Why Do You Homeschool? Last Call...

I've gotten such a great response to the Why Do You Homeschool? study, first posted here back in April. Responses came in from coast to coast, as far south as Florida and as far north as Alberta, Canada - even from distant places around the globe like Okinawa and Australia!

In the six months that I've conducted the survey, your stories have made me laugh, cry, and cheer out loud. So, I want to get them out for others to read, too (if you have privacy concerns, you should know that all respondents will remain anonymous). I'm closing the survey at the end of October and will then get to work writing a paper about why we homeschool.

And I'm hoping that in these last few weeks, I'll get enough survey respondents to bring us up over one hundred. Combined with the survey of the northeast I did last year, we're pretty close - and it'd sound so cool to say, "Many of the one-hundred-plus respondents felt..." Doncha think?

So, if you'd like to take my seven-question survey about why you homeschool, please email me at whywehsatyahoodotcom, and I'll send it to you. If you already have, thanks again; I've enjoyed getting to know you!

Happy Homeschooling -

Spring Projects

Taking on insane projects seems to be in our blood in Springtime - to see last year's, go ahead and click here, here, here, and here.

And, this year is no exception! In addition to gardening, Earth Scouts, Pick-Up Baseball, and just regular life, here are some other doozies we've got going on around here:

From Spring 09

We're continuing with the Why Do You Homeschool? study, with surveys coming in from all over the country, and world! In studying that map up there, you may notice that most of the responses come from Massachusetts and New Jersey. Many of these respondents didn't hear about the study from my blog, or even the blogosphere - they read about it in their homeschooling email newsgroups. So, I'd like to ask you, if you haven't already, to consider posting the link to my survey (this is the link), or the survey email address - whywehs@yahoo.com - into your email newsgroup. The more surveys, the better, and I'll be working on this for at least the summer.

Here's another new, log-term project we've got going this spring:

From Spring 09

No, not a new sleeping-place for Owen - we are getting baby chicks this week! They will live in this brooder for the first month or so of their lives (in the basement, not the living room), and then they will move to the coop that Ben's building out back. This is exciting, and a little scary, and sure to be a big blog topic in the future... especially as I have a fear of chickens that I'm obviously going to have to overcome!

And this last one is not a long-term project, but I wanted to share a pic of this great creation the boys and I made today... think of it as part of our interest-led curriculum:

From Spring 09

A geodesic dome, made of newspaper. Unlike the brooder, this structure will remain in our living room... and may very well become Owen's new sleeping-place!