Gabelma

Hi - I live in North Scotland, I am English but my hubby is American.... I have 2 fantastic kids a precocious 3.5 year old daughter and a 7 month old son who loves pink and think sleep is for wimps, one day I dream of sleeping again. I am very much LDS but like to use ideas from other religions to enrich my families life. I haven't referred to myself as Christian for a long time though - Charley

I'm sure she will be flattred that you thought of her. :) Sounds as though she is into litature. A book sounds like a good idea, or maybe a border gift card. What types of books does she read? I myself am a bookworm so I may be able to recomend an book. (I am also writing a book. ) What else does she enjoy? Music maybe? trouble is I always buy her a book or music - might just get her a big bunch of flowers for being such a great friend she is my favourite babysitter as she looks after my dog and cat so well as well as the kids. Charley

I do find teachers tend to be very polarised when it comes to home ed - my daughters best home ed friend is the son of a nursery teacher. And actually of the 20 teaching students I lived with at uni 6 now home ed their children Charley

For me school was a disaster I am bright enough and got to univeristy, but I have something called Dyspraxia (when I was diagnosed it was still called clumsy child syndrome) so I have always been untidy and the one that got 'picked on' - Do you find being homeschooled as a teen makes being LDS easier? I know the home ed teens round here seem so much better able to look after themselves. I wish I was musical - my husband is he plays the trumpet but I am about as tone deaf as a person can be what music are you into? I really like George Harrison, Robbie Williams, Johnny Cash, Charlotte Church (as in her pop stuff), my daughter loves old fashioned Diva's like Diana Ross, Shirley Bassey, Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt. I Do love books though I am currently reading Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hern and Three in a Bed by Deborah Jackson the latter is about cosleeping with babies, I studied family archaeology at university and find the ways children are brought up in other cultures interesting. I used to read a lot of SciFi Fantasy books but started to find some of them a bit dodgy lol and had to be very careful. Have you read the Dragons of Pern series? I think they are my favourites. And I read on another board you love Harry Potter I do too - my all time favourite is CS Lewis though he wrote the Mars Trilogy - there is one of them Perelandra which is about a world where the fall didn't happen? have you read any CS Lewis apart from the Chronicles of Narnia? The Screwtape Letters are funny too? I've been helping my daughter write stories - we have been writing a series together called the Colour Fairies - she tells me the story, I ask her questions and then we draw the fairies or I get my husband or my brother to help.e If I ever did them into a story book though the villian would have to change as we borrowed Evil Edna the TV from an old cartoon series in the UK - guess she could become Petulant Petula the PC or Ellie liked the idea of a cat called Custardy Carnage, but he would have to be yellow and we have just written about the yellow fairies would make the pictures a bit yellow. Any ideas of a grey and dreary super villin? Have you got plans for college? at 30 I am still trying to work out what I want to do with my life aside from bring my kids up - I am doing a counselling course right now? Charley

1) you give your real name on the net? yes its Charley 2)how tall are you? 5ft3 3)do you really have a favorite color? Bright Orange 4) beef jerky or herheys?!?!?!? definitely not Hershey's sorry but chocolate in the US stinks 5) do you like rollar coasters? not really 6)ninjas or pirates? can I have neither? 7) how did you find this website? typed LDS chatroom into google 8) hair color? naturally brown 9)if you had a weird hair color, what would it be? right now its plum with red, ginger and blue on the front to make like a flame affect does that count? 10) if you had wings, what would they look like? probably like a stealth bomber 11) favorite cartoon as a kid? probably She-Ra 12) how long have you been LDS if you are LDS - 16 years AND LASTLY 13) what is your favorite movie? Sister Act

A bishop once gave me the following metaphor relating to bad or stray thoughts 'it doesn't matter if a pigeon lands on your head, what matters is how long it stays, what it does whilst its there' I find when I have doubts I think of that and it makes me smile - tends to help keen Satan away Charley

I could do with some help - one of my closest friends will be 15 in December we have been good friends since I was her primary teacher. By 12 she had written her first novel and is currently trying to get it published, I want to get her a just because gift, maybe a good book but I am a little out of touch - I don't want it to be an adult just getting it wrong lol I forget sometimes she isn't the same age as myself (30) Charley

Well technically the person that posted was wrong, its my soap box being an historian who studied, but its a common ignorance most people in the British Isles don't know what each term to describe our country means. England isn't an Island its 1 of 3 countries that make up the island of Great Britain (the others being Wales and Scotland) the UK - refers to Great Britain and Northern Ireland (so one island and part of another island). The safest term is the British Isles which then takes in the Isle of Man, Isles of Scilly, Channel Islands, etc, but then we are a group of Islands, and don;t even have governments in common. Have met several conventionally schooled Americans that think UK stands for University of Kentucky and GB stands for Green Bay Wisconsin:). Many people in England particularly forget that the other countries are distinct and there are still calls for independence, even within in England itself the South West area (Cornwall) is Celtic rather than Anglo Saxon and some people there call for independence but less so now I should imagine. Ignorance comes in all forms and schooling imo even in normal schools is only as good as the children and parents make it. The beauty of home education is you can just drop things and go and do something else - we just spent the night at a campsite, met up with another family that home ed and a group of French Bikers, some older people and Ellie had a great time, socialising your children out of school is easy and the socialisation is more natural, those that go to school later tend to be stronger and more able to say no to things they don't to do - this is how I am going about things right now but its just the days we are at home Unschooling for us happens as we go through our lives, as well as the Steiner writing I am trying to do the Waldorf Idea of having a rhythm to each day - we do some housework, then we do the Steiner bit of baking bread (OK not every morning, most mornings), 5 parts flour to 1 part butter, rub together then add enough milk to make a dough is a very basic recipe can be tweaked to make something that resembles a tortilla, small soda type bread or corn bread etc - cheese and carrot can be added. Doing this we do some chemistry (Combining ingredients), physics and we do measurements as well as making bread. I can give you some of the proper recipes its not proper bread but takes less than half an hour We try to take a walk outside, when we go we take books and binoculars with us as I am not very good with birds and plants so we look them up, even at 3 Ellie can help find pictures that look like the. We are working in our garden I am hoping next year to have a vegetable patch and greenhouse set up. If we don't manage and its a clear night then dh takes Ellie out with his telescope. Our house is full of books of all kinds right now I am very interested in Japanese culture so we have been learning how to cook Japanese food, speak a few words (how to greet a person), and I am looking into the architecture. And we have done what we can to take our baths Japanese style, which is great. I try and do some yoga but I have an illness and somedays can't manage it. We may do some painting or crafts - again the Steiner ideals come in here because I use real watercolours and acrylics which I scavenged off dh. Would like the beeswax crayons and clay but they are expensive so I scented some homemade playdough instead. We have time a soft play centre over the week so she mixes with other children outside of church. And then some days we sit in our PJs eat popcorn and watch say a wildlife show or even a movie. I think learning to relax and take stock is an important life skill. Or we can even just read books, do jigsaws. Right now she is very into She-Ra We are trying to do a lot of camping as we get plenty of visitors from the rest of Europe are here over the summer so I am hoping she will pick up bits of French, German, Spanish etc My daughter is bright and intelligent and would learn inspite of me - I know parents that unschool entirely never actively teach a thing their children generally learn to read and write at about the aged of 8 but they start with chapter books, some in a home ed magazine were 12-13 but then went on to college/university. I just personally feel that I want my daughter to read and write earlier because I know I would have missed out on a lot if I had left it that late. Home education will become even more important with my son - schools in the UK at least are seriously failing boys they are underachieving in most mixed schools even the good ones they don't come upto the same standard of girls. Helping my son suceed and fulfil his potential at home will be much easier as he won't have to compete in the same way he can learn to compete with himself. The unschooling for me is just grabbing their interests and helping them explore them and not really sitting down, but showing children how interesting and magical life really is, for example my daughter has a squint (lazy eye) and did have a hearing problem - gave us the opportunity to learn about how the eyes and ears works. For the last year she has constantly asserted to anyone who will listen she wants to be an ear doctor, so she has books on the skeleton and the workings of the human body, I want to invest in a Grays Anatomy, but will have to wait until my dh finishes college and gets a proper job. There is an interesting discussion going on in my national home ed magazine right now about Unschooling and how in its various forms its been treated as the norm for home ed in the UK and more structured parents have felt pushed out and are now speaking out. Charley e LOL I am thinking if anyone is gonna brainwash my kids its gonna be me - I do agree the joke in the UK community is the parent on a trip to a castle with their kids during term time and they are asked the usual questions, is it a family holiday, the home ed parent explains no they home educate, the parent of the other family asks aren't you worried about socialisation - the home ed parent looks at her children carrying on a conversation with an old man about the battlements, and then looks at the bored children of the family on holiday, just smiles and says no:) I have seen it myself - my daughter will arrive at a playground and go upto children and say hello will you play with me, and so many children get scared by that and hide behind parents legs etc I find it refreshing when we do meet children she doesn't frighten by a forward nature:) How do your parents homeschool? Charley

There are at least 200,000 children home educated (its called home education not homeschool here) in the UK some of those are LDS although I only know about 10 families personally, this year we have been to several home ed camps up and down the country its a thriving and fun comunity. We don't need to follow a curriculum, or sit exams anymore than children in private schools have too. Indeed in Scotland (its different in England and Wales) I don't even need to tell the local authority I am planning to home educate unless my children are already enrolled in school. Education Otherwise is the first point of call here as you then are put in touch with other members near you. It does involve travelling quite a bit but then I figure doesn't do my kids any harm to learn about public transport and how to get to places. Last year Scotlands top pupil was home educated until she was 16 she got 100% on her Higher Physics exam and is intending to study Theoretical Physics. Many parents are daunted until they realise you don't need to teach as much as you learn together and many home ed children fare much better at university than school children because they already know how to learn and set their own deadlines. And they do tend to be more interested in what they are learning. My Mum didn't home educate us but wanted too and have to say the skills she gave us despite not being highly educated herself allowed me to learn more than anything I learned at school, hopefully I can do the same for my kids. I have met many main stremed schooled children who don't know their geography and are pretty poorly educated some of them even have degrees lol the only home educated missionary I have ever met was the best educated person I have ever met Charley

I am in the UK and although my eldest child (Elana) is only 3.5 we decided to home educate before my husband and I got married. My biggest motivation aside from a strong burning its what Heavenly Father wants me to do is the fact that children are pressured from a very young age I was shocked at the amount of homework elementary/primary school children get - I agree with Maria Montessori that play is a childs work but my neice and friends children seem to have no time at all to just play and be children, that can't be good for anyone. My daughter is at present outgoing, a little odd, very intelligent and very sociable, all the things that in a few years school could ruin in her it might not but I am not prepared to take that chance. Teachers and other pupils tend not to take so kindly to children who want to be different. I have been very impressed wth the homeschooled children I have met so far, my friend is a librarian and I worked for a shortwhile in Museum Education and the difference in taking a group of homeschooled children over a group of school children is amazing. Whilst I don't want to knock schools, my local schools are great, I do think if its possible for parents to then home education wins hands down for me everytime - children tend to be (and I appreciate its a generalisation, naturally some school children display these traits and some home education is a farce and the kids are awful) more caring, more able to deal with adults and younger children, more interested in the world around them etc an example would be I went to a home ed camp and my daughter was looked after by the other children there I remember thinking she hadn't been to the toilet all day turned out the older kids just helped her, in our local street I get called to put my daughters shoes on. Right now my plans are mostly unschooling but teaching her writing (following Steiner plan of no reading until 8), basic arthmetic and algebra, and pushing a foreign language very early on (right now because its cheapest option she is being exposed to some Japanese, Arabic and Scots Gaelic). Whilst I was pregnant with my son, Gabriel, we learned a lot about the body which has linked onto cells etc my DR was very impressed my daughter was able to tell him the various hand bones etc I had no intention of doing anything formal until Elana was 8 or 9 but she loves sitting at the kitchen table doing 'school' we use the Draw Write Now books and spent a whole month learning about chickens and learning to draw them, and now she can recognise words and is starting to be able to write her name. Last months was pigs and we have taken some time off before tackling the sheep. We have an active local homeschool group which does help Need to go battery is low but if you have any questions Charley