Our oldest daughter is just finishing up 6th grade this year.  She has been playing basketball for years already and really enjoys the sport.  So she asked to go to basketball camp this summer.   Because she splits the summers between two states, we had to put our heads together to figure out how to make this work.  There is a plethora of summer camps for every sport and hobby under the sun available and trying to find something reasonably priced was a bit of challenge but we did manage to find a few options! 1. Local Schools:  many of our local high school teams offer a one week camp or clinic. These are very reasonably priced options!  Depending on the school, you can get some really great instruction.  The girls basketball coach at my husband's high school routinels sends players to Division I colleges and even has a player in the WNBA. Unfortunately, she's not doing a camp this summer so we had to look elsewhere. 2. City Recreation Department/YMCA:   We used this … [Read more...]

Do you have any amateur poets in your household? Are your kids writing poetry in school or homeschool?  Here is contest they can enter -- the World Poetry Contest.  We entered a poem and they do ask for your email and a mailing address.  I just used a non-important email account that I have.  The contest ends August 31, 2012 and winners are notified on October 1, 2012 on the World Poetry Movement's Facebook page.  Some poems are published in a compilation as well!  Let me know if anyone enters and wins! … [Read more...]

  This week author, blogger, and visionary Seth Godin published a 30,000 word manifesto addressing the question: What is school for? He calls it "Stop Stealing Dreams."  I'm about half-way through the manifesto, mostly because I've had to stop and take time to think about what Mr. Godin is saying.  His ideas are very counter-cultural (or maybe they are very cultural, but we just don't want to change to admit that!) and I have a hard time processing some of what he says on the first go.  But the manifesto is something every single parent, homeschooling or not, should read and ponder. The topic of this manifesto is public education and the way that public schools educate students. His premise is that we are now living in a post-industrial revolution world, but we are still educating our children for an industrial revolution world.   I think that homeschoolers can take a lot away from his premise.  Homeschoolers may not educate exactly like public schools, but we … [Read more...]