Homeschool College Admissions - Links

info I'm collecting and reading for one of the MN workshops...in no particular order and certainly not complete

Stanford on Homeschool Admissions
Learn in Freedom: Colleges that Admit Homeschoolers
Info from the College Board
Air Force Academy Admissions Guidelines
Redeemer Pacific College
Christendom College
Accreditation Issues - NAPCIS
Thomas Aquinas College
Ave Maria
Thomas More College
more from Thomas More

Special Needs:

http://www.professorsadvice.com/

Cursorily related...

http://stanthonypaduainstitute.org/default.htm

Isn't it sad...

that reading and learning are often considered important only for children? The ironic thing is that when parents are interested in learning, it is a huge benefit to their children's education.

One of the most frustrating things...

about offensive content in movies and television is that it has caused a lot of well-meaning people to assume that all movies and television that have no offensive content are good.

A little good news in Hollywood

With all the tabloids and popular magazines screaming at you in supermarket check-out lanes, you can't help but notice the latest news on who divorced whom, who's getting married the 5th time (or more) and other depressing things. So it was nice to open up this month's Reader's Digest and read that Jeff Bridges has been happily married to his wife for 28 years. Now THAT'S worth mentioning. :)

Minnesota Catholic Homeschool Conference

I'll be giving a couple of workshops here later this year.

My Godfather

We lost track of my godfather for many years and I have in fact, never met him. My parents knew him when my dad did engineering contract work for the Air Force for a year back in the 60s. He was all over the world when I was born so there was a proxy for my baptism. We tracked him down a few years back where he was the pastor of a parish in Massachusetts and I was able to speak with him on the phone (I remember talking to him on the phone just one other time - when I received my first communion), but I seem to have lost track of him again. I hope to meet him one day. I wrote this post mostly so I wouldn't lose the above link yet again.

Catholic Homeschool Companion

Here is the new cover art for the Catholic Homeschool Companion. I think it's supposed to start shipping in about two weeks. I'm really excited to get my hands on a copy, partly because I have an essay in there sharing thoughts and experiences on homeschooling highschoolers (based largely on my own experience as a homeschooled student), but also because it's filled with essays by lots of different people on homeschooling. I tend to enjoy writings of people sharing their wisdom and experience with education more than that of "the experts."

It's neat to see some familiar "faces" in the table of contents; a friend from my old San Diego homeschool group (hard to believe we left there almost eight years ago), one of our local homeschool Dads and lots of people that I've had the privledge of getting to know via the Internet over the years.

Mom says the funny thing this time

I brought Ria to the doctor's the other day to have stitches removed from her foot. When explaining to her doctor what had happened, I accidentally said "The hospital had her in stitches for 10 days." Doesn't sound too unpleasant.

Picky, Picky

Part of our kids' night-time prayer routine is an extensive Litany of the Saints, concluding with the kids' patron saints (done in pairs) followed by "Pray for Us" (or the Latin "Orate Pro Nobis" which they like to randomly interchange). The other night Terri was leading prayers and went through the Patron Saints. After she named Kate's two patron saints and everyone responded "Pray for Us", Kate started screaming "No!" in a very loud voice. This resulted in universal giggles from the other children who are, at this point, neither surprised nor shocked at her occasional outbursts. The laughs continued and eventually increased as Kate's face slowly changed from anger to a quirky smile. "They already did me," she very sweetly explained.

"Gus" starts a Geography Blog

He and I are working on this project together. We're trying to talk "Ria", our history buff, into joining us, as a lot of historical geography is included on things like the Geography Bee (and "Ria", by the way, did very well on the Geography Bee herself - she had the highest score going into the final round).

Memed

My sister memed me. I think this is easily turning into a Confession Meme for me partly because I don't do a lot of things by habit; if anything I'm weird about not having a lot of habits.

Rules: "The first player of this game starts with the topic "five weird habits of yourself," and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don't forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says "You are tagged" (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours."

1. I talk to the other cars when I'm driving around (with the windows closed). It's quite polite (and embarrassingly silly - "Okay, Mister, I've got the right-of-way here...") as I'm used to driving lots of little kids around. But it was pretty embarassing when I caught myself doing this while driving my 20 year old nephew around one day.

2. I hate parking my monstrous 15 passenger van. I park excessively far away from stores, even in mucky winter weather. Snow doesn't generally keep me off the roads, but I once skipped my son's gymnastics class because I didn't want to deal with the messy, snowy parking lot.

3. I lose my keys habitually. This is mostly because I don't habitually carry a purse, but rely upon pockets instead. I've discovered that also habitually having a messy desk is a nasty combination. (I'm currently working on breaking this habit by carrying a purse). Yawn.

4. I start lots of books and generally finish less than half of them.

5. I take a lot of those silly quizzes people put on their blogs but almost never post them on my blog. Let’s see… according to these quizzes, I’m Katharine Hepburn, Joan of Arc, Indiana Jones, Lady Cordelia Flyte, Pope Pius X, and Dumbledore; from the Numenorean Race; a golden retriever puppy, a child of the 80s, and was in fact written by Dr. Seuss. I highly object, however, to the quiz that labeled me 100% British. Holy Saint Brigid! Sure, I like Chesterton, Tolkien and Lewis… and Jane Austen… and Edmund Campion… and Shakespeare… and Rumer Godden… and Hilaire Belloc… and P.G. Wodehouse…and Evelyn Waugh well enough, but there’s not a drop of British blood in me!

I'll tag Nutmeg since she tagged me last time (and follow Clairity's example of just tagging one person).

Whaddya Know About That?

"Gus" won our local Catholic Homeschool group's Geography Bee (As part of the National Geographic Bee)! Afterwards he took the written test, which was very difficult, and we don't expect that he's made it to the state level, but we'll find out soon (I hope!).

Kid Stuff

We ate at our favorite Chinese restaurant last night (which, by the way, is a really good place to take a large family - and none of that nonsense about kids' meals - cheeseburger, pizza, chicken fingers or corn dog no matter what the restaurant, argh!) with the whole family. We really had a great time and the kids were amazingly well-behaved (we do give them a little reminder before we enter a restaurant - no running, no yelling, no jumping, etc.). We did laugh a lot which, fortunately, didn't seem to bother the others in the "banquet room". One lady, who had been sitting behind us, stopped by on her way out to compliment the family. What a sweet thing to do. Moms, especially, can tend to feel so conspicuous in restaurants.

Anyway, back to the laughing part. The funniest thing was "Frank" putting a chopstick in his water glass, thinking it was a straw, and then acting exactly like he had just had a sip when he pushed the glass away. "Kate" said something extremely funny just before the chopstick incident, but now I just can't remember.

"Kate" is just funny in general right now. She's one of the few morning people in our family. She goes to bed kicking and kranky, but wakes up with the biggest, brightest smiles imaginable. Here are a few of her funny sayings... the dog kennel is a "dog tunnel" and "Ria"'s crutches (which she's, thankfully, done with now) were "crunches".

By the way, I don't think there's anything quite as precious as watching an extremely eager almost-two-year-old try to learn and repeat the sounds animals make. "Frank" was so darn cute last night - especially when he was arguing with me about whether a cow said "Mmmmmmm" (which he insisted on) or "Moooooooo".

Well, we're off to the local Geography Bee today. "Ria" had a lot of fun last year and is looking forward to going again. "Gus" is ecstatic. He's been waiting for this for a long time and is finally old enough to participate. He's also enjoying the fact that he has four more chances to participate after this year.

Now I Know Why...

Cinderella Man has a long wait on Netflix. Look here, here and here
One of these days I'll see it! :)

Some thoughts on offense and conversion

I woke up this morning before the children and decided not to just surf the Net. Age quod agis. But what should I do? There are dishes, laundry, website work, etc.

I finally settled on a little spiritual reading and pulled out Cardinal Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity. Good choice. Just what I need right now.

Here is a little story I want to share from the book. I love how Ratzinger shares a Jewish story in a book introducing Christianity. That in itself is interesting and wonderful for a lot of reasons. But here is the story (in the first chapter on "Belief in the World of Today.")

An adherent of the Enlightenment [writes Buber], a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him too and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi's room he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, wrapped in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly and said, "But perhaps it is true after all". The scholar tried in vain to collect himself - his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Jizchak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: "My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and nor can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true." The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible "perhaps" which echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance. (pgs. 20-21, cited from M. Buber, Works, Vol. III, Munich-Heidelberg, 1963, p. 348)

It contains a great deal of truth in itself, but also reminds me of some other tidbits about conversion - like Evelyn Waugh's "Tug on the Thread" from Brideshead Revisited and even this little piece I was reading today from Barb Nicolosi's blog. Her blog has a tendency to keep my perspective in check. She's a little feisty, perhaps, and I'm sure some take offense at her strong opinions. But I think it's easy today to become a too-comfortable Christian with lots of leisure to be offended by things. We're not going to win the culture war by being offended and boycotting organizations that offend us. A particular organization may choose not to offend us in the future, which isn't a bad thing, but no hearts will be changed and moved by this.

I think we need, on occasion, to swallow some of that offense in order to look at what other people need and see what we can do to change the culture, even in a very small way. If we can stand having an open, honest discussion with someone who doesn't believe, or who doesn't see the world the way we do - one in which we do a lot of listening and trying to understand - we can perhaps just plant a little seed. But maybe that seed will turn out to be a mustard seed, eh?

This to me is part of the joy of homeschooling. I can teach my children (with the assistance of God's grace through prayer and the sacraments) to enjoy and appreciate the fullness of the Church's teachings and the Unity of Truth, the "marriage" of faith and reason. They can appreciate Science partly because it is learning about God through his creation (and partly because it's fun and interesting - why should we be surprised at that when God is ALL goodness). They can see how great works of literature, sometimes inadvertently, will tend to confirm timeless teachings of the Church. They can build their own "skeptometer" in order not to be swayed by everything they read, but to "test everything and hold fast to what is true" (I'm paraphrasing here). And perhaps someday, they will go out into the world and be more interested in planting seeds (ESPECIALLY mustard seeds! [grin] ) than being angry and frustrated that other people out there don't agree with the Church already.

Age quod agis

That's a Latin phrase I picked up last year and I decided it's what I need to focus on for my New Year's Resolution.

Do what you are doing.