to stand in a circle looking inwards, I guess in this case the size doesn’t really matter although 15 to 30 might be a reasonable number. Each person calls out their name as quickly as possible, going in a clock-wise direction and as they call out their name they look into the face of the person on their right (you may want to warn people to pay attention to the person on the left and right). Once you have gone around once or twice or perhaps more times, remember speed is essential, a sort of Mexican wave. Change direction and repeat the process the other way. Good, now you know the person on your left and your right. Now the tricky part, you need to call out the persons name on your right while looking into the face of the person on your left. The person you have just looked at needs to call out your name and look into the eyes of the person on their right. Go around as quickly as you can (it is really not too bad as long as you can remember the person on your left and shout it to the person on your right). Now the fun part, at any one stage you can change direction of the wave so if somebody shouts the names of the person on their left to you, you can keep looking at them and shout the name of the person on your right. This will change the direction. It is all good fun but should probably be demonstrated but I hope that these instructions will be enough to get you going.
Pass the Semaphore (a Semaphore is a signal)
Create two rows of chairs, back to back, the row can be as long as you like as long as the group remains manageable. So for a group of 30 you would have two rows of 15 chairs with the kids sitting on each side of the row of chairs holding hands. The flagmaster sits at the one end with a large coin which he flips. If it is heads each team must squeeze the hand of the person next to them remembering that only the first person on each team closest to the flagmaster may look at the flagmaster and everyone else looks down the line. At the other end of the row a chair, a ball or an object on top of another chair. So everyone sitting holding hands looking in the direction of only the two persons nearest the flagmaster are waiting and looking at the flagmaster because he or she is about to flip the coin. If the coin lands heads up, the two on the closest to the flagmaster must squeeze the hand of the person next to them, the signal needs to be passed down the line as quickly as possible and the person closest to the ball grabs the ball and wins. The team who win rotate so the person who holds the ball moves to the head near the flag master. If a false signal is sent down the line ant that person grabs the ball (which happens quite frequently) then that team rotates but the other way so that the person at the head goes to the tail.
The first team to completely rotate there team members is the wining team.
CheckerBoard
Posted on April 14, 2007
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CheckerBoard
This freeware software by Martin Frerz is better than most commercial checkerboard applications. There is a significant amount of information about the game of checkers at Martin Frerz’s website. - Enjoy.
http://www.fierz.ch/checkerboard.php
My Desktop - Today and Yesterday
Posted on April 14, 2007
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The following is a list of what I have installed on my Personal Computer
April 2007
Software
Money Dance
Dreamweaver 8
PDF Creator
Google Picasa
Version Tracker
Skype
UltraISO
SnagIT
Vista Video Codecs
Paint.net
Driver Detective
Version Tracker
Adobe
DVD Shrink
7Zip
AntiVir
Utilities
StartUP CPL
Sync Toy
Universal Extractor
Gmail POP Trouble Shooter
SVS - Software Virtualisation
Posted on April 14, 2007
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SVS is a program developed by Altris which can be used to run and manage virtual applications and software.
I have been using SVS for about six months now and am very impressed by what I can do so easily and ituitively. I have used it to run almost all my applications virtually. One of the key benefits of this is that I can easily export the application and migrate it to a new or different computer.
It is similair in many ways to VMware which allows the user to run virtual operating systems however in this instance it is the application that can be virtualised and activated or deactivated, imported or exported. Once the virtual application is deactivated there is no bearing or impact on the operating system of any sort and ti it does not exist in the registry or in the “normal” file system. It exists only in the data file or whatever it is that Altiris have chosen to call it.
SVS is free for personal use. If you often find yourself installing a programme which you later wished you never installed Altiris is what you have been looking for. Altiris monitors what you install and virtualises the application so what is installed has little or no impact on the existing computer environment.
Homeschoolers can benefit significantly from virtualised applications since we are continually installing aind uninstalling educational programmes and utilities. Quite often these programmes are not well written and overtime can clutter and slow down your computer. If you find yourself in this category of user then you may wish to have a good look at SVS by Altiris.
If you’re reasonably computer savvy you will quickly figure out how it works and begin to benifit from SVS and Software Vitualisation. If you are not very comfotable with virtualistaion don’t worry SVS will ( I feel) soon be appearing in different forms and guises in your computer since they have alliances with with companies like Dell, Hewlett Packard, VMWare.
No doubt a useful, clean uncomplicated product like SVS will someday will swallowed up by some conglomerate and no longer be freely available or worse will become over complicated and obfusticated in much the same way that Skype and PayPal were after they were purchased. - This is why whenever possible I use open source software.
For More Information about SVS
http://www.altiris.com/
http://juice.altiris.com/svs
Get Ready Build Applications - http://www.svsdownloads.com/
An SVS Tutorial - http://www.svsdownloads.com/svs_tutorial.php
Free Thinking 2006 by Eno
Posted on April 14, 2007
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Except for the dribble about evolution I thoroughly enjoyed this opening lecture by Brian Eno - Friday 3 November 2006 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
BE talks about music, opensource, wikipedia and the next 10000 years in an interesting and informative manner, besides being interesting I very much enjoy the way he speaks and articulates ideas.
There is truely nothing new under the sun, so perhaps at last we are begining to get a notion of what God has planned for us from the very begining.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/freethinking2006/pip/132yy/ (Approximately 1 Hour)
We can only benifit persons like BE who convey and articulate ideas so clearly.
Rhymes
Posted on April 13, 2007
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Bumper car, bumper car,
Number 48
Whizz around the corner….
Slammed on the brakes
Policeman caught me
Put me in jail
How many bottles of ginger ale…
1-2-3…..
The rules for bumper car bumper car…
Start in the skipping rope
Jump in time while others sing
‘Bumper car bumper car….’
When they say ‘whizz around the corner’ the skipper jumps out of the skipping rope and runs around one of the people turning the rope… on the words ’slammed on the brakes’ the skipper ends up back in the rope skipping. When the counting starts the rope moves more quickly until the rope gets caught or the skipper stops
Friday the 13th
Posted on April 13, 2007
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Friday the 13th means means very little more to me than perhaps another day on God’s wonderful earth. Today I bought my son JJ a present, he is now the proud owner of “Woody” from Toystory. I set up this section of my homeschool website and I am very much looking forward to catching up with a backlog of edits and posts, contributions, ideas and information.
Why this new website http://education.homeschool.co.uk you may ask? Why not continue using http://www.homeschool.co.uk ? Good Question. The original website relies heavily on Dreamweaver and some simple CGI scripts and databases. This site however can easily be updated and managed from almost anywhere.
Roland Munyard