imagination and the BIG picture!

story of stuff

Wow - Our children need to know this!
Watch this short movie - it will open your eyes to our "shopping" world!
http://www.storyofstuff.com/downloads.html

This looks really useful

http://www.tutorvista.com/

Unlimited tutoring for flat monthly fee. Really cool

Homeschooling study results..

This is an extract from the Executive Summary of the research done by the Fraser Institute :

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/product_files/Homeschooling.pdf

• Home schooling continues to grow in popularity
among parents in both Canada and the US.

• There are good reasons to be suspicious about easy
comparisons between the test scores of home
schooled and other students, since it is difficult to
ensure comparable testing conditions or levels of
student participation, among other reasons. However,
the number of scholars and studies comparing
the two groups continues to grow, bolstering
older studies.

• Many studies, Canadian, American, and international,
have found that home schooled students
outperform students in both public and independent
(private) schools. One US study found that
home and private school students perform comparably
well, and that both maintain a strong advantage
over public school students.

• Home educated children enjoy no significant advantage
if one or both parents are certified teachers.

• Surprisingly, several studies have found that home
education may help eliminate the potential negative
effects of certain socio-economic factors.
Though children whose parents have university
degrees score higher on tests of academic achievement
than other home schooled children, home
education appears to mitigate the harmful effect of
low parental education levels. That is, public
schools seem to educate children of poorly educated
parents worse than do the poorly educated
parents themselves. One study found that students
taught at home by mothers who had never finished
high school scored a full 55 percentile points
higher than public school students from families
with comparable education levels.

• Despite a widespread belief that home educated
students are not adequately socialized, the preponderance
of research suggests otherwise. The average
Canadian home schooled student is regularly
involved in eight social activities outside the
home. Canadian home schoolers watch much less
television than other children, and one researcher
found that they displayed significantly fewer problems
than public school children when observed in
free play.

• Though the long-term effects of home schooling
are less well studied, both Canadian and American
findings on previously home schooled adults are
encouraging. Canadian home-schooled students
report a life satisfaction score well above their public
school peers. American studies have found indications
of a wide range of non-academic benefits
from home schooling.
The Fraser Institute 3 Home Schooling, 2nd ed.

• The widespread use of the Internet has helped the
development of social connections and pedagogical
resources of home schooling families.

• Home schooling families reportedly spend less
than US $4,000 per year per household on home
schooling though that cost does place any value on
the parents’ time. In the United States, the most
recent figures show public school spending to be
$9,644 per child.

Got to love it!!