A Quick Tip

Quick Tip

Six Great Things About Homeschooling!

By Christine Field

Quick! What are the top six things you absolutely LOVE about 

homeschooling? Do they include...

(1) The joy of meeting your child's learning needs - wherever 

they are. In homeschooling, we soon forget if our child is 

"ahead" or "behind." We work with them at their own level 

of need, and speed.

(2) Scheduling flexibility. Start school at 8 a.m., 1 p.m.,

7 p.m., or any time in between! The work schedule of spouses 

and others can be accommodated to allow for more family time.

(3) Following your child's interests. If your young child 

takes a fancy to butterflies, you can study butterflies to 

your heart's content...at the library, on field trips to 

botanical gardens, state parks and other learning centers, etc. 

You are not bound to only study butterflies when your child 

is in 3rd grade, during the 5th month of instruction.

(4) Helping your child see connections. Studying butterflies 

is more than an insect study. Delve into color, art, the 

science and physics of how they fly, scientific discoveries, 

the role of butterflies in human history, in costumes, 

and their etymology - what does the word "butterfly" mean, anyway?

(5) Having all your kids together. While you sometimes want to 

pull your hair out at the prospect of another day of 

all-together-time, having them home is a special time in your 

family's life.

(6) Being able to stay in your pajamas all day! Your child 

doesn't have to wait until Pajama Day at school. Every day 

can be Pajama Day, or crazy hair day, or, today we're having 

dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner day, 

or we're all wearing something green day...or...

What about you? Make a list of your top six and come share 

them on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/homeschoolinc)

---------

Christine Field is an author, attorney and speaker. To learn more about her 

writing and ministry, visit MomLifeNavigator.com.

www.avko.org 

Life is about Making Choices

Life is about Making Choices

John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"

He was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, "I don't get it!

You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"

He replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or ... you can choose to be in a bad mood.

I choose to be in a good mood."

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or...I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or... I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.

"Yes, it is," he said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood.

You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live your life."

I reflected on what he said. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw him about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins...Wanna see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

"The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter," he replied. "Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or...I could choose to die. I chose to live."

"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.

He continued, "..the paramedics were great.

They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read 'he's a dead man'. I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said John. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. Yes, I replied.”

The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, “Gravity.”

Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude... I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.

Attitude, after all, is everything.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34.

After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

www.avko.org

Could /fish/ be spelled "ghoti"

Could /fish/ be spelled "ghoti" or "-fici"?

To illustrate the weirdness of English spelling, George Bernard Shaw once said we might as well spell the word fish "ghoti." The fact of the matter is, Shaw was only partially right but 100% wrong!

True, the gh may be pronounced /f/ as in laugh.
The o may be pronounced /i/ as in women.
The ti may be pronounced /sh/ as in nation.

But there is no word in English in which the initial letters gh are ever pronounced /f/. There is no word in English ending in ti in which the ti is pronounced /sh/.

As a matter of fact the sound /fish/ is spelled fish only in words that can be reduced to a base (morpheme) of one meaningful syllable. The words fish, fishes, fished, fishing, fisherman, fishermen, fishery, and fisheries can all be reduced to "fish."

But surely we wouldn't want to spell beneficial as benefishal or official as offishal and that should be sufficient to make my point. The sound /fish/ happens to always be spelled fici in words that have a base of more than one syllable. For the phonic patterns rarely taught in schools see The Fancy Words.

If you have comments about this website or questions concerning spelling, invented spelling, whole language, phonics, learning disabilities, homeschooling, etc., you may always e-mail DonMcCabe@aol.com. We appreciate any comments that will help us make this website even more useful.

www.spelling.org

www.avko.org

Characteristics of Good Readers

Characteristics of Good Readers:
Things that are Never Taught,
but are Somehow Learned

To list all the many things good readers learn that are not taught in school is almost impossible. There are so many. But I am starting a list here on this website and hope that others will add to it.

1. Good readers learn to automatically read letter combinations at the ends of words differently than the same letter combinations that form a word. For example, a good reader reads the letters t-r-y as "tree" when it comes at the end of words such as entry, pantry, country, etc. Likewise, a good reader reads the letters t-y at the end of a word as "tee" as in party, county, jaunty, nasty, and empty. At the beginnings of words t-y is usually pronounced tie as in Tyrone, tyre (British spelling), typhoid, and typist. Tries becomes "trees" in entries, pantries, countries, etc. Ties becomes "tees" in parties, counties, and empties.
2. Good readers learn how to pronounce the -sque letter combination as sk as in Basque, masquerade, mosque, grotesque, and bisque. They learn that que at the end is /k/ as in unique, technique, and pique. View more of the specific phonic patterns that are not taught.
3. Good readers learn how to scan without being systematically taught how to scan.
4. Good readers can use a dictionary and without being systematically taught have learned to correctly pronounce any word by using the dictionary diacritics.
5. Good readers can read dialects in print. For example, the following are definitions from Dictionary for Yankees and other uneducated people by Bil Dwyer. Bad--a place for sleep or rest. Bail--this rings on Sunday mornings. Bait--What people do on "hawse" racing.
6. Good readers know the conventions cartoonists use to indicate thinking, motion, speed, dreaming, as well as talking.
7. Good readers catch satire and puns.
8. Good readers enjoy reading.
9. Good readers know how to find things in catalogs and can use telephone directories and anything with an index.

www.avko.org

www.spelling.org

Beauty of Mathematics

Beauty of Mathematics

Sequential Inputs of numbers with 8 1 x 8 + 1 = 9 12 x 8 + 2 = 98 123 x 8 + 3 = 987 1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876 12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765 123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654 1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543 12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432 123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321 Sequential 1's with 9 1 x 9 + 2 = 11 12 x 9 + 3 = 111 123 x 9 + 4 = 1111 1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111 12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111 123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111 1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111 12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111 123456789 x 9 + 10 = 1111111111 Sequential 8's with 9 9 x 9 + 7 = 88 98 x 9 + 6 = 888 987 x 9 + 5 = 8888 9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888 98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888 987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888 9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888 98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888 Numeric Palindrome with 1's 1 x 1 = 1 11 x 11 = 121 111 x 111 = 12321 1111 x 1111 = 1234321 11111 x 11111 = 123454321 111111 x 111111 = 12345654321 1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321 11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321 111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321 Without 8 12345679 x 9 = 111111111 12345679 x 18 = 222222222 12345679 x 27 = 333333333 12345679 x 36 = 444444444 12345679 x 45 = 555555555 12345679 x 54 = 666666666 12345679 x 63 = 777777777 12345679 x 72 = 888888888 12345679 x 81 = 999999999 Sequential Inputs of 9 9 x 9 = 81 99 x 99 = 9801 999 x 999 = 998001 9999 x 9999 = 99980001 99999 x 99999 = 9999800001 999999 x 999999 = 999998000001 9999999 x 9999999 = 99999980000001 99999999 x 99999999 = 9999999800000001 999999999 x 999999999 = 999999998000000001 ...................................... Sequential Inputs of 6 6 x 7 = 42 66 x 67 = 4422 666 x 667 = 444222 6666 x 6667 = 44442222 66666 x 66667 = 4444422222 666666 x 666667 = 444444222222 6666666 x 6666667 = 44444442222222 66666666 x 66666667 = 4444444422222222 666666666 x 666666667 = 444444444222222222 ......................................

This is a funny interesting part of math. Enjoy the beauty of mathematics in sequential numbers.