The Alabama Homeschooling website was created to keep Alabama homeschoolers "in the know". There is so much homeschooling information out there, it can be a little overwhelming and sometimes a little hard to find. The Alabama Homeschooling website is our attempt to make this part of homeschooling a little easier. The Alabama Homeschooling website is the official website of Everest Academy but offers information FREE to all Alabama homeschoolers.
Jedediah Purdy is a law professor at Duke University and the author of several popular books on American culture and history. His first book, For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today, was published in 1999, when Purdy was a 24 year old law student at Yale University, and made him something of an intellectual and political celebrity. Purdy, who is known for his earnest demeanor and unabashed concern for things that matter, described the book as “one young man’s letter of love for the world’s possibilities.” Purdy’s parents were self-described hippies seeking an honest, simple, rural life when they moved from Pennsylvania to a farm in West Virginia shortly before he was born. They named their little boy after Jedediah Strong Smith, the famed mountain man and Western explorer of the 19th century. Purdy was homeschooled until age 13, eventually making his way to Exeter and then Harvard University, before completing his law degree at Yale. A “wildly popular” teacher at Duke, Purdy recently finished a book on the nature and origins of private property.
Homeschooled from the fourth grade, Joey Logano is known in racing circles by his nickname, “Sliced Bread,” as in, “the greatest thing since…” He has certainly established himself as one of the best young stock car drivers around. Logano starter racing when his was six and won the national junior stock car racing national championship just a year later. Logano went on to becomine the youngest driver ever to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup race, the youngest to take home Rookie of the Year honors, and the youngest to race in the legendary Daytona 500. Being homeschooled allowed Logano to devote more time to racing than many of his peers. When an interviewer asked the then eleven years old Logano in 2001 if he felt like he was missing out on life with all the racing and training he was doing, his reply was, “I have home schooling and I really like that. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not going to school. I feel like I learn more that way.”
I am a certified middle school teacher at Prince of Peace Catholic School in Hoover and after school I run a business, The Knight School, in which I and my international squad of chess coaches teach very high-energy, fun-driven chess lessons at the 27 area schools listed below. I wanted to check and see if you thought my brand of big-class chess tactics training would fit with what you do? My 225 students learn to love critical thinking and problem solving and in the process get ridiculously good at chess as well. We do this within an environment dedicated to positive interactions and perfection of sportsmanship. It certainly works in these schools. For more info you can visit my website atwww.theknightschool.com which has a link to the last big article about us in theBirmingham News, or you can view the attachment and pictures which contains an upcoming article.
Let me know if you are interested in letting The Knight School beef up the math/logic/critical thinking/fun end of your program.
Jonathan Krohn, whom Jon Stewart of The Daily Show once referred to as “Doogie Howser GOP,” became something of an overnight political sensation after his three minute speech at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference when he was 13, garnering coverage from several major American media outlets and worldwide attention on YouTube. A year prior to the speech Krohn published his first book, a conservative political manifesto called Define Conservatism, which he dedicated to Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and William F. Buckley, Jr. Krohn has since written a second book, Defining Conservatism: The Principles That Will Bring Our Country Back, which is described as “a history lesson, a manifesto, and a roadmap for the future” designed to get the Republican party and the conservative movement in America back on track. Krohn, who has been homeschooled since 2007, is a regular contributor to the conservative magazine Human Events.
Gather your gang and spin your way into the New Year! Start the countdown: 3, 2, 1... Game Night! Put the kids in charge to design and create a game board for New Year's eve or any ol' night together!
First off, gather your supplies. You'll need at the ready:
Large piece of cardboard (15" x 15" or larger)
Poster board
Paint & brushes
Brad (one of those bendy claspers not the neighbor kid)
Cardboard tubes
Index cards
Pen
Small action figures
Family photos (that can be cut) where the faces are approximately 1" high
Glue
Scissors
Instructions:
Paint the large piece of cardboard a bright color.
Using the poster board, draw your game board pathway and cut it out and glue into place. (Or you may paint a pathway directly on to the game board.) Divide the pathway into squares by drawing lines every two inches or so.
Fill in the squares with either "R" for Recall or "P" for Prediction. What else could you add? "T" for Talent, "J" for Joke or even "Stuck in the Mud: Lose a turn" or "Lucky Day! Go again!"
Next, make family and friend focused playing cards for each letter. The "R" cards will quiz the players on last year's events and the "P" cards are for making predictions for the future. For example, an "R" card could read: How many goals did Josh score in his last soccer season? A "P" card could read: What will Grandma's hair color be this time next year?"
If you've included "J" for Joke the card simply reads: Tell a joke! The "T" for Talent cards indicate an act to be performed like: Balance on one leg and tell us three things that are in your backpack at all times. Or In an alien language tell and show how to make a birthday cake. Clearly, the sky's the limit on how YOUR game can be designed and played!
Make a spinner. First, cut a 5" x 5" square from cardboard. Have an adult punch a hole in the middle. Divide the square into "pizza slices" and write 1, 2, 3, 4, Spin again, etc. in each space. Cut out an arrow from card stock or cardboard and punch a hole in the middle of that. Attach the arrow to the spinner with the brad.
Make game playing pieces. Cut out family and friend faces and double-stick tape them to the action figure heads. Hilarious!
Weave the ribbon, pipe cleaners, string, yarn, wire of your choice in and out of the nails to form a 3-D frame.
You're ready to roll... er... spin! Happy New Year!
Let me start off by saying that I used to despise video games. They seemed like such a waste of time to me. Dalton was started at an early age playing "the game" by his grandparents and my husband. My husband has now evolved into not liking game playing time either. We have had major conflicts over the years involving issues pertaining to length of time played. As with anything else, when something starts interfering with the peace in my home, I research it. Surprisingly, I found many many studies documenting the benefits of game playing. I wrote them down as I went along.
Here is what I found:
Systems analysis
Patience (you have to accomplish this to make that happen)
Understand and construct multidimensional characters
Empathy
Alleviate stress
Physical Rehab
Spatial vision improvement
Hand-eye coordination
Problem solving by cause-and-effect
Sparking imagination and creativity
Positive effects on cognitive health
Quick decision-making skills
Strategic aptitude
Physical activity
Technology aptitude
Social skills
Improve language
Improve social studies
Improve scientific reasoning
Improve math skills
Many games are based on history, city building, and governance
Strong analytical ability
Increased flexibility
Increased adaptability
Increased attention capacity
Fast and accurate information processing
What I have noticed in my home regarding gaming is that it is an instant-immersion adventure set in different places, situations, story lines, and times. I have noticed that Dalton will look up the facts and compare them to the game he is playing. The game usually has historically accurate clothing, backdrops, music, etc. Dalton has told me that he has learned more historically accurate information from games than he ever has from books (and he has read a LOT of historical books). I have also noticed that he uses the games as a "jumping off point" to get involved in different topics. As Dalton has gotten older, he has started learning about computer programming "languages" and "modding" which has led him to a greater understanding of not only how to use a computer but about the inner workings of computers. Dae has also delved into the video-gaming world. She mostly plays on-line games such as "Toon Town", restaurant-building games, and Wii games. She has learned a lot of real-life skills such as typing, cooking, drawing, computer skills, health information (using the Wii), reading, writing, spelling, science, history, geography, cultures, and on and on and on...
I have now restructured my thinking on video gaming and have definitely seen the many benefits. I hope this brings some peace of mind to a frantic mom out there worried about their child(ren) playing the game "all the time"!
How Video Games Blind Us With Science - This led Steinkuehler to a fascinating and provocative conclusion: Videogames are becoming the new hotbed of scientific thinking for kids today.
The 15 Clearest Benefits of Gaming - Most reasonable experts in fields such as psychology, education and research acknowledge that interactive entertainment has important benefits that have the potential to shape the world’s future.
Medical News Today - According to a new study inCurrent Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, regular gamers are fast and accurate information processors, not only during game play, but in real-life situations as well.
How Video Games Are Good For the Brain: Most games involve a huge number of mental tasks, and playing can boost any one of them. Fast-paced, action-packed video games have been shown, in separate studies, to boost visual acuity, spatial perception, and the ability to pick out objects in a scene. Complex, strategy-based games can improve other cognitive skills, including working memory and reasoning.
Live Science article on World of Warcraft and Unschooling - "We know several kids who learned to read while playing these games," Traaseth said. "If you want to classify some of the things we're doing when we play World of Warcraft, the list could include math, reading, sociology, economics, creative writing and communications."
Reading, writing and playing The Sims - Bushnell now spreads the word about how video games can help kids learn. Games, he asserts, teach you creative problem-solving. They teach you to formulate hypotheses (“First I have to get the key from the magician so I can open the door”), to test these hypotheses (“Game over”) and revise them (“Oh no, I have to drink my elixir to get to the magician!”). Games can even teach you the fundamental principles of scientific research.
BRAIN CANDY: Is pop culture dumbing us down or smartening us up?At the same time, players are required to manage a dizzying array of information and options. The game presents the player with a series of puzzles, and you can’t succeed at the game simply by solving the puzzles one at a time. You have to craft a longer-term strategy, in order to juggle and coördinate competing interests. In denigrating the video game, Johnson argues, we have confused it with other phenomena in teen-age life, like multitasking—simultaneously e-mailing and listening to music and talking on the telephone and surfing the Internet. Playing a video game is, in fact, an exercise in “constructing the proper hierarchy of tasks and moving through the tasks in the correct sequence,” he writes. “It’s about finding order and meaning in the world, and making decisions that help create that order.”
Digital Journal— The report found how teens enjoy video games: "Even when they are not playing games with others, teens talk and engage with others about games—by posting comments on discussion boards and websites or by writing reviews and walk-throughs that assist newcomers to a particular game by showing them how to play the game."
Very interesting talk on how games can change the world:
Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.
The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where -- exceptionally in scientific publishing -- both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.
Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.
Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them, but a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that "unfolds" the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.
This is where Foldit comes in.
Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks. Cracking the enzyme "provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs," says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.
"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release. "The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
One of Foldit's creators, Seth Cooper, explained why gamers had succeeded where computers had failed.
"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," he said. "Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."
Akiane Kramarik is considered to be the youngest art and poetry prodigy in history, but chances are you’ve never heard of her. Kramarik taught herself to draw at age four, began painting at age six, and started writing poetry when she was seven. She also speaks four languages: Lithuanian, Russian, English and Sign Language. According to Kramerik, God taught her how to paint and write, and has been appearing and speaking to her in dreams and visions since she was three. Prior to Kramarik’s encounter with God her family had no serious religious commitments. Her mom, a Lithuanian immigrant, was an atheist and her American father was a lapsed Catholic. They, along with Kramerik’s four brothers, are now devout Christians as a result of Kramarik’s influence. Kramarik’s first painting sold for $10,000 and she has since sold paintings for as much as $1,ooo,ooo, making her one of the wealthiest child art prodigies in the world and one of the richest teens in the United States.
Homeschooled until high school, Blake Griffin grew up playing basketball with his older brother, Taylor, and followed him to the University of Oklahoma where the brothers led the Sooners to the Elite Eight of the 2009 Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament. Blake was select no. 1 overall in the 2009 NBA Draft, selected by the Los Angeles Lakers, while Taylor was selected 48th overall by the Phoenix Suns. Blake Griffin is often described as “a man among boys” for his massive size and awesome athleticism. His dunks are already legendary. Griffin, who’s mom is white and dad is black, considers being biracial an asset, allowing him see the world from both sides of the racial divide and giving him a broader sense of perspective.
Were you like me and missed the whole lunar eclipse due to cloud cover? Well check out this time-lapse YouTube sent in by Gayle Thrasher. Thanks Gayle!
When Erik Demaine joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he was 20 and the youngest professor ever in the history of the school. Demaine homeschooled while traveling around the United States with his father, a goldsmith and glassblower. Demaine started college when he was 12 and finished his bachelor’s degree two years later at age 14. In addition to being a mathematical and computational genius, Demaine is something of an artist. He wrote his dissertation on the computational logic of origami, and is known as the leading theoretician of origami mathematics, which uses paper origami models to understand mathematical concepts and apply them to disciplines like architecture, robotics and molecular biology. In 2008, Demain collaborated with his father on an artistic collection of mathematical origami which was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and ultimately incorporated into the museum’s permanent collection.
It's that time of year again... Joy Unspeakable Homeschool Band program is enrolling new students for the Spring 2011 semester. Since 2004, we have had band classes for all students ages 3 through high school graduation. We have added a Music Theory class for any student – the student does not have to be enrolled in our band classes. There is also a Festival Band class for students who take lessons elsewhere, and do not enroll in our band classes, but would like the opportunity to participate in the "Large Group Performance Evaluation" known more commonly as "Festival."
Students who enroll for Spring 2011 will be eligible to participate in Marching Band 2011.
Our Georgia band program meets in Bremen, GA.
Our Alabama band program meets at First Assembly Christian School, Ashland, AL.
Please contact me for further information. Thank you,
Amber South
Director, Joy Unspeakable Homeschool Band and First Assembly Christian School Band programs
This is an awesome site with lots of FREE downloads including (but definitely not limited to... ):
Veteran's Day Lapbook
January Planner
Math Primer
Spelling Primer
Charlotte Mason eBook
...and much, much more!!!!
Francis Collins is best known for his leadership of the Human Genome Project, which completed a genetic map of the entire human genome in 2003. Collins grew up on a farm in rural Virginia, where he was homeschooled until the sixth grade. An outspoken Evangelical Christian, Collins publishedThe Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief in 2006,arguing for the compatibility of science and Christian faith. In 2007 Collins formed the BioLogos Foundation to ”contribute to the public voice that represents the harmony of science and faith.” President Barack Obama nominated Collins to the position of Director of the National Institutes of Health in 2009. Collins accepted the nomination and was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Track Santa's Sleigh on Christmas Eve! Those wacky scientists at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) use four high-tech systems to track Santa - radar, satellites, Santa Cams and jet fighter aircraft. Not only that, they provide lots of pre-Christmas Eve activities just for kids including:
*Visit Santa's Kids' Countdown Village - Visit this website each day in December to receive updates from the North Pole and discover surprises (activities like wordsearches and crossword puzzles).
*Watch Holiday Cheer Videos - Watch videos created by students to celebrate Santa. And on December 24th visit NORAD's site to see the video feed from Santa Cams positioned around the world.
*Track Santa with Your Mobile Phone - On December 24th use "Google Maps for Mobile" to track Santa's location worldwide.
*Track Santa Through Google Earth - On Christmas Eve head to the NORAD site to track Santa's flight in Google Earth.
*About Santa - Watch a video of Santa reciting, The Night Before Christmas. Read FAQs about Santa and NORAD. Find out how many cookies Santa eats on Christmas Eve.
*About NORAD - Find out why NORAD tracks Santa and how they do it!
An extensive library of state-of-the-art dissection alternatives that are available on a FREE loan basis to students, teachers, school boards and others interested in advancing science education without harming animals.
"Backyard Conservation" shows you how conservation practices that help conserve and improve natural resources on agricultural land across the country can be adapted for use around your home. These practices help the environment and can make your yard more attractive and enjoyable. Most backyard conservation practices are easy to use. America's farmers and ranchers have been using these practices successfully for decades. (downloadable)
Few contemporary writers are as well known or highly regarded as Margaret Atwood. What is not well known is that the Canadian novelist, poet, and literary critic was homeschooled through the sixth grade. Atwood spent much of her childhood following her dad around the backwoods of Northern Quebec, where he worked as a forest entomologist, learning to be at home in nature and to learn naturally at home. A long-time environmental activist and vegetarian, no doubt the time in the woods with her father played a role in igniting Atwood’s love of animals and the environment. Atwood’s latest novel, The Year of the Flood (2009), envisions the future emergence of a new environmentally rooted science/religion hybrid in the wake of a massive ecological disaster caused by genetic engineering experiments. The book contains several religious hymns written by Atwood, who has indicated that her own religious beliefs are similar to those displayed in the book.
Apply Online! Find A Armed Forces Job Or Employment Application
Each day, the brave men and women of our armed forces keep this country safe and protect civilians from threats we don’t even know about. Exciting career opportunities are waiting for those willing to join our armed forces and the United States government can offer tuition assistance and the chance to see the world.
There are an astounding amount of benefits and different jobs waiting for you in any branch of our military. One of the greatest advantages is that the armed forces are always hiring. Every branch is constantly looking to hire young minds to help safeguard our nation. Another amazing benefit is that you can gain real world experience and veteran’s benefits that can help you fulfill your career goals.
Now more than ever, our brave men and women need your help. You can apply online for the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, and National Guard. Whether your passion is demolitions, speaking a foreign language, learning about other cultures, fixing and piloting helicopters, or breaking codes, there are jobs waiting for you in the military. Behind a desk or in the field, if you have a need to serve your country, want to see the world, and make money to accomplish your dreams, then the United States military wants you! http://www.job-applications.com/armed-forces-jobs/
You have got to check out the snowflake galleries on this site! The pictures are just stunning!
You will find information on:
*Natural Snowflakes – Includes a photo collection with normal and unusual forms.
*Designer Snowflakes – Watch videos of snowflakes growing in the laboratory.
*Snowflake Physics – Explore the "Snowflake Primer" to learn what snow crystals are, how they form, and why they grow in such diverse shapes.
*Snow & Ice Activities – Get some unique projects you can do with ice and snow including making your own ice spikes (sort of like ice stalagmites) using distilled water and an ice cube tray in your freezer.
