Legalize It

So, recently friends from Oregon, the Carolinas, and a new member on our Arkansas Unschoolers list had some questions about home schooling regulations in Arkansas. So I thought I would answer what I can and include some useful links, instead of responding to all the lists, etc.

First, I want to point out that homeschooling is legal in all fifty states.

In the state of Arkansas you do not have to be a certified teacher to homeschool.

Intent to homeschool must be turned into your district superintendent's office by August 16 The link to that form is here.
http://www.arkansased.org/about/pdf/schools/hs_waiver_intent_10-11_051810.pdf .

If it is your first year home schooling they require you to drop it off in person, every year thereafter you can mail it in.

State law requires that home school students in grades 3 through 9 test every year. Parents/legal guardians that are registered for the current school year will receive written notification of the test dates, times, and site. Testing for grades 3-9 will be held April 5-16, 2010.

As in public schools, parents have the right to wait to enroll their children in homeschool kindergarten.

You have the right to choose your child's curriculum. You have the right to learn as a family in the way that best serves your family's needs.

The link to the Arkansas Department of Education's Homeschooling Page is http://www.arkansased.org/about/schools/home.html

The Homeschooling Legal Defense Association has put together a pdf file summarizing the homeschooling laws in AR. It can be found here. http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/Arkansas.pdf

Arkansas has many support groups! here are e-mail lists and playdays for everyone from religious homeschoolers to unschoolers (whole life learners) . Google your preference!

In Northwest Arkansas there is a cooperative day program for homeschoolers that icludes fun classes and lots of social interaction. My kids took ballet, spansh, knitting, acting, literature, etc. It is called The Treehouse and the link is http://www.thetreehouse4kids.org/

If you are so inclined, there is more of a free school approach provided by the Headwaters Community in Red Star, Arkansas called The Headwaters School. I have enjoyed their Halloween gatherings and Junebug Jams for years. They offer two days a week of unstructured learning with amazing teachers who facilitate the kids own natural curiosity. their link is

http://headwaters-school.org/

I hope i have answered some of the questions you all have been asking! Also I would like to point out that Barnes and Noble, Hastings, Office Depot all give teacher discounts to homeschooling parents! Make a copy of your intent to homeschool and they will hook you up!

Please contact me if you have any tricky questions and we will sort them out!

OH! And my favorite home schooling magazine is Home Education Magazine. You can find them here

http://www.homeedmag.com/

They have a great getting started section, with a printable phamplet, and if you are new to or curious about homeschooling they will send you a complimentary issue!

Anyhow, happy learning!

Shakespeare and summer camp

So the older two have returned from summer camp, where Sol focused on rocketry and archery, while Ivy enjoyed the trapeze and horsemanship. There were also tidbits of other little projects, Ivy's Chinese writing, Sol's wooden painted airplanes and other toys for Arlo. I love the energy that fills the house when they return, skin golden with just a little sunburn, stories and laughter and reconnecting with their younger brother and sister. suitcases dumped into the laundry and squeals of joy that we have the movie Ponyo which they have wanted to see for so long.
We have begun reading Usborne Stories From Shakespeare, as that is a general interest. We started with Hamlet at Sol's request. Then we looked up facts about Hamlet from a little book we got called 101 Things You Didn't Know About Shakespeare....did you know that Shakespeare most likely had a cameo in the original production of Hamlet, playing the ghost of Hamlet's father? Or that having ghostly apparitions appear onstage may have been a way to calm down the notoriously rowdy Elizabethan crowds, get their attention, and cause them to shut up and watch the play.
Hamlet should be Netflixing it to our house soon, so I thought it would be good to read the middle school level story first, so we could follow the plot together without too much help.
Free range learning...it's a wonderful thing!

Imperfectly

So we are dog-sitting our beloved canine friend Louie. He is super sweet and super big. Arlo and Aley have already had a tussle about our Harry Potter cloak, all I have accomplished is pouring two bowls of cereal and cutting out a a hand drawn jet for little Mr. And then, they are off in orbit, totally enthralled in their game, bellies full, dogs off cavorting in the woods instead of barking at each other by my door.

I am not perfect. Homeschoooling, especially radical unschooling, is a messy, zany pursuit on the best day. Today is a day for trust and music and LOTS of coffee!

So i leave you with these thoughts....

As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.
Thomas Carlyle

Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.
Thomas de Quincey

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.
Ben Okri

Attack of the were-poodle

The older two are away at camp, so Arlo and Aley have been spending tons of time in imaginative play. They have been cracking me up left and right. First they took the bubble pipes and played "sherlocks". This was followed by pretending to be on a roller coaster similation ride, like the one at Chuck E Cheese. Somehow this evolved into a game where Aley was a werepoodle. As in werewolf/poodle. With no irony.
Sometimes my life is too sweet.
If I sit still and pretend to read my book, they just keep going and I observe the whole thing.
Perfect.
Did you know were poodles travel in colonies?

Books Are My Drug

I have an addiction. And I don't wanna get better. My addiction is books! So this post is to mention some of my favorites for kids and adults.
First, the baby set. The little adorable plump love bundle set!
I love the board books of Charley Harper's ABC's and 123's. Charley Harper was a naturalist and an author. Check out his work at http://charleyharper.com/. I also enjoy Nikki McClure's from A to Nap. You can see her work here http://www.nikkimcclure.com/. and of course, board books of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle are always nice!
As far as picture books go, my current favorites are Wave by Suzy Lee, A Dignity of Dragons by Jaqueline K. Ogburn, and Nicolas, Where Have you Been? by Leo Lionni.
For second graders The Sisters Grimm series is really popular. They are fairy tale detectives, and have magical fun solving crime.
For middlers I have enjoyed a series of mysteries by Blue Balliet (currently the Middle School Mystery Club at Nightbird Books is reading them). Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and The Calder Game. They all involve puzzles, codes, and art!
Also The Book of Elsewhere by Jacqueline West is a new one that is gret for upper middlers (10-12 year olds)
Of course there are a lot of teen novels out there, but Alice in Wonderland is a perennial favorite. Also The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.
And for us older folks; Serena by Ron Rasch was a lush, suspenseful surprise. And Just Kids, Patti Smith's transcendent memoir about her early days in New York City with fellow artist Robert Mapplethorpe is the best book I have read this year. Beautiful!
For now that is all I can post...there is a book calling my name. You can, if you are in fayettevlle, find these and more at Nightbird Books!

Call me Tex

Arlo wants me to change my name to Tex. "Isn't that a cool name, Mama?"
In other news, we are still learning and growing together. We are all sort of catching the tide of Sol's Shakespeare kick, our Netflix queue is full of biographies and documentaries on the bard, as well as performances of several plays. I ordered the Usborne Stories of Shakespeare, a beautiful hardback book that turns the plays into stories for kiddos. This will make Aley happy, since she is obsessed with reading Romeo and Juliet! They will be our bedtime reading for awhile. Sol's reader friendly copy of Hamlet is here, and that is prett neat. Shakespearian text on one page, translation into modern English on the right.
Sol watched Nova, his favorite PBS program last night, whle the rest of us splashed in the pool. It was about cuttlefish, odd little guys! After the kids went to bed, I added tons of Nova DVDs to our Netflix.
I love unschooling. We all unschool. We all pursue our interests and take time to smell the roses!
I asked Arlo what kind of books he wanted me to get him from Nightbird, and he said,"Books about animals. Hippopotamus, turtle, all the animals"
Life is good. And life is for learning.

Good times...

Last night we had a semi-large gathering of folks at our house, including twelve kiddos, and it was downright awesome. The kids splashed in the pool, the adults had long deep talks, a gaggle of girls went to our blackberry patches twice and came back with baskets of berries that were gobbled up right there on the deck by the little tribe. On Saturday, while I was working, Cheyne and the kids siphoned pond water to fill up our three foot pool, so we didn't have to use our well water. Talk about a learning experience! All of the kids expressed amazement that water could move like that.
There is just a sense of harmony, of syncing with each other, that has been missing from our little nest.
It is a really great beginning!
And does anything taste more like summer than a fresh, ripe blackberry, picked by a child?