We've spent this week continuing the diagnostic testing for the Lifepac curriculum. I love Ambleside Online, but I feel the material just wasn't right for William. It would have been GREAT for me in high school :) We had a talk and he said the history books were boring. He enjoyed the mythology and the literature, but not much else. Plus it was just too much work for me. The website lays out the curriculum in 36 weeks, but I have to re-do the planning to fit my schedule then re-write it for William because neither he nor his father can figure out how to read my schedule :( Plus I have to make sure the books are printed if getting them off the internet, put them in the plastic page covers and make sure William knows where they are. I just can't do it anymore.

So Scott and I talked and decided we needed a more structured curriculum. William also said he wanted to do workbooks again. He found some of his old paces from the ACE curriculum and was telling about his goal setting and other things he did while in private school, and he loves to get grades for some reason. So we made the decision to use Lifepac. I already have some science stuff ordered and I found a great place to purchase the rest - they take paypal :) It's called Pennywise Learning.

I don't plan to use the curriculum as an end all/be all though. If he knows the material there is no reason to continue doing busy work. We'll also continue to use Ambleside's wonderful reading lists and to get access to books we cannot find used if they are available online.

Something else we discovered while he was taking the tests - he doesn't know HOW to take tests :) That's something that I always took for granted, but we rarely have him take a test. The science and history was fine - it was all multiple choice and simple enough. The language test was more difficult for him because of the directions he had to follow. He knew the material, but he didn't know what the directions were asking him to do with the material. Testing isn't very important to me, we only test when required by our state, but I do think that as William gets older and closer to SAT time for college we'll practice test taking a bit more.

After working on his tests this week he's spent a lot of time watching Animal Planet. He likes Most Extreme and Growing Up. He's also watched 2 shows about dinosaurs and played about 3 playstation games all the way through, as well as reading the instruction book that came with the game.

William's birthday party is tomorrow so I need to go. He's having a mystery party and I have to meet my "cast" at my mom's tonight to help them know what to do for the party. My brothers and their girlfriends are all helping out. It should be really fun.

The definition of soul is "the animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity."

The definition of spirit is 1. The vital principle or animating force within living beings, 2. Incorporeal consciousness, 3.The soul, considered as departing from the body of a person at death.

The definition for conscience is "the awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong."

And finally, the definition of personality is "the totality of qualities and traits, as of character or behavior, that are peculiar to a specific person."

I bring this up because I got in the diagnotic tests for the Lifepac curriculum today. William wanted to start with science. While he was doing the test some of the questions stumped him. This is one of them:

Two things that people have that animals do not have are
a: hair and nails
b: a conscience and a spirit
c: a conscience and a brain
d: a spirit and a tail

and another one:

People, not animals
a: have a skeleton
b: have a heart
c: need exercise
d: have a mind to figure things out

Of course you know what they are looking for. The answer to the first one, according to the book, is b and the answer to the 2nd one is supposed to be d. I disagree with these answers, but I'm not surprised to find them in a Christian curriculum as most Christians have differing views on this subject.

I included the word definitions to hopefully help readers understand my meanings. I think sometimes people can say the same things but when they use different words it sounds as though they disagree.

First of all, I believe animals have a spirit, and to me that is the same as the soul. The definition above bears that out. I also believe that your soul or spirit is your personality - what makes you you - with all the quirks and habits that you have - and what makes an animal the animal that it is.

I have many pets. Each of them is different. I have cats that like to be the boss and some that like to hide. I have some that like to be held and some that don't. These are personality aspects of my pets. If animals don't have a soul or spirit or personality, then how are they different? Then each pet you will ever have should be exactly the same in temperament, likes, dislikes, etc. But they are not. They are not alike because each animal is different, just like people are different.

A conscience, however, which is a moral compass to tell what is right or wrong, that is a tough one. Animals do not have the same sense of right and wrong as people. A lion that kills an antelope does it due to instinct. He doesn't consider it barbaric or murderous - that's what lions do. Dogs knocking over the trash can to get something to eat don't consider it wrong unless they have been trained. A house dog trained to be housebroken and not sit on the furniture or knock things over will look very guilty when caught by the owner. Is that a conscience as far as right or wrong or just training or fear of punishment? I don't know. I will have to give the book that one, I guess, since we cannot see into the mind of that dog.

I also disagree with the question that people have a mind to figure things out, not animals. There are chimps that can speak sign language. My cats learn how to open doors. If there is a cabinet they want into, they will work at the cabinet until they learn to open it. After that, you cannot keep them out of it. In Germany our doors had handles, not knobs. My cats would jump and jump until they pulled the handle down and opened the door. Other animals with fingers have learned to open cage doors. Some of this is training by humans, but some of it is just their awareness of their surroundings. I think animals are very smart and know a lot more than we think. They may not have words or communicate the same way as humans, but they are sentient and intelligent beings.

Now the big question asked by every 5 year old when their pet dies - do animals go to heaven? I don't know. No one knows for sure. The Bible isn't clear. It says that God knows when a sparrow falls. I feel that if he knows when that sparrow falls, then he knows when the puppy or kitten dies and how hurt the owner feels when that happens. I believe that since God created animals - not just for food but for companionship and friendship - that he has a special place for them in heaven. We are now back to the soul discussion. If an animal has a spirit or a soul, then it has to go somewhere, right? I don't believe that God would create a living being with a spirit and have it fade away when it died.

I am going to share my views on this subject with William as I'm sure it will come up in the Lifepacs.

Today is William's birthday. Scott is off work so we are spending the day as a family. The day includes a trip to one of the big cities near us for Chinese food at a buffet, a trip to the game store to find a new (used) game and another car charger for his Gameboy, possibly a trip to Walmart to find some slides for the microscope and maybe a movie at the dollar theater in the afternoon. If no movie is playing that we want to see, then we may head over to Oxbow Meadows for a nature walk.

While planning for this years birthday post, I read back through the previous posts I'd written for William's past 2 birthdays. I read my poem to him and it made me cry, which made him laugh :) But he was really crying with me on the inside, I'm sure :)

William is turning 12. I don't know how I feel about that. He's still playing Gameboy and watching cartoons but he also asks about driving and dating and getting married. He looks so much older now. He is very tall and many people already expect him to be 13 or older. We ate lunch at a local restaurant a few weeks ago and William said it was too fancy for him. Even though it was a fancy, quiet place - cloth napkins on the lap and everything - he was very well behaved and caused no problems. The other patrons in the restaurant - mostly retired locals or tourists down for the day - kept looking over at us like they were wondering why William was having lunch with us on a Friday afternoon. Maybe they were expecting him to spill something or run around like an idiot. I have to say, though, that my son has always had very good manners in public. Yes, he has his moments, but they are few and far between.

I think for this birthday I'll talk about some of those moments I remember from when he was younger.

William has always wanted to do things faster and better. He seems to almost be grown up in many ways. From the time he was 3 months old he wanted to sit up on his own. Now, most babies cannot sit up until they are over 6 months old. William was just learning to prop up on his elbows, but that wasn't enough. He had to sit up, even if his head would wobble. He hated car seats and baby carriers. He wanted to be held where he could see everything. We have a family photo of him at 3 months old trying to sit up. He wouldn't be still in the photographer's baby chair, so I was propping him with my hand so he wouldn't fall and he was kind of sitting back and resting on it. The photographer said she couldn't believe he was only 3 months old and wanting to sit up so soon. Even though he wanted to sit up so quickly, he took his time walking and didn't walk well until he was about 14 months old. He took his first few steps on his own in a hotel room while we were driving from Colorado Springs back home to Georgia when Scott left the military. From that moment on he was walking everywhere and I had to walk with him. He would grab my hand from wherever I was sitting and pull me up out of the chair to walk with him.

When he was just over 1 1/2 years old my niece was born. I went to my brother's apartment sometimes to visit them and I would hold her and give her a bottle. William got jealous and wanted me to hold him too. I said "I can't hold you now, but you can help feed her the bottle." So he would hold onto the end of the bottle while I fed my neice and still feel close to me. Around the same time period a friend of mine from grade school came to visit me with her 5 week old baby. I also held him and was giving him a bottle. William came up to the baby and tried to grab the bottle and drink it. By this time William hadn't had a bottle in almost a year. I again let him "help" feed the baby and when my friend left I made sure to give him extra cuddle time. He's said a few times he wishes he had a brother or sister, but he never really liked to share me.

When he was about 4 we decided to have a yard sale one weekend. I was in the living room cleaning and pricing things and he asked me what I was doing. "Getting ready for a yard sale," I told him. "Why are we selling the yard?" he asked.

When he was about 5 or so the first Star Wars movie was re-released in theaters. We hadn't been to a movie theater in years, not since William was about 2 and we had to stand at the back of the theater during Jungle Book because he wouldn't be still. We had only watched movies on VHS since then, so he had never really been to a theater. We got into the theater and was eating our popcorn when the previews started. After about the third preview, William nudged me and whispered, "Mama, can you fast forward to the movie?"

One of the best memories I have is when he accepted Jesus as his savior. I worked out of town and William went to a daycare in the same town. We had about a 30 minute drive each morning and evening. We talked in the car alot - we still do. We would have these really deep conversations. I listen to a lot of Carman tapes and had R.I.O.T. in the cassette player on this day. The song playing was "Whiter Than Snow". William listened to the words and started asking about the meaning of the song. I explained as best I could that Jesus takes our sins, cleanses us, and makes us whiter than snow. I wasn't sure if he really understood at 4 years old. Just as we pulled into our driveway, he asked me "Mama, can I ask Jesus to come into my heart and make me whiter than snow?" I said yes, of course, and prayed with my son right in our driveway. It was a very emotional day. There was a lot of stuff going on in my life at the time and it was amazing how God was working on me, my son and my husband during this time.

I remember when reading finally clicked for him. He was in his 2nd year of kindergarten at private school. He'd gotten a new teacher who worked with him on reading while the younger kids in the blended class had their naps. A few months into the school year he started reading road signs - "Mama, that says stop!" Then he read the words on restaurant signs, billboards, everything. He had finally gotten it!

Today is a funny, handsome, and very tall boy who loves animals and science, mostly life science. He watches Animal Planet and Discovery Channel and can tell me all sorts of interesting things he learns. He wants to volunteer at our animal shelter when it opens sometime this year and he wants to be an animal cop so he can protect animals from people who hurt them. He reads a lot and can pick up things quickly. He has a great imagination. He started telling a serial story called "The Creepy Shadow" while in first grade at his private school and would tell the kids a new part of the story every day. He loves jokes and loves to laugh and smile. He can be friends with almost everyone, no matter what their age.

He asks me sometimes if I wanted a girl. I tell him that I would like him and his dad to be more understanding sometimes of my girlish wants like watching a romance movie - or any movie without car chases and explosions - and wanting to hug him and kiss him on the cheek. But I also tell him honestly that while it may have been nice to have had a girl whose long hair I could braid and have tea parties and do makeovers with, I couldn't imagine life without my little boy.

I am so blessed to be able to homeschool him and never miss any more of these little moments. I was able to be with him with addition clicked in his head, when he learned how to do more on the computer than just play a memory card game, when we cried together after watching "My Dog Skip", and cried again when one of our cats died of kidney failure. I watch him be reminded briefly of a mythology story and listen to him recite it back me in detail. We had deep discussions during the reading of Robinson Crusoe last year, and when I wanted to give up on the book he asked me to keep reading it. I watched him go from being scared to touch a horse to learning to groom, saddle and ride one. He learned to drive a golf cart, clean a barn stall and how to pitch hay. It's amazing how long 12 years can be, and yet they seem like such a short time.

Happy Birthday to my young man.

I'm trying to find a better color for my links because I find them hard to see in a post and I know where they are :) I have played around with different colors but cannot keep the site looking nice if I change the links. What happens is a changed link color changes all the links - the archive links, the sidebar links and the post links. I would like the sidebar links to be some color of white while the post links are a different color and can stand out from the white text. However I haven't found a way to do that. If you readers can find my links okay, though, I'll leave it the way it is. Otherwise I'll keep playing around with it.

This week we've mostly been following William's interests. I am still having him read White Fang. Once he starts reading the book he enjoys it and will read longer than I ask him to.

He said he wanted to learn how to type, so I requested a typing book from my local Freecycle group and I started teaching him the correct way to type. It's so funny watching him with the keyboard, trying to type on the home row keys and use his pinky finger to hit the enter key. He's having a lot of the same struggles I had when learning to type correctly in high school. He gets frustrated at times and says "I want to type like you!" and I remind him that if he practices then in 20 years he will type like me :)

I absolutely love United Streaming. I was lucky to be able to get a free membership since I live in Georgia. The membership is provided by PBS. William said he wanted to watch something about Great White sharks so I searched and found 2 videos about them. I also found a lot more videos I downloaded to use for school as well. I need to see if one of my brothers is able to convert them to DVD for me so we don't have to watch them in front of the computer.

William also decided to start a blog about his Sims2 family that he has created. He's enjoying playing the game, taking pictures, and creating a story about the family for his blog. He wants to learn to type so he can type it himself, but until he gets better at typing he's dictating the story to me and I'm typing. He definitely has an imagination when it comes to story telling. If anyone visits his blog he loves comments :)

We also watched a few TLC Elementary School shows that I Tivo'd and looked up the story of Tristan and Isolde after seeing the commercial for the upcoming movie. The story is pretty adult themed, depending on what version of the myth you find, so I had to tone down the story a bit after I found it.

William also saw a commercial for Sea World and now he wants to see Shamu. I guess we need to plan a family vacation to take place in a year or two. I really wanted to try to go to England next year, though. I found a great site with lots of tour information and some good prices. I'm too scared to travel to another country without a tour group :) The only problem is Scott's work schedule - they are constantly changing it and they make him ask for vacation a month in advance, then they don't tell you if it's approved or not until almost the last minute. That makes it almost impossible to plan anything that we have to have reservations for. We went to Nashville one year and stayed at the Opryland hotel and Scott called work just to say hi and I'm here and you're there :) One of the jailers said "LT called a meeting for tomorrow". Scott said "I'm in Tenessee about 8 hours away. I won't be there." Do you know she had people calling and riding by our house while we were gone just to make sure we were actually gone?

I'm ordering a Lifepac Diagnostic test this weekend so I can see what grade levels he's at so we can start using that curriculum. Until then I guess we'll keep reading and doing what we're doing. After I get the results from the tests then I'll order some of the curriculum from ebay and try it out to see if we want to keep using it.

So that's our week, pretty much. We're just working and doing day to day things. I did get the mystery party instructions downloaded so now I just need to plan the party. That's mostly what I'll be doing for the next few weeks.

You scored as Journalism. You are an aspiring journalist, and you should major in journalism! Like me, you are passionate about writing and expressing yourself, and you want the world to understand your beliefs through writing. English 92% Journalism 92% Linguistics 67% Theater 58% Philosophy 50% Art 33% Mathematics 33% Sociology 33% Dance 25% Chemistry 25% Engineering 25% Anthropology 25% Psychology 25% Biology 25% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

Truthfully, I would love to continue college and major in some type of English or Literature. However the college near me requires 2 years of a foreign language and I really don't think I could do another year of Spanish. Why can't I just learn about books and write really bad short stories? I've searched for English courses online as well but cannot find any offered. My dream would be a creative writing course with literature tossed in there. I've given up on my finance major at this time since I failed my Algebra course - well, made a D, but that's not enough to continue in finance.

Yep, still here. Not much going on. We haven't started back with school yet, just watching some things I Tivo'd. I think we're just going to do a lot of reading for the rest of the year. I'm feeling burned out but I don't know why. I don't do even half of what other homeschooling families do, but I'm tired.

A great thing about the flexibility of homeschooling is that we're able to arrange our time off with my dh's time off. Tomorrow we're going to see 2 movies at the dollar theater and run a few errands and work around the house, all while dh is at home on his days off.

During the spring I'm going to get William a diagnostic test for the Lifepac curriculum. After we see what grade levels he needs we'll probably use either Lifepacs or Switched on Schoolhouse next year and use Ambleside for our free reading. He said the other day he wanted to use something like the pace books he used while at his private school. I did find some versions of SOS on ebay, even though you aren't supposed to resell them after use. There were a LOT of Lifepacs on ebay as well, so even if William needs different grade levels in his subjects we should be able to get them inexpensively.

William will be 12 on January 19. I can't believe my baby is growing up. I saw a bit of peach fuzz on his upper lip the other day. He is very tall and looks so much older at times. In some ways he's still such a kid but in many others he is so grown up.

He wants to have a mystery party. I really need to buy a copy of a game so I can get the planning done and invitations sent out. I should have had that done already.

Check it out at Why Homeschool. I'm having to tell myself I can read later. There are so many interesting articles there I know it will take some time.

I created a folder called "Homeschooling" in my favorites when I got my new computer. I use this folder and its many subfolders to organize various links I come across. I thought I would share a few and hope that someone out there could use the information. I check the links periodically and I checked them again before posting, so they should work. These are just a few, there are way too many to post them all. I'll post more in a week or so.

Learn to Speak Gaelic

Discovering Lewis and Clark

Library of Congress - Primary Documents Resource

Free Online Spelling Course

A Child's Garden of Verse by R.L. Stevenson

The Video Shakespeare - Free Videos from free-ed.net. These mostly consist of the BBC versions of the plays.

Paragraph a Week Program - gives ideas for paragraph topics

World Factbook - good geography resource

American Rhetoric Top 100 Speeches

Living Math

Learn the Multiplication Tables

Classical Composer Biographies

Biography.com

The Open Door Website Science Text

Science Channel's Discoveries This Week