Teaching Children at Home What Parents Are Doing and How They Are Doing It (Home Spun Schools)

In this day and age we often find that, the more we know the more we still have to learn. Whether it is in discovering that the moon or Mars may contain water to finding new species of ocean life, we continually come to the conclusion that there is much left to discover and learn about our universe and about ourselves.

This is also the case when it comes to the field of education. It wasn't that long ago that children were receiving formal education in a one room schoolhouse with all age groups in attendance. This well-meant approach quickly revealed many problems. In addition to the difficulty controlling the older children to not unduly influence other children of a younger age, there was the problem of reaching all minds with the standard curriculum regardless of age or level of comprehension.

Thus, it was in the best interest of children that we began addressing these discrepancies by assigning grade levels deemed appropriate to their age level. This was a marked improvement to teaching according to comprehension level to a great degree, with one exception: it was discovered that, regardless of same age to grade assignment, many children weren't comprehending the curriculum at the same level as others in their peer grouping.

Enter the specialized educational opportunities commonly referred to as private or special education geared to individual ability. However, the standard form of education still remained within the public educational format. It was apparent though that neither of these venues were completely satisfying. Either the private schooling was economically out of reach for many children in need of special education or the public system was still too much in the cookie cutter mold mentality. In recent years, there has emerged a third form of education: homeschooling.

In addition to the concerns of parents as to the quality of education their children receive within the private or public school system, there is also a very real concern as to what type environment their precious children are being exposed to. It has become apparent to many that the private and public school systems are becoming less about educating children as they are more about indoctrinating them into a world view contrary to the wishes of many parents.

Into this field of concern come pioneers to the homeschooling movement Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore. The many years of research and documentation have led them to the forefront of this latest phenomenon to educating today's children. Among the many books they have published over the years, one of those books is titled "Home-spun Schools".

An Easy Household Guide (Composting)

Nicky Scott, Chairperson for the Community Composting Network in the UK, is the author of three small books (roughly 4 x 6 inches) dealing with waste reduction and has appeared in two videos about composting. His book, Composting - An Easy Household Guide, was originally published in 2005 and the second edition was released in 2006. The cover and all ninety-six pages are printed on 100% recycled paper.

This book is slightly more advanced than his smaller booklet, Composting For All. Both books discuss why compost is such an important factor in reducing stress on landfills. But here, Nicky shows how this one simple action can benefit everyone in the community and can actually affect global conditions as well. Nicky tells readers that approximately one-quarter of UK's methane gas emissions (one of the gases that contributes to global warming) are due to organic waste in landfills, which are decomposing improperly. When composts are given aerobic conditions there is very little gas production.

Nicky shows other advantages such as less odor in garbage cans and less volume for curb-side pick-up services to deal with - therefore garbage will be put out on the curb less often.

Nicky demonstrates how to get the right mix in the compost for optimal decomposition conditions. He then explains some of the different composting bins sold commercially. There is the perfect bin available for different situations from apartment dwellers to individuals, situations involving pest issues (rats, etc) and communal composting. His book covers Dalek-type bins, tumblers, digesters, green cones, green Johanna's, fermentation methods, worm bins and more.

Explain The Enemy Within

The enemy within is a nonfiction historical account of the development of witch hunts both in Europe and in the American colonies. The author is John Demos who is a professor of history at Yale University and is the author of several articles and books on American history.

The early European development of witch craft started in local cult activities beginning in the middle ages when there was a great deal of superstition. Many of these thoughts had been passed down from pre-Christian times and typically focused on crop fertility, weather, love, sex reproduction, health, property and many other human relationships. With time three highly charged images would gain strength those being the Devil, the heretic and the magician in which each or all three would become the image of the witch.

Witchcraft gained momentum due to environmental factors such as civil wars, religious wars, famine, plagues, political turmoil, harsh climate change which resulted in dislocation and dispossession of large elements of the peasant population.

Typically the witch would be a middle aged or elderly widow who had lost the protection of her male counterpart. It appears that menopause and the loss of reproduction played an important role in the definition of the witch. Many of them were impoverished and could become targets of suspicion and resentment.

There seems to be three elements in which witchcraft became evident. The fist was distress caused by epidemic disease,floods, earthquakes, droughts, or clusters of house fires or shipwrecks. The second was remarkable events such as the appearance of comets,eclipses and meteorites.The third was caused by human affairs such wars, community division over religion or controversy of ownership of property.

With time witchcraft served to explain painful and baffling communal experiences. Disappointment and failure could be explained by witchcraft such as crop and livestock failures. butter that would not churn and could even include loss of love and broken friendships.

In Puritan American, the typical village lived with a fear of disorder and thus they found within their faith strength, hope and the promise of a new life. They believed that intense and unrelenting discipline would be able to control disorder. Thus, when disorder such as crop failure occurred in the village, they had to have an explanation for the cause. And the scapegoat was the witch. It is interesting to note that when the offending witch had been removed such as through a conviction, the village would feel a surge of unity as the process of removal of the witch seemed to be restorative and amazingly the crop failures would reverse.

Here Explain The Secrets Of Yeast Infection No More Revealed

Linda Allen's Yeast Infection No More is the only holistic system for curing yeast infections permanently in the market. Its unique 5-step method guarantees effective and permanent treatment without even the use of drugs and other medications. Seems impossible, right? How could this be true when other aggressive treatment plans don't even work? If you're a chronic yeast infection sufferer, I'm not trying to raise your hopes up and just disappoint you. But, Yeast Infection No More works!

Linda Allen was a yeast infection sufferer herself. So, she knows how you actually feel and understands your experiences. She is a medical researcher who really tried her best to find a cure for her disease because she was sick and tired of always trying and buying expensive medications just to find out that all didn't work and the infection keeps coming back. After years of extensive and thorough experimentation, she has finally found a cure for eliminating yeast infection forever. Linda Allen, herself, is using her own program to treat her infection and her infection is already gone.

The program is 100% natural and safe. So, you need not worry about experiencing side-effects you may have already experienced with other treatments you have tried. Medications are there to relieve you from the infection, right? But, what do they do? Instead of freeing you from all the uncomfortable symptoms of the disease, medications usually worsen them, plus, they give you additional uncomfortable experiences with their side-effects.

Drugs, creams, and even probiotic therapy, which is also said to be a natural treatment to candida infection, don't work. They only focus on the symptoms, not the real cause, itself, of the infection. If you think of it logically, like I have, it does make sense. What's the use of treating the symptoms when the cause is still there? Yes, you're free from the symptoms, but, sooner or later they will all come back because the real cause of your infection is still present. What Yeast Infection No More does is it fights the root cause of your infection and eliminates it permanently, so that the cause plus the symptoms will be gone. The bonus part is that it will be gone forever, so you won't have to worry and fear about the infection coming back.

A Sound Among the Trees by Susan Meissner

A cannonball wedged in the north wall of Holly Oak. The quiet elegance of the old mansion disguises the trauma the antebellum house suffered in the Civil War. Who is the ghost in the cellar-Susannah, rumored to be a Civil War spy for the north, or Union soldiers buried there? Susan Meissner's new novel, A Sound Among the Trees rolls all of this into one intriguing novel.

Marielle Bishop marries into the superstitious Bishop family. Little does she know what awaits her when she leaves her southwestern home. Marielle lives in a beautiful mansion surrounded by the shadow of her husband' first wife, the ghost in the cellar, and the contempt of Adelaide, her great-grandmother-in-law. Holly Oak itself seems to demand penance from the women who live there. Heavy burdens for all.

Susan Meissner is an award-winning writer and speaker. Publishers Weekly named her novel The Shape of Mercy one of the Best Books of 2008. Lady in Waiting, published in 2010, is a perfect example of her ability to combine contemporary and historical fiction. When Ms. Meissner is not working on a new novel, she is directing small groups ministries at The Church at Rancho Bernardo.

The book releases on the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War as a remembrance of the women behind the battles. Ms. Meissner doesn't miss a beat. Characterizations and plot are set in motion immediately. Well-crafted dialogue draws us into the mystery surrounding the antebellum mansion. The subtle use of subtext whispers us deeper into the puzzle. The novel expertly blends the present-day with hints of the past until the real Civil War story is revealed at the end.A reader's guide is included for book groups.The ghost haunts many pages of the book, but the real presence in A Sound Among the Trees is that of a writer who excels at her craft. Highly recommended.

Lives of the Predators, by Gordon Grice (The Red Hourglass)

The black widow spider is notorious for eating her mate as they copulate, but how many of us know much more than that about this beautiful, mysterious, spider?

Grice collects black widows and keeps them in jars and studies them, and he tells us more than we care to know at times. But it is not just black widows that interest Grice, it is rattlesnakes, praying mantis, tarantula, pigs, dogs, and the recluse spider.

The Lives of the Predators is fascinating, strange, and scary, all at the same time. Grice writes with such vivid imagery that you can almost feel the hairy tarantula, and hear the particular sound of the black widows web as you brush through it.

Grice mixes us a venomous cocktail of personal accounts and tall tales; gruesome historic details that may have you questioning if you will ever eat pork again, and yet on the other hand he reveals how seemingly close humans still are to the animal kingdom.

As humans we feel that we are at the top of the food chain and that we have no natural predators who relish our flesh, but wait, that is not true at all! History reveals that as early as biblical times swine have eaten human corpses; in Africa leopards dine on humans regularly; and dogs are more dangerous to us than the wolf.

Grice's knowledge and research are impeccable. His interest in the life and death of his subjects is sometimes morbidly sadistic and it brings to mind an image of little boys who delight in tossing a poor grasshopper into a jar of red ants. But beside the morbidity is a side dish of humor when he describes the story of a man who was supposedly eaten by his hogs as, "...the man was old; he died of a heart attack or a stroke while feeding the pigs; and 'nothing was left of him but the shoes.'...You have to be particularly suspicious of the heart attack diagnosed from the shoes."

A Journey on Challenging Conventional Wisdom Through Economics (Freakonomics)

Reading a book about economics is probably good for anyone in today's business world or for myself, a small business coach. Yet, the authors, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, of Freakonomics provided their readers a lot more than just numbers.

The first hook that I received was how the authors defined morality and economics. Not, I am not going to share those definitions with you. You need to buy the book or check the book out at the local library.

Then the authors proceeded to connect seemingly unrelated events through 6 chapters from What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common? to What Makes a Perfect Parent? using the science of measurement. These are not your standard economic topics by conventional wisdom. Their efforts reminded me of the Connections television series hosted by James Burke (science historian) that debuted in the late 1970's.

What the authors accomplished for me was:

To confirm through some unique examples that we as human beings have a tendency to confuse cause and effect

To look beyond the accepted conventional wisdom with a different perspective by asking the unasked questions

In far warning, part of this book might be viewed quite negatively by some readers. The authors did their best to balance their findings against anticipated moral outrage.

Again, conventional wisdom many times has us throwing out the baby with the bath water. Levitt and Dubner are asking you to question what you truly know against what you have been told. You may not agree with their findings, but the process of open and honest questioning should be the conventional wisdom within every individual.