How I Became a Co-op Teacher

Are you a committed homeschooling mom like me? If you know me in person, you might not believe I am shy and introverted. There are a lot of days I am simply battered by having to deal with crowds of people at the grocery store or even too many cars on the road. Once I get to know you or a situation, like co-op, I appear to be outgoing but I still go home and am ready to crawl into a quiet corner of my house.

I’m also very bad at saying ‘no,’ but, I’m working on it.  I step out of my shell for my kids which I usually don’t regret doing. On almost any given day, I’ll do numerous things outside my comfort zone just to help one or both of my kids.

I have heard so many wonderful things about 4-H and kept trying to find something in the area to get my kids involved in and one day, an excellent homeschool mom tells me, “I’m going to start a 4-H STEM group.” I’m thrilled and volunteer to do anything to help. We try to meet up with the appropriate 4-H people and eventually have a meeting to find out what we can do. I even offered to lead the Senior group (students aged 14-18) because they’re supposed to run this mostly by themselves. Whew!

This was the perfect group for me. It involved at most six students but usually only four with one being my own and all I had to do was find the supplies they needed, do a little prodding and off they go! I could sit back and talk to the other parents there. They had officers and took notes on what they were doing, I kept them up to date in supplies and they had fun building catapults, robotic hands, playing with Lego robotics, learning how robots worked and how to work together as a team.

The next thing I know, it’s part of a co-op! What’s a co-op? How’s this going to change things? Do I have to be more involved?? More people, more hustle, how am I going to do this?? Thankfully, the mom who started 4-H took care of everything. Did I mention she’s amazing?

This co-op turned out to be a fun place to be. Lots of different classes were offered by parents who were looking out for the best interests of their children too. Our motto is “Whatever you’re doing, let’s do it together.” And it really has turned into a good thing for both parties. Some of the classes we want to teach our kids work out better with more kids involved. We get more input and ideas, they’re getting more options. They’re more interested all around AND we can get messy if we want! I even helped out in classes which weren’t my original 4-H class.

While this was going on, another great homeschooling mom said, “What about getting some speech classes from Toastmasters a little closer to home?” I said it sounded interesting and offered to help. (Anything to help my kids, right?) When the Toastmasters class was over, the kids informed us they weren’t ready to stop so we continued. I’m starting to feel a little crazy by now.

Everything was going well, co-op was wonderful, and the speech program was fun, another terrific homeschooling mom asked, “Hey! What about another co-op about 10 minutes from your house? And we could continue doing speech there!” Well, how could I not look into it? Now I’m teaching STEM and Speech at a new co-op.

We can’t forget about what it’s done for my kids! Not only have they had the chance to learn from other teachers and the subjects those parents know and share but my boys have also come out of their shells. They’ve had the chance to meet other kids and make new friends, and some are a little closer to home.

Yes, there are days I’m still ready to crawl in my quiet corner when I get home but I wouldn’t trade sharing my thoughts and learning with these kids for anything.  They make it fun for me and I sure hope they’re getting something from me in return. I’m thinking it might be time for me to branch out. Yes, quiet, shy little me might try something new. I couldn’t do it without a lot of help from my fellow homeschooling parents and we’d all love to help anyone else step up to lead a class or two. How does the saying go? “What doesn’t kill you …” I’m not dead yet and that’s how I became a co-op teacher!

Catching up.... again

I really need to either give up this blog or blog more often because that subject line is getting really, really stale. I blame the holidays! (And Marsha for not nagging me lately ;-) )

Today I should be getting more bottles so I can bottle up my 2nd batch of homemade vanilla. If you didn't get to try it the first time, I hope you can this time. It smells delicious! And one of my co-workers told me that he made a vanilla pastry just to highlight the vanilla and his party friends raved over it. :)

Speaking of work, they're cutting back on expenses like OT and they just let two of my co-workers go yesterday. :( I still get some OT and I was reassured that my job is not in jeopardy so YAY! I am sad to see anybody let go though. I think they'll both be okay in the end. One is opening up her own law firm and the other's landscaping business is booming :)

Homeschooling has been fun lately. Patch is doing his best to avoid doing any work at all and Franklin does his willingly enough - I'd love to see him adding his own work though. He made a great power point presentation the other day about the history of space. We're hoping to make one next week on our trip to the State House last week.

I'm not sure if the power point will load but he knows he needs to work on his story line to make it a little more interesting but I'm really proud of him!

Elsewhere in homeschooling, the SC homeschoolers are all getting lessons on how government works lately. One of the legislator proposed a bill H 3478 to change the homeschooling laws. In a nutshell, they want homeschoolers to take standardized test that other SC children have to take, register their names and they want to eliminate our 3rd option completely. It seems to have come about because some child died from starvation and abuse by the hands of a father who claimed to be homeschooling this child. While it's a heartbreaking story, it really has nothing to do with homeschooling. My uneducated guess is that this child was being abused and should have been noticed by the system before the father pulled him out of the public school system. The system should have followed up on an abused child, not all of the homeschoolers who are not abusing their children. Anyhow, the legislators are being educated that parents should have the right to raise their children as they see fit and in my eyes, it's not the way the 40th ranked state in the nation is doing it. Some people suspect that SC might be trying to raise their overall test scores by using the homeschoolers - and that's fair because we get no funding and a tiny bit of use of the public schools, right? Not that I want any funding from the state because then they'd only want to regulate us more. It does bother me that I only get one day a week of speech class for Patch because he's a 'walk-in' this year. We own two houses in this school district so pay double the taxes to them. The legislatures are also being educated that we do have our children's names registered - with our 3rd option groups and there is really no reason they need to know them too. If they want to see my registration card, I'd be glad to show it to them but the only people who have asked to see it are people willing to give homeschoolers a discount because they're homeschooling. And, last but not least, there are a LOT of 3rd option members who don't want to have to get their curriculum approved every year or every time  they want to make a change in what they're choosing. Option 1, going through the school district, pretty much gives the state the children's names, requires them to take the standardized tests and school at home the way they'd school at PS. Option 2, is very similar to Option 1 but you pay $500 a year for the privilege (or close to that and that could be per child - I'm not willing to look it up at the moment ;-) ) Option 3 has it's requirements too but basically, we have to cover 5 subjects through 6th grade and add 2 more subjects from 7th to 12th, keep a diary, journal or other of the number of days we homeschool and what they're doing and keep examples of their work.

So, basically, the boys and I (and probably most South Carolinian's) have been studying how this bill might become a law and what we can do to stop it. They've been included in what to write to the Reps & Senators involved in this situation. Sadly, we have not heard back from anyone we've written. Thankfully, a lot of homeschoolers have heard back and the bill is quiet for the moment. The ringleader has asked that the bill stay in committee and not get voted on. Being the involved homeschoolers that we are, we're keeping an eye on them and any movement to make changes, introduce something new or try to sneak a vote in on this one anyhow. If representative Brannon thinks that the bill is really dead just because he asked for a non-vote on this one, he's a misinformed legislator and if he thinks we won't pay attention, he's sadly mistaken. He and another one of the original four  proposers of the bill have vowed to get more control over homeschoolers so no children will get abused or starved to death again (yeah, good luck with blaming them all on homeschoolers!) At least we got one of the four to drop his name from the bill! Don't go messing with us SC homeschoolers!!

I will update more with info about our trips to the Governor's mansion and the state house soon.

Cabin fever relieved for a little while

I know most people will think of a claustrophobic type of cabin fever but I seem to have a fever to need to get to the cabin! My girlfriend, Lorelei and her husband own the cabin that her parents built years ago. She showed me the picture just this past weekend of her dad setting the stones in the fireplace - so when I say 'built,' I mean 'built!' They also build things in the cabin, table, chairs, headboards, quilts. The one thing that amazes me is that they found a fireplace cover that fits almost perfectly just laying in the woods one day. 

Front of cabin

Back of cabin

I don't know how many acres they have up there, I think at least 10 but they've built trails all over that we love to get out and hike on. While we're there, we also do a bit of clean up on the trails, sweeping the leaves off so they're not as slippery come May when they open the cabin back up, trimming back some of the over growth along the trails, This time, we added pulling up White Pines that aren't native to the area and even chopping down the bigger ones. 

Patch clipping down a White Pine

Ryan clipping down a White Pine

View of the woods from the driveway - around the next corner is the cabin

(Yes, using one real name since he has his own FB page now...) 

There's always so much to do up there that we can never get everything done but with such a short trip this time, we at least made it to the cheese factory and the giant slide. They've added stairs to the giant slide! And even the big kids like to slide down it...

Patch

Lorelei

Phil

Just to show you the size of it!

The closest we got to any snow. Ryan thought he was going to hit his momma  with a snowball - then he thought again. 

 We also got to drive home after picking up some YUMMY apples along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a little hazy out that day but still a beautiful drive.

It's always fun to visit our friends, we missed their girls bunches!! We're ready to visit again :)

Hermione loves it up there but you should have seen how excited she was to get in the car to head home. I know she misses it too but she loves her people more :)

Ryan is all about technology of any form but at least this time he had an excuse. He's writing 1134 words a day for NANOWRIMO. Hermione just wants to be with her people. :)

Did I mention fall was in the air?

Once again it's time to enjoy that cooler weather. Sometimes I miss the north and all the beautiful colors that we don't seem to get this far south. But, the leaves are changing a bit and hopefully, we'll get out to see some color this week.

But, we've been up to some stuff recently...

We got to go see my mom while she vacationed in Myrtle Beach. I didn't get many pics (stupid camera batteries dying - I know! I know! Bring spare batteries for once!) But, we did get in a pool a bit and the boys thought the brief visit to the hot tub was okay. Grammy bought the boys some pretty kites that we flew for a bit on the beach. It's great the way they make kites these days - you can drop them in the ocean, drag them in through the surf and we'll be out flying these kites again! :)

John Edwards (the guy who talks to the dead) recently had a birthday and had some drawings on his page to celebrate. For the Evolve gift package there were over 7000 people who left comments and I was one of five picked to win that one! The package arrived yesterday and it's pretty cool!

It arrived the day we found out some of the cars in the neighborhood had been broken into. I looked at my dew covered windows in the van and knew we had been checked out too but thankfully, we passed! No valuables worth stealing in this girl's van! (And, Todd's car was gone but I'm guessing his passed too :)  ) Our knowledge of the break ins began when Todd found a backpack in our side yard with the contents laying there. When he checked, he found mail addressed to a house around the corner. He went to return it and found the police there - the neighbor's truck had been involved in a smash & grab. In talking to neighbors, we found a few more cars had been broken into. Now I'm thinking that we  REALLY need to have a motion detector light hooked up for the driveway and side yard - look how secluded it is! No low windows, fences in both yards - perfect for darkness. :( 

So, use this as a reminder to keep your valuables out of site or better yet, not in your car at all! Thank you.

~End of service message...

Fall is in the air...

It hasn't gotten much cooler yet but I'm ready for that soon!

Have I mentioned here that my goal is to visit State Parks all over South Carolina? I figure that if I'm going to live here, I should know more about my state :) We've been to Sesquicentennial a bunch of times but it's time to branch out. Today we visited:

It's in Camden so not to far away (And Patch has an attachment to Camden.) We had bought the Park Plus package and received a coffee table book that in my humble opinion, is terrible. I'd like to see pictures of what the parks actually look like instead of blurry artistic pictures of leaves. So, here are a few that we took today (no, not all that we took - we took 94 and I deleted at least 40 of those and I'm not sharing all 54 that remain either! LOL)

 
 

 

 

 

 

A couple homeschooling pics to share.... The difference between a 5th's grader's math and an 8th grader's:

 

I had heard that learning cursive helps improve printing skills - what's shown here is better printing than the 8th grader had but I'm way impressed with his cursive - better than mine ever was!

I went to the doctor on Monday and found out that I have tennis elbow so now I get to ice my elbow after work every night :) Lucky me!

Hope ya'll get to enjoy the fall season soon!

Over the deep 'Green' edge?

Okay, so most of you know that I've made my own laundry soap but I've also dabbled in other cleaners, dish detergent, windex, carpet cleaner, all-purpose cleaner. I used a lot of them on the rental house and they worked really well. After all my couponing efforts, I still have a lot of stock on manufactured cleaners so I haven't been using them here but I will when I run out of the others. It just seems silly to waste the other cleaners.

I've also started trying to make more food cost-cutting techniques. One being cutting up whole chickens. They truly taste better! I've made my own vanilla and chicken stock. Last week we made taquitos and Patch wants more! The mini-chicken pot pies were not a great idea because we still had to spend over an hour cooking them when we wanted to eat them.

Before you read further, take a guess at what these are:

These are why I'm wondering if I've gone over the edge of 'Green'

They are Soap Nuts and I'm going to try using them for the laundry! I read that these are how people washed their clothes in the rivers. They also gave me a small bottle of concentrate that I can use to clean other things. Now I want my own soap nut tree! LOL

Cooking day!

I keep saying that I would love to spend my day off doing absolutely nothing. It never seems to happen though. I love my job. I love the money I make but I miss my weekends. I do try to make the most out of my day off and do something fun with the boys.

I was bad and didn't take pics of the boys actually helping but I know Patch and Franklin enjoyed most of it. We made mini chicken pot pies:

And, chicken taquitos!

 The first thing we did was cook and shred the chicken. I figured that I had never shredded any meat until just recently and now the boys already know. After that, they didn't help much with the pot pies but we had a fun assembly line going for the taquitos. Patch loaded the tortillas w/ chicken and cheese, I rolled them and stuck them with a toothpick or two and Franklin cooked them. It's always a learning experience and we know that we need to find better tortillas next time. We did taste test them (isn't that the best part of cooking??) and they taste good even if they aren't the prettiest tortillas we've seen - at least they have something in them unlike some we've seen at the grocery store ;-) ) And now we have a couple fairly quick meals waiting for us in the freezer.

And our reward for all our hard work? Going out to dinner!!