Elena LaVictoire's List: Homeschool resources

• Diet and sleep are inextricably intertwined.  If you think you can master your sleeping habits without improving your diet, you’re deluding yourself.  Seriously.

   

  Unfortunately most people — Americans especially — consume a truly hideous diet these days, filled with hormone-laden animal products, artificial ingredients, sugar, caffeine, salt, white flour, and heavily processed junk.  An unhealthy diet will tax your endocrine system (which is responsible for hormone production), and that is going to prevent you from enjoying restful sleep.

   

  What works well for me is a whole foods vegan diet, heavy on the raw fruits and veggies. 
• If you’ve been messing with your physiology by consuming excessive sugar, caffeine, processed foods, etc, I highly recommend you fix your diet first before attempting to master your sleep habits.  Otherwise you’re only going to frustrate yourself.
• Fresh fruit is perhaps the ideal food to eat for your last meal, especially low-sugar fruits like tomatoes, avocados, peppers, and cantaloupe.  Personally I’m not a big fan of having nothing but fruit for dinner, but when I do, I usually don’t need as much sleep, and I almost always wake up feeling more alert.  So regardless of what my mind has to say about it, my body clearly likes it.
• A very close second choice for an evening meal would be fresh veggies, especially a big salad.  After that would be lightly cooked veggies.  The less processed your evening meal, the less energy it will take to digest, and the less it will disrupt your physiology.  If you eat crap before bed, you can expect to feel like crap in the morning.

•  

  You’ve probably heard this advice before, but there’s a difference between hearing advice and applying it.  So go apply it, and get thine ass to the gym.  At the very least, run around the block for 25 minutes each morning.  If you don’t do it, you don’t know it.

   

  When I’m exercising aerobically every day for at least 20 minutes, I can shave a good hour off my sleep each night, which more than compensates for the exercise time.  I wake up feeling more alert and energetic too.  But the best part is that I enjoy better concentration and alertness all day long.  It works way better than caffeine… and without the crash.
• If you don’t like the way you spend your mornings, you may suffer the problem of waking up without getting up.  A good morning routine can help remedy that.  It’s important to have something to look forward to that makes you eager to get out of bed.

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• This is good advice for everyone, but I think it might be of particular interest to teens and young adults who have a hard time getting up in the morning.
  - Elena LaVictoire on 2008-03-13

• GLENN: That great Soviet State of California. They have been blazing the trail for Stalin and Marx for years.  
     
    STU: As I would say, comrade, our surge has worked in California.
• GLENN: That was perfect. Comrade, great news from the west, west Western front. As some of those hate mongering speech-loving people have pointed out earlier this week, California has decided parents do not have the constitutional right to teach their children at home.  
     
    STU: Oh, comrade, it will be a day very, very soon where that whole constitution thing, we don't have to worry about it anymore.
• GLENN: Do you have the -- and I want to make it very clear. This is not an English-only program. That would be wrong. Do you have the English version of this song? The Soviet national anthem?  
     
    STU: Comrade, I sent it to you over our state-run Internet service last week.  
     
    DAN: Yeah, I should have it by a week.  
     
    GLENN: Okay, good. Check into that, will you? 
  
• So they actually had the audacity to say that you don't have the constitutional right to teach your own children at home. Comrade.  
     
    STU: Yes, comrade.  
     
    GLENN: Some would say --  
     
    STU: Yes.  
     
    GLENN: Some would say that God gives man his rights. God gives man his children and God gives man the right to raise his children as he feels fit and man lends those rights to the state and man can take those rights back because they don't even belong to him truly; they belong to God.  
     
    STU: Well, comrade, people who believe that get shot.  
     
    GLENN: Silly, isn't it?  
     
    STU: Here in the Soviet Union.  
     
    GLENN: (Laughing). Oh, my goodness. California, what are you doing? Recent decision in California does two things. It removes the parent as the primary decision maker as what's best for their own children. You love that. Two, it gives the state the sole power to decide what it is able to teach your children. There are 166,000 students in California alone that are homeschooled. Courts have a long history of telling parents what they have to say or how little they have to say in what is taught in the public classroom. Even the liberal ninth circuit court ruled that parents -- I'm quoting, parents have a right to inform their children as they wish on the subject of sex. However they have no constitutional right to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines it is appropriate to do so. 
     
    So not just sex but anything. Anything. The Sixth Circuit held that parents do not have the fundamental right generally to direct how a public school teaches their child.
• Isn't it very telling that the judge doesn't tell parents that they should send their kids to school to get a better education? Nowhere in here is "Because public school could provide a better education." Well, why wouldn't the judge say that? I mean, isn't that the greatest reason to send them to public school? Because it's a better education? Yeah. Can't really say that, can you? No. Because generally speaking, nationally speaking on the national average, homeschool kids do better on tests. Homeschool kids do better in college. Homeschool kids do better at work. Why? Because homeschooled kids haven't been coddled, haven't been talked down to, they've had rules that actually make sense and apply. They're enforced! They've got to get the job done. They're held accountable. They're what I like to call in the real world.

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• Glenn Beck's hilarious take on the homeschooling calamity in California.
  - Elena LaVictoire on 2008-03-12

• Great site - science for kids.  Includes the periodic table and more
  - Elena LaVictoire on 2008-03-09

• Good for students and teachers!
  - Elena LaVictoire on 2008-03-04

• a great list of resources for students and teachers
  - Elena LaVictoire on 2008-03-04

• Judges H. Walter Croskey, Joan Klein, and Patti Kitching of the Second Appellate Court then made an extraordinary ruling. They held that the California Educational Code Section 48222 that exempts private school students from compulsory attendance at government-run schools only applies to those enrolled in traditional private schools. This goes against two previous home school cases handled by HSLDA, that upheld the right of homeschools to operate as private schools: People v. Darrah, No. 853104 (Santa Maria Mun. Ct. Mar. 10, 1986); People v. Black, No. 853105 (Santa Maria Mun. Ct. Mar. 10, 1986).
• What is the truly scary part of the Second Appellate Court ruling for religious homeschoolers is the rejection of the Longs' right to homeschool based on their religious beliefs.

• "[The Longs'] statements are conclusional, not factually specific. Moreover, such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to home school his or her child."

  
  So the State gets to decide whether a family is homeschooling for religious reasons NOT the family itself
• , parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their
  children.
• The judge was ruling totally against the precedents. The family was in compliance. They weren't even filing as a "home-based private school". They were using an ISP. And ACCREDITED ISP, even.
  
  This is bad for us here, and we're working on how to handle this. We're not sure what the aftermath is going to be about this. I believe that they can appeal, since there are higher courts available

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• The California apellate court once again legislates from the bench- this time to the detriment of homeschoolers!
  - Elena LaVictoire on 2008-03-03

• 
  What I focus on is variety. I have containers with groupings of items such as blocks, marbles, paper/crayons, and clay which are called centers. On Monday’s I replace each center with five new ones, containing new items
• I try to find inexpensive things to add to centers such as .99 cents puzzles and clay from the discount stores. I have allowed him to play with some colorful plastic hair rollers that are assorted sizes. He loves to stack them and watch them fall. He has dominoes, cards, mini blocks, large blocks and homemade lacing boards. I made the lacing boards out of cardboard that I punched wholes in with a hole puncher. I wrapped scotch tape around one end of the yarn to form a sturdy point and then attached the other end of the yarn to the cardboard. children will work tirelessly to try and lace the entire board

• Some good ideas here about occupying toddlers while homeschooling the older kids. - Elena LaVictoire on 2008-02-27