Try not to get your mom mad about cleaning.

Today, after I got home from horse back riding, Mom made me clean the house. When I started cleaning my room, she went on and on about how it was a mess, and how I didn't clean up the downstairs(which I did). I started cleaning up. I realized that almost everything was where it should be, it was just piled up or disorganized. In homeschooling, there are times when you need to clean up your desk or your books. Why didn't I pick up when I was done with my things? I did. I might have put them where they were supposed to go, but I just shoved them there. Try to make sure, that if you are using something, you know where to put and how to put it there. Homeschooling is all about organization. You figure that since you are home all day, that you will do it later. Procrastinating. Don't do it. Be organized.

Church

Usually, when I start homeschooling, I go to church in the morning. I did this today, and I just got home. I think going to church is very good for me considering that I want to be a priest. Church is not mandatory, but then again, neither is chess. Mom puts church down as religious studies on her reports. It is an easy way to get a few hours of history, every now and then. When the moon becomes full this month, the feast of the Tabernacle is started. The Jewish celebrate it for eight days.I enjoy church; for me, church is fun. For others, church is punishment. Some people don't even go to church. My mom and I do stuff that are not in the NYS curriculum, and then we put them down as subjects.My mom says church is history. I think I learn more from things like that, then taking classes on it.

A present for you.

Today I went to Tae Kwon Do. Last time I went, I stretched a little too hard. That's it! In order to home-school correctly you need to be stretched. What I mean is, you need to do somethings that you have never done before. Don't do the same thing twice. Try to think up new things. Think of home-schooling as a competition of who does the most different stuff everyday. It is sometimes good to do the same thing over and over to master it, but if you do only that,then what are you learning? As I said in earlier blogs, expand your creativity. Try something new. If you do the same old thing everyday, you won't be successful. Life is a gift. That is why it is called the present. Life is a present in a box for you. In order to unwrap it, you need to fulfill life. Do your best. Challenge yourself and try new things.

A typical day.

Surprisingly, I don't really have a topic for this blog. I will just tell you my average day, and then you can see what you will learn from this. Well, today I started out with all the computer stuff. As I always say, start from the hard stuff, and work your way down. This is understandable to me. When you are done with the hard stuff, all you have to do is the easy stuff, and that takes five minutes. If you don't do the hard stuff first, it hangs over your head all day long. Anyway, I did my computer programing from 7:00-8:30. After that, I ate breakfast and emptied the dishwasher. That took me until 9. I went downstairs with my math tutor. At 10am, I charged upstairs, eager to practice my guitar. I just learned the song Beck's Bolero. I did my laundry and started to read. If you know me, once I start reading, it just sucks me in. Just like the computer. My mother's treat to me, is to give me time to just read. I read until 1:30p, finishing my book, The Lightning Thief. This is the fourth book I read this week. Then, I went outside and played around until my Chinese tutor came at 2p. I was with my Chinese teacher from 2-4. Then I was finished with my school! Thursdays are easy days for me, because my mom is not home and I home-school with tutors or work independently.

Another day, another pile of work. Sigh...

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I am sorry to say, my life is run by home-schooling. Today I had all my school work, then Tae Kwon Do at 1:00, then guitar. After that I felt like doing something else. How about nothing? But no, I have horse-back riding. Finally, at 5, I get to come home, relax, and play the guitar for a half an hour. Wait a minute... Another tip for homeschooling: Give yourself a time period where you are finished with school. For instance my time period seems to be never. I think yours should be about 3:00. Give yourself lots of work, but the second it turns your time period, you stop whatever your doing. I don't know; it is just a suggestion.

Where I went wrong.

Today, similar to every Tuesday, I went to my grandma's house. I do this because my mom has a teaching job every Tuesdays and Thursdays. A few minutes ago, I made the fatal mistake of printing almost thirty pages of information about capitols. You see, I have been learning the capitols, and I needed to make flash cards for every one. Consequently, I needed some information about the capitals and I accidentally printed lots of pages about it. A lesson learned. I just realized that another tip is to avoid the computer. Granted, sometimes you need to use the computer for home-schooling, but I made the mistake of taking an online college course this year. So now I am spending about three hours on the computer every day. I am not saying not to use the computer, just don't get sucked into it like I did. Try looking at books instead. Be on the computer only from a half an hour to an hour. More then that is bad. Be smart; don't let the computer suck you in.

Exercise

One major problem in home-schooling, is getting your exercise. I do Tae Kwon Do three days a week. Doing exercise helps me with my concentration and makes me do better at my school work. What do you do? I suggest doing something with a teacher or a professional, because if you do something with the wrong technique it could hurt you. An easy way to get your exercise, without paying, is to have your mom measure a distance with her car. Then you can run a few miles every other day. Make sure you report what you are doing for exercise to the school. Without exercise you will not be focused as well. This is because exercise sends blood to your brain and helps you think more efficiently. If you do exercise, it will help you in the long run.

Tip #3 Books and hooks

This blog is about books. You see, I really only like fantasy books. That is what I am hooked on. Hint, hint, books and hooks. Well, anyway, my mom and I have a deal. Mom picks a book for me to read, and I pick a book to read. If you look at my book log, it has a classic book, then a fantasy book, with a title such as The Revenge of the Shadow King. Then after my fantasy book, I read The Iliad. This helps me with different book genres because I read the book I want, and the book my mom wants. My mom picks the books off the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth book list. I will add the link later. I think this helped me because you cannot read just one series of books (even though I want to). You need to enjoy classic books and different genres or else when you need to read a text book, it will kill you to try to force yourself to read it. It has happened to me, and I don't want it to happen to you.

A good example.

Remember my last blog? It was called Go to bed, NOW. Well, anyway this is a perfect example of doing things you don't want to do. Last night, my family and our Chinese exchange student's friend went to the Parsons Dance. I thought that this would bore me out of my skull. I did not want to go. Of course, mom made me go, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the auditorium watching the show. (This is also an example of, what moms says, is law). I am watching the show thinking, you know, I could be using my time writing in my blog, instead of watching some ballet. Then the second dance was happening, and I realized that the show wasn't too bad. And finally at the end of the show, it was awesome! So, the moral of this story, is the Parsons Dance is cool. NO! The actual moral is doing things you don't want to do, helps you expand your creativity..

Go to bed, NOW!

Why did I call this blog Go to bed, Now? How should I know? Just kidding, I called it that because in homeschooling, you have to do stuff that you don't want to do. Do you think a little kid wants to go to bed? No! Of course not. Do you think I want to read a history paper for an hour and answer a bunch of questions? In homeschooling, you get free time. Lots of free time. But you still need to do stuff you don't want sometimes. It is important to do things you don't want to do. If you do everything you want to do, those things become useless and boring. By doing subjects that are meaningless to you, you learn that it might not help you, but it WILL help someone, someday. If you do stuff that you don't like, eventually you will like it, and learn it. Homeschooling is about an education; so get one.

The list strategy

In order to survive the treacherous days of home-schooling, you need to be organized. Yeah, I am talking to you, not to your mom. Even though she needs to be organized too, that is a different matter. I am saying YOU need to be organized. In order to do that, I suggest that you ask your mom to make a list for you everyday, until you learn how to make your own lists. That sets the goals you need to do, and when you’re done, you are done with school. This has helped me so much it is not even funny. For instance, there are some days that you just want to get done with school. You work harder to get your list done, and then you are finished at noon. This is more convenient than the school's way to do school because you might have math for an hour, but you have gotten everything done that you need to get done in ten minutes. Instead of doing math, because you are finished, you mess around with your pencils or something. This also helps you get more things done when you have a weaker subject that takes you an hour. But then when you have another subject that take you fifteen minutes, it's finished fast. So, doing this will help you with your weaker subjects, but at the same time help you review the subjects you already know. I think the list strategy helps a ton!

Tip #2: get the most out of every experience.

Whenever I go on vacation, mom makes me do work. This might seem like a downfall to homeschooling, but it is actually an advantage. Sure, it seems annoying. And yes, it will make you mad when you want to go to the beach, and you have to complete schoolwork. But if you think about all the advantages, you will realize that there are many. Dear moms, I am not saying to suffocate your kids with huge amounts of work piled up around them. I want you to realize that I mean every day do a little bit of each subject, and even when you go on vacation, don't resist a little work. For instance, last weekend my family went on a whale watch trip, and mom made me study the body structure of a humpback whale. I got more out of the trip than anyone else, and the biologist was happy to answer my questions because she could tell I had already done some research on the topic. So,when your mom randomly gives you some work that is related to your every day subjects, realize it is to help you get the most out of your experiences, even the little ones.

#1 tip to surviving homeschooling

Today I had to go to my grandma's to home-school because mom went to work. My mom is a busy person who is always running around. So, consequently I do too. If I am not doing five thing at once and have to do a million things in a day, it seems I get nothing done. I realized just now, that the #1 rule is "Do stuff". I am not kidding. If your list of to do stuff isn't jammed pack, you will get nothing done. Just like the quote, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person". From experience, you might not get everything you want done, done. If you put more tasks you think you can do, you work harder to accomplish them. Today, with grandma I gave myself five things to do. I only did four out of the five things. The more things you try to do, the more things you get done. Trust me, it works.

The beginning Dun, Dun,Duuuun

Hello, my name is Connor Rohlfing Peters, or you could call me Connor. I started home-schooling about a year ago. I am ten years of age and want to keep it that way. I hate growing up. It all started in fourth grade ahhhh... Oh, sorry. Well, anyway it started when I was in fourth grade-- reading during math class. Yup, reading illegally, can you believe it? The math class was so boring and it rotted my brain. Yeah, math class was rotting my brain, just like when you watch tv. The class was ninety minutes long and all we would do was go over the homework, and do five math pages. And that took ninety minutes. How boring. The rest of the day was like that too. Do some work for five minutes and read the rest of the hour. Boy, did I read alot, but, worst of all, I would get in trouble when I got caught sneak reading.
So, mom decided that school was too easy, and waiting until seventh to go to a private school was too long. By that time I would lose every thing I already learned. All of a sudden, my mom forced me into submission; home-schooling, wa wa waaaaaaaaaa. Home-schooling is not that bad. Actually it is kinda fun. Uh-uh school, fun, funny, right? Well, not really. It actually is fun! Except the times I had to do work while we were at the beach vacationing. And the times... that... you do not want to hear about :).
We started home-schooling Jan 15,2009 in the middle of the school year. My brother thought that I was anti-social,but I hate to break to you, I do a lot of stuff with other kids. For instance, in the middle of my school day I can have another home-schooled friend over. And when our dogs had puppies, I got to stay home with them. Then my brother thought that I did no work at all. Well, that's not true; definitely not true. I finished the whole fifth grade curriculum in half a year. That's right, I completed two grades in one year. I have bragging rights :). I did a lot in one day, and this year I am even doing a online college course at John Hopkins University. My curriculum for last year is below. Well to wrap this up, I think home-schooling is a HUGE advantage. It is awesome, buuuuuuut... there are some tricks to survive it. That is what I am writing for! A kid's guide to surviving homeschooling!