Thursday, October 22, 2009

A quick note

As for science: We're trying a little LifePac for 8th grade. Only comment? Hmmm....withholding judgment. I'll decide by the end of the first book. Not sure why I got the first 4th grade book; my daughter is already studying solar systems rather than plants. By the way, you can buy LifePacs a book at a time from Alpha and Omega Publishing for those who want to try it and see or simply don't have the money to buy it all at once. The biggest difference is in the shipping costs.

Now for a bit of humor-filled encouragement/advice for those "rebellious" firebrand homeschooling families, a cute post from Lee Binz. http://www.thehomescholar.com/parents-hang-together.php

Friday, October 2, 2009

From science to World Wars

As I mentioned previously, we are studying the book World War I as an additional study to the boys' co-op classes. This book studies the causes of World War I and how it built into World War II.

In the book, the author recommends viewing several movies directed by Frank Capra as propoganda for the war, and he gives some things to watch for (like the music) and how they affect the viewer.

I have been trying to figure out how to do this course, and others, at as little cost as possible so I was thrilled to find several of the recommended movies at the local library. This has been something we have talked about off and on for a long time, especially as it relates to textbook authors. Hopefully it will bring home the idea that we need to figure out who the media author is trying to accomplish whether their medium is newspaper, internet, movies, etc.

P.S. The technical side of me emerges: When typing World War I or II, use a capital I (as in the letter immediately following H in the alphabet) instead of a number 1. If you use the number one, World War number 2 becomes World War number 11. There really weren't 10 wars in between!