National Geographic has some wonderful videos online, completely free of charge. Fabulous quality and good playback. Two thumbs up and I'm adding the link in my sidebar.

We are making muffins this morning. There are a few good resources here and here and here and here. Chaos substituted Splenda for the sugar; the recipe called for a quarter cup honey, but she left it out. Possible explorations:

• How many calories are there in each muffin with the honey and without?
• What is "yeast" and "leaven"?
• How do quick breads rise?
• What is the history of the muffin?
• What is the origin of the word muffin?
• How many calories does the butter add?

Who should Home School their kids?

Children tell you the darnedest things about their teachers, so we had taken most of what Michael said with a spoon-full of sugar and were convinced it was childhood angst and not a problem at school. To my surprise and dismay I was told a different story by Michael's band teacher, and then the horror at having told my son that he was full of beans, sat in. His math teacher—I will call her Mrs. E—had been tormenting my son, not just name calling, but standing him up in front of the class and it had gotten so extreme that kids that didn't like Michael had begun reporting what Mrs. E. was doing to the band teacher.

Read More here.

Pressure to pass standardized tests, shrinking budgets and world competition have lain a heavy burden on American schools, and the victims are not only recess, the arts and gym, but the students themselves. Ask any teacher, and they’ll tell you that behavior problems have drastically increased over recent years, a big part of the problem being the absence of physical activities and free, creative time according to a recent study.
From Truemors

Today will be our fourth day of Homeschool. We are getting a routine -- Math and Science in the morning; Language Arts, Social Studies and Fine Arts in the afternoon. We don't start until 10:00 am and so we don't finish until 3:00 pm. We may have to adjust that -- it seems that the afternoon starts late.

I had a major meltdown this morning after bad dreams last night. Am I doing the right thing? My family tells me "yes" but I am still in doubt. I suppose it just hit me this morning....

I am going to tweek this template more today and add content. I hope to use it as our "jump page" every day.

Edited at 1:46 pm
I've cleaned up the template -- I'm working on getting the titles of the sidebar WHITE and not GREY but not having much luck. I've almost finished the "container" for the content -- content will be next.

The kids have 1) done Math 2) Science 3) Music and are now working on Social Studies as we listen to Yo Yo Ma on the Airport Thingy that is attached to the printer and speakers . I am pleased. They are doing a project about the 44 American Presidents -- a power point each. Should be good -- after President's day we will go back to World Geography and World History. This afternoon they will read their respective books. I am going to plan some Language Arts for next week. They are used to schedule and I'm needing schedule, so this is the plan for the time being.

That I tweeked this template ... and then copied over it and lost all my changes. I am a dweeb. Starting over....

I'm a little better organized today. They had math worksheets printed out at their place this morning -- I have worked on a link list for them on our "new" blog -- "Adventures In Homeschooling." I am pleasantly surprised at how many of the textbooks I have purchased have an online text available with extra worksheets and extra help -- even video components.

We had a bad day yesterday -- or a good one, depending on how you look at it. I had an appointment at noon, so the girls packed up some reading material and carried it with them. It would have been a good day, except that the LH's car had a flat tire. We met up, I purchased him new tires at Sam's, we went to lunch as the tires were installed, we went back to Sam's and did a little shopping while we were there. We had planned to be home at 2:00 -- instead we were home at 4:00 and they did their schoolwork until 6:00; goofed off too much until Karate at 6:45 (to the point we were almost late) and more Karate at 7:30. I'm sore today from standing around and the cold and medicine changes. My arthritis is acting up and I'm just plumb sore. It was good in the fact that it shows we can be flexible; and bad that we had to pack too much into the day.

I need to work on sermon prep this morning and the bulletins. And the house is somehow worse than it ought to be... maybe because we are spending more time in it. But first, more coffee.