10 Movie Ratings

1. Yes Man - good, not enough dare devil actions
2. Serenity - too emotional, not enough funny comments
3. Tin Man - good display of story, not enough back story
4. Ice Age 1 - terrific with undetailed action wounds
5. Ice Age 2 - nice mix of emotional setting
6. Ice Age 3 - good imaginative use of story line
7. Wimbledon - a classic hero movie
8. Shrek 1 - funny, exciting use of animated character
9. Shrek 2 - fine display of magical possibility
10. Shrek 3 - repeated far-fetched story line

How many times has this site seen a face lift?

Not that we expect anyone is still paying attention, but once upon a time this was home (one of, anyway) to Kansas Area Homeschool Network. I started KAHN a number of years ago to help link unschoolers and homeschoolers of less traditional paths across the state of Kansas. It was an effort at creating a community of support and I think it succeeded. At the very least, I know many more families today that homeschool in a wide variety of ways. We have made friends (or at least acquaintances) in Wichita, Kansas City, Dodge City, and of course Lawrence (LAHN) and Topeka (TAHN), where KAHN grew its roots.

Anyway, the kids and I have been toying with the idea of starting a blog together, and I thought it wouldn't hurt to put this one to good use since perhaps a few people still have it bookmarked and there is still some good stuff here for those who want to take the time to browse the archives.

I honestly don't know what is to become of it, but here we are... embarking on yet another adventure together.

44 Presidents

Thanks, Rebecca, for the link.

L.E.A.R.N.

Word is that Kansas City area homeschool support group L.E.A.R.N. is active again and they are planning an UnProm.

Visit their website for more information.

L.E.A.R.N. Mission Statement

L.E.A.R.N. is an organization formed to provide secular support for homeschooling families.

L.E.A.R.N. supports families with a wide variety of ideologies regarding education, parenting, culture, and religion.


Membership in L.E.A.R.N. indicates a respect for other individuals, regardless of age.


Membership in L.E.A.R.N. indicates a willingness to be respectful of other member's beliefs or lifestyles that may not reflect your own.

World eBook Fair

Access to eBooks online... until August 4, you can download free eBooks from the World eBook Fair.

An Unschooler's Holiday

Just in case you didn't know, today is Learn Nothing Day. It's going to be a busy day for us, but I suppose we can try to do our best to keep our minds closed to anything new and sparkly for just one day.

The Size of Things

I mostly wanted to bookmark this to show my children, but then I thought there would be others who would enjoy this illustration.

Homeschooling: Back to the Future

This is an old piece from The Cato Institute that I may have even had in my files once upon a time, but I thought it was one of the more interesting pieces on homeschooling and I really appreciated the historical look beginning with Raymond Moore and John Holt. I am of the Holt persuassion, and I have often encouraged people to look to work by Raymond Moore, especially when anxieties about reading and writing come up in regards to young children.

The constituencies Raymond Moore and Holt individually attracted reflected the backgrounds and lifestyles of the two researchers. Moore, a former Christian missionary, earned a sizable (but hardly an exclusive) following among parents who chose homeschooling primarily to impart traditional religious mores to their children--the Christian right. Holt, a humanist, became a cult figure of sorts to the wing of the homeschooling movement that drew together New Age devotees, ex-hippies, and homesteaders--the countercultural left.

The two men earned national reputations as educational pioneers, working independently of one another, eloquently addressing the angst that a diverse body of Americans felt about the modern-day educational system--a system that seemed to exist to further the careers of educational elites instead of one that served the developmental needs of impressionable children. In the 1970s the countercultural left, who responded more strongly to Holt's cri de coeur, comprised the bulk of homeschooling families. By the mid-1980s, however, the religious right would be the most dominant group to choose homeschooling and would change the nature of homeschooling from a crusade against "the establishment" to a crusade against the secular forces of modern-day society.

Buttressed by their national media appearances, legislative and courtroom testimony, and speeches to sympathetic communities, Holt and Moore worked tirelessly to deliver to an often-skeptical public the message that homeschooling is a good, if not a superior, way to educate American children; that it is, in a sense, a homecoming, a return to a preindustrial era, when American families worked and learned together instead of apart.

Please take the time to read the entire article here:
Policy Anaylysis
Homeschooling: Back to the Future

Thanks, Rebecca, for the link.

Consuming Kids

A friend from a local homeschool group shared the following.



JoAnn's comments:

This morning I just went to a screening of this documentary:

http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/events/consumingkids.html

I give this film my highest possible recomendation, and it is my fervent hope that every parent in America would view this film immediately. In fact, I took my 11 year old with me to see it, and she was very glad that she saw it, and felt that it helped her to better understand and look with a more critical eye at a lot of things that are currently targeted to her age group. In addition, this film looked separately at every developmental stage from infancy to post adolescent, and also at differences in marketing for each gender.

It covered the full gamet including the history of government regulation of media, the breadth of marketing (schools, ipods, targeted radio on school busses, cell phones and much more) how market research is done (and this will chill you to see how children are even being recruited to surrepticiously gather data on peers, how brain waves and eye blinks are recorded in response to various types of visual stimuli) and how this all is affecting the health and well being of our entire citizenry.