The Conference was Great--Quiz and Prizes for You!!

It was great. It worked out well and was well attended--close to a little bit over 1,000 people came to a resort for two days to learn about homeschooling, or be reassured in the way that they are already homeschooling. The kids had fantastic workshops--fairy house building--my daughter did this with my husband and they built an intricate area of pine cones with grasses woven through and a shovel that my daughter made out of a branch and a leaf. The plant material was donated by a conservatory in the area which had been collecting it for a couple of months. My son enjoyed two sessions of foam sword making, including participating in full scale battles during the second advanced sword making session. Kind of scary to see your son waving a foam sword at a bunch of other 10 and 11 year old boys who were also brandishing their cushy weapons at your son. I'm able to report that no one was seriously hurt in the battles. Both of my kids went to a Series of Unfortunate Events workshop where they had been warned off of it in the registration form--they persisted and went any way. I think it turned out OK. There were no scary real estate agents or exploding door knobs. There were other unfortunate things, but the kids both survived those too.

As a family, we attended a workshop where we could see animals close up. This wonderful veterinarian has travelled all over and is very knowledgeable about animal behavior. Therefore, we saw and were able to pet: an opossum, an alligator, a hedgehog, a snake, and an ostrich. None of those animals posed any kind of threat to us as they were gently held by the vet. He walked up and down each row of seats and talked the entire time about the habits and characteristics of the animal he was carrying. We looked at a tarantula and didn't handle it, because we would have been a threat to it--we would have made it too nervous.

Look:



Here it comes, kids.

Poky, but not harmful if touched correctly.

Here, he is speaking to the ostrich directing it to turn left or right or go forward.

Um...uh oh.

Really? It won't bite us? They don't bite, unless for food? Are you sure?! OK, I'll touch it, after this little kid does first...


Tarantula.

The talent show was a huge success as well. I stopped myself from full on embarrassment by cutting short the "fun" homeschooling quiz I thought we'd all do together...uh...no. So, I changed directions fast and proceeded to introduce the kids and they killed. Very talented and fun kids in various ways: some amazing Suzuki students playing violins and a cello; a very nervous trombone player who pulled it off any way and got through his entire piece; a little hula hooper; a kid who stood on his head and sang Consider Yourself from the musical Oliver (OK, that was my son. People liked his shtick); a girl who in a very poised way spoke into the microphone and explained that she's been taking a gymnastics class and has gotten good at some tumbling, and she would share that with us then (that was my daughter and she was great); three girls who did a jazz dance they've been working on in their dance class; some singers; lots of pianists.

Since the quiz wouldn't work at the talent show--as I began, I swear I could see tumble weed drifting past as I spoke and I could hear crickets chirping as well--I've decided that you guys will have to suffer through it. I can't see your tumble weeds, and I pretend not to hear the crickets.

Ready? This is not multiple choice--sorry. Also, you have to really think hard about the answers...

Q.
How many homeschoolers now in the U.S.?



Q.
What do the following historical figures in this shortened list have in common?

Artists
Claude Monet
Leonardo da Vinci

Authors
Agatha Christie
Alex Haley
Beatrix Potter
C.S. Lewis
Charles Dickens
George Bernard Shaw
Hans Christian Anderson
Louisa May Alcott
Margaret Atwood
Mark Twain
Phillis Wheatley
Pearl S. Buck
Robert Frost
Virginia Woolf

Businessmen
Andrew Carnegie
Dave Thomas
Joseph Pulitzer
Ray Kroc

Composers
Felix Mendelssohn
Irving Berlin
John Philip Sousa
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Entertainers
Alan Alda
Charlie Chaplin
Louis Armstrong
Whoopi Goldberg

Inventors
Alexander Graham Bell
Benjamin Franklin
Cyrus McCormick
Eli Whitney
Thomas Edison
Orville Wright
Wilbur Wright

Military Leaders
Douglas MacArthur
George Patton
John Paul Jones
Robert E. Lee
Stonewall Jackson

Photographers
Ansel Adams

Presidents
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Jackson
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
George Washington
Grover Cleveland
James Garfield
James Madison
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
John Tyler
Theodore Roosevelt
Thomas Jefferson
William Henry Harrison
Woodrow Wilson

Scientists
Albert Einstein
Blaise Pascal
Booker T. Washington
George Washington Carver
Pierre Curie

Statesman
Alexander Hamilton
Daniel Webster
Patrick Henry
William Jennings Bryan
William Penn
Winston Churchill

United States Supreme Court Judges
John Jay
John Marshall
John Rutledge
Sandra Day O’Connor



Q.
What do the following colleges/universities have in common?


Amherst C. !! MA * * * * * *
Austin C. !! TX * * * *
Brandeis U. !! MA * * * * *
Brown U. !! RI * * * * * *
Bryn Mawr C. !! PA * * * * * *
Cornell U. !! NY * * * * * *
Dartmouth C. !! NH * * * * * *
DePaul U. !! IL * * * *
Duke U. !! NC * * * * * *
Emory U. !! GA * * * * *
Georgetown U. !! DC * * * * * *
Grinnell C. !! IA * * * *
Hampshire C. !! MA * * *
Harvard U. !! MA * * * * * * *
Illinois Institute of Technology !! IL * * * *
Indiana U., Bloomington !! IN * * * *
Johns Hopkins U. !! MD * * * * * *
Loyola U. Chicago !! IL * * *
Massachusetts Institute of Technology !! MA * * * * * *
New York U. !! NY * * * * *
Northwestern U. !! IL * * * * * *
Oberlin C. !! OH * * * * *
Occidental C. !! CA * * * *
Pennsylvania State U. University Park Campus !! PA * * * *
Princeton U. !! NJ * * * * * *
Providence C. !! RI * * * *
Purdue U. !! IN * * * * *
Reed C. !! OR * * * *
Rhode Island School of Design !! RI * * * *
St. John's C. !! MD & NM * * * * *
Sarah Lawrence C. !! NY * * * *
Smith C. !! MA * * * * *
Stanford U. !! CA * * * * * * *
Swarthmore C. !! PA * * * * * *
Trinity U. !! TX * * * * *
Tulane U. !! LA * * * * *
United States Military Academy !! West Point, NY * * * *
United States Naval Academy !! Annapolis, MD * * * *
U. of California: Berkeley !! CA * * * * *
U. of California: Davis !! CA * * * * *
U. of California: Riverside !! CA * * * * *
U. of California: San Diego !! * * * *
U. of California: Santa Cruz !! CA * * * *
U. of Chicago !! IL * * * * * * *
U. of Colorado at Boulder !! CO * * * * *
U. of Connecticut !! CT * * * *
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign !! IL * * * * * *
U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill !! NC * * * * *
U. of Notre Dame !! IN * * * * * * *
U. of Pennsylvania !! PA * * * * * * *
U. of Wisconsin--Madison !! WI * * * * * *
Vanderbilt U. !! TN * * * * *
Vassar C. !! NY * * * * * *
Villanova U. !! PA * * * * *
Washington and Lee U. !! VA * * * * * * *
Wellesley C. !! MA * * * * * *
Wesleyan U. !! CT * * * * * *
Williams C. !! MA * * * * * * *
Yale U. !! CT * * * * * *




If you've gotten through the quiz and think you know the answers, please post in the comments section. The first three people with accurate answers will get...























Mexican candy! I will mail to the winners (or hand out, if you're local--hi friends!) some amazing caramels that we got when we were down there in January. No, they've not been eaten up. Yes, I'm mostly off of sugar.

So, if you think you know the answers to this most difficult quiz--I demand intellectual vigor around here, you know--please post your comment.

Good luck!

Here I'm trying to figure out how to properly use my flash. I don't normally use it. My husband is anticipating me taking tons of pictures of him, even though I'm blinding him with the flash. Isn't he handsome, and doesn't he look slightly frustrated with me?

See? Just like Rear Window.

Sorry, Babe. Technology has its costs.

I Don't Have a Thing to Wear

You know what? I don't have a thing to wear to the homeschooling conference--nothing! No kicky blouse to wear over smokin' hot jeans. No interesting hand painted silk scarf to casually throw over a shoulder like a Parisian woman. No. I'm going to wear frumpy mom jeans and a linen tunic I got from Goodwill a few months ago.

It will have to do. No one is going to care about me, the talent show MC, they're going to see the kids and enjoy the show. Does a kicky blouse a show make? I think not.

Will post when we get back from the conference.

Enjoy your fashionable weekend. Maybe you'll wear a short skirt and a long jacket...

Homeschooling Conference or Everyone in Their Underwear

I still have a few things to do to get ready for our upcoming annual homeschooling conference. I have to write up a flyer about our super duper supportive and fun homeschooling group and recruit more fabulous people. I have to make copies of all sorts of things and I have to figure out what I Am Going To Say...

I HATE public speaking and yet I will cheerfully MC a talent show at a homeschooling conference year after year. What am I thinking?! Why?!

The kids all do such a great job and this is the end of the whole thing--it wraps up everyone's experience of the conference. People are receptive. It's not like I have to pitch a stimulus package or something. I don't have to give a report about glacier retreat, or spreading contagions, or tell everyone that their banks have failed and the FDIC no longer covers anything.

No. This is fun and everyone is on my side. We're on the same team! They know I'm just a mom homeschooling my kids. They know I'm not a professional speaker. They know I don't get paid to speak--what a sweet gig that would be though, wouldn't it? I'm just an amateur up there along with their hopeful, slightly nervous kids ready to perform.

Last year my daughter told me to imagine that everyone in the audience are all my friends. Then, it's easy! This is probably what she and my son do as they perform with a little acting troupe they're in. They have NO stage fright whatsoever. They are completely poised and confident. They get energized to perform and then they do and they are great, absolutely wonderful. I love watching them on stage. They are so calm and ready to do what needs to be done.

Got to get to work. Got to go write now. Got to try and be like my kids, except without the bathroom humor and the weird clothing combinations and the refusal to eat certain vegetables...except brussel sprouts--I'm going to skip those too.

Overcoming Fears, Or Ignoring Them All Together

Now that they have their own rooms, our kids come spilling into our room early every morning. They used to sleep with us when they were little and then gradually worked their way out into a shared room, with a double mattress on the floor, graduating to bunk-beds and then into a room of their own for each of them.

At some point before 7:00 or so, they come in and cuddle with me making a mom sandwich. It's nice really. It's a very sweet, pleasant way to start the day. The kids gradually becoming more and more awake, all of us talking about what's coming ahead in the day, the kids charging downstairs to watch a movie, alternating whose turn it is to pick every day.

This morning my daughter came in with very sad eyes after having had a bad dream. She had dreamed that we were at a hotel somewhere and there was a fire where we had to hurry to gather up our things and when she woke up she wasn't sure if we survived the fire or not--she didn't know how it turned out. She felt that maybe the dream continues and since she didn't see us reach safety, maybe we didn't. What an awful idea!

I cuddled her, stroked her forehead and her sobs turned to small whimpers as she and I talked and she told me all about it. We held each other until she felt OK enough to get up and start playing with her brother.

Later, as we were all doing various things in the house, she asked if she could start a fire in the fireplace--a thing she rarely does. Yes, she sure could.

I made sure the flue was open and then she laid small sticks directly above the metal rod with our gas starter, turned on the gas, lit the match and lit the burner. As the sticks caught fire, she asked which logs she should add next and then did when it was time.

The fire crackled away merrily as I saw her tending it and shoving a slender stick in it and taking it out to see its glowing end. She was happy and felt confident and able as she controlled it. I don't think she even thought of her bad dream from earlier. I don't think she made a conscious decision to face down the fire that had plagued her dream the night before. I think she just wasn't defeated by it. The bad dream had no residual effect and she could make a fire if she wanted to.