To home school or not to home school?

My last post I really railed on issues not being addressed by our leaders. Today I wanted to talk a little about the education dilemma.

My daughter is soon to be 4, and most children her age are getting ready to start preschool/head start. We have opted not to send our daughter to preschool and to do it at home. There are many resources out there for education at home. My favorite is abcteach.com. They have free printable and for a small membership fee you can get even more. I love the site.

Now here is the first issue that I am facing. Organizing a time to sit down and have her work on it and do it properly. I have a 1-year-old also and it is hard to get the two of them to cooperate to work on this. Also, I do not want to be overbearing and I want to have patients when working with her, but I find myself getting frustrated when she wants to scribble instead of write. I know that you have to be stern and organized to teach and I admire those who can do it! I hope that I will be able to learn this skill as I am unsure about which avenue to take with my girls education.

That brings me to the second issue. Public education is "free" if you don't count book fees, lunch fees, and probably gas fees if things don't improve with gas prices. But what kind of education are our children receiving? We rank pretty low in education when evaluated against other developed countries. Why is this??? We spend so much money and are getting further and further behind. Private schools are expensive, and with current economic issues I do not know if we will be able to afford this.

You see most of the smartest and brightest children are home schooled and private schooled. Is this because children are allowed advanced on their own level? I believe so. Students do not have to wait for a class to catch up if they are ready to advance. There is less limitations to what they can learn and there is more life experience in the learning process. Just going to the supermarket can be a big learning experience for children (especially young ones). There is more opportunity with homeschooling for hands on learning to. Going to see how things work or going to a history museum or the such to see history instead of just listening to a lecture or reading a text book (that may or may not be accurate). There seems to be so much benefit.

I do not fault teachers (at least those who are true teachers). They try their hardest with what they are given, but not enough is available. Also, teaching is a lot like the nursing profession. You have to be truly devoted to it in order for it to work for you and the students.

I have this dilemma facing me and hopefully over the next few months I will be able to establish a good schedule, and get us on the right tract!!! Any comments or suggestions are appreciated on this issue!!!

What the heck ????

Boy, where to begin!! This has been a day. News is bad for our country right now. Jobs are down, the economy sucks, you can't afford to drive to work if you are lucky to have a job; and what are our politicians doing and our candidates doing? Going around the world trying to improve our reputation around the world and talk about how much money in aide we are going to give them!! Outrageous!!!

This all started this morning while watch my morning dose of GMA. It is hard to believe the job market crash that is going on. And folks it is a crash, don't let these so called experts fool anyone. I am so tired of hearing how we are not in that bad of shape and that we will bounce back in no time!!! BULL!!!! I am really concerned about things and the way they are going. Now I am a pretty upbeat person and usually always see a silver lining in any storm cloud, but right now all I can see is the storm and a storm that is going to last for a long time.

It is funny though, I "retired" from nursing and of course the medical field is seeing growth. But at what price. I got out of the field because it did not give the flexibility for me and my families needs and because there is such an influx of people getting into the field, the passion is gone. No more are people going into it because they have a deep desire for meeting the needs of people, no longer are nursing schools being selective about who they let into programs just pay and your in. Now I am not saying that all are bad, but many are. People are taking the jobs and getting the education because they have no other options. But this is having a negative effect on the profession. I know this first hand and is one reason that I am out. I was tired of having to clean up after incompetency and working for people that were incompetent and liars. They were in positions that they lied and wiggles and kissed butt to get into and had no true qualifications!! I was tired of being called by lawyers for information on issues that people had with care (I have never been named in a lawsuit) and have decided to sue and asked to give my opines on care and whether or not it was satisfactory. In most cases it was not in my opine and I guess I should leave it at that!!!!

Then this evening I was watching BBC America. I have gotten to where I like to watch this show because you do not have any tiptoeing around to make a political agenda happy like many newscasts here in our wonderful US. I was really surprised how much stuff gets left out of our news casts. I am referring to the news casts on the BIG three networks that just about everybody with a tv can get, if you watch CNN, FOX news or the such you may hear more. I really got upset that the focus of our presidential candidates were to go over seas on tours right now. Both are senators and should be working on helping figure out how the heck to help this great nation out of the bind that it is in. We are selling out companies to over seas investors, sending our jobs over seas and watching our own suffer. Where are these movie stars who are concerned about things in Africa and china at when our own country is in need. Oh, I forgot they are over in France giving birth to babies and buying vacations home in England and where ever else they want to spend there millions!!!

People talk about illegal immigrants taking our jobs away and using up our public aid funds. I think our bigger problem is how much we are sending out of this country. We need to focus on that. Of course if we do not focus on it soon, we will not have to worry about illegal immigration because who would want to come here if things continue on a downward spiral like it is.

I know this has been a pretty negative sounding entry, but dog gone it. I am tired of this. I am worried about my children in this situation. How will there education be paid for, we know the government can't pay enough for our children to get the education they deserve and we can not afford to pay higher taxes to get an increase in education. You can not afford private school and put food on your table, and home schooling is becoming more and more under scrutiny by the government and they want to be able to control that now too. Our food supply can not be guarded against disease because the FDA can not do the job they should be ding, and our drugs (medical) are now killing us!!!

I DO LOVE THIS COUNTRY! I recognize the many good things, but recently it just has been sucky news!!! If I was living in another country I may not be able to freely express my opinions in this format!!!! Thanks to all our service people for that!!!!!

Okay, I am going to do it!

I have been thinking about doing something for years now, and now I am going to do it!! I am going to start my own business.

I am a crafter and have thought about starting my own business is crafting for a number of years. I have finally decided to go ahead and start it. I have been trying to get a job as a medical transcriptionist from home without any luck. I took a course from home and had high hopes. It cost a pretty good chunk of money and put my family out on a little financial limb. You hear that it is a fast growing need, and as a registered nurse, thought it would be a perfect fit for me. After almost two months after completion of my program and submission of a lot of resumes, I still have no job. With gas prices and child care costs, it does not pay for me to work outside the home. So my answer is to start my own business.

I know that there will be a lot of work involved and lots of time to spend, but I am hoping that it will be worth it in the long run. Many people are successful at their little home adventures, and hey, I have nothing to lose, I would spend money on crafting goods anyway!!!

My husband is behind me 100% and my two daughters want to help. Of course they are just 3 and 1. It will be interesting.

I feel fortunate that I am able to make this try of it. We do not need much more additional income right now, but things are going down hill so fast that it won't be long before we do need more to just to maintain food on our table and a roof over our heads. My prayers are there for those who are already in that situation.

Wish me luck!!! More to come!