10-year-old college sophomore
10-year-old college sophomore
Maybe the homeschooling didn't have much to do with this. But this kid is very philosophical and wise for his age.
Moshe Kai Cavalin likes to tell about the time his father took him to take his college entrance test. The administrators told his dad he couldn’t bring an 8-year-old with him into the test room. His father told them the boy was going in alone — because he was the one taking the test. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Girl, 17, graduates from college
Girl, 17, graduates from college
This weekend, most 17-year-olds are contemplating plans for a summer job and getting ready for college.
Serennah Harding is getting ready to wrap up her college career.
Harding will be graduating Huntingdon College today with a bachelor's degree in cell biology.
"I don't think it'll hit me until I'm walking across the stage," she said.
Harding entered Huntingdon at 13. She is one of nine children in her family who were home-schooled using the methods published by their parents, Kip and Mona Lisa Harding, in their e-book "College by 12." Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Who better to teach about unschooling?
Who better to teach about unschooling?
An unschooler named Andi wrote this comprehensive how-to on unschooling aka"worldschooling." It's fairly balanced and informative for anyone who's considering homeschooling or unschooling. You can even add to parts of it.
Hi, I'm Andi. I wrote this lens. (In case you don't know, a 'lens' is Squidoo's name for a user-made page about a topic.)
From the time I was six, I was homeschooled. From the time I was twelve, I was worldschooled. Then, this spring, I graduated.
So I've been through the whole thing - all the way until I was accepted into my top choice college and awarded 60% tuition in grants.
And you know what? You can do it too. You can follow your interests during your teens years and have an incredible launch into your adult life.
That's what this lens is about. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool, unschool, web
Homeschooler courted by top universities
Homeschooler courted by top universities
In what has been called the most competitive year ever for college admissions, Chelsea Link defied the odds to get accepted into Yale. Then Harvard.
Then came the fat envelopes from Princeton, Columbia, University of Chicago, Stanford and Northwestern University.
Making that feat still more extraordinary, Link has been home-schooled since age 5. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Homeschooler ahead of his time
Homeschooler ahead of his time
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. – By day, Neil Turner tackles academic research papers on topics like the biblical accuracy of carbon dating.
At night, the college freshman sometimes needs to be reminded to brush his teeth.
He’s still 13, after all. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
College Night for homeschoolers
College Night for homeschoolers
BEDFORD -- Seven students sat around Anne Gebhart's dining room table, with maps and folders strewn in front of them.
Gebhart, 40, directed the children, ages 6 to 11, in learning the nation's state capitals. For the younger students, it represented new information. For the older ones, just a review. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Homeschooled student ears full-ride scholarship
Homeschooled student ears full-ride scholarship
CHARLESTON — A book by German philosopher Martin Heidegger sits open on the coffee table in front of the fireplace at Peter Borah’s home.
It’s weighty material for someone like Borah, who’s high school age, but he says spending time poring over such works is a valuable opportunity for him.
“There’s just no time to read a German philosopher in school,” he said, explaining that having the chance to read Heidegger’s book is one thing he likes about being schooled at home. “It’s given me opportunities to explore things that I’m interested in and to work at my own pace.” Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Homeschoolers Rally to Make Pro-Life/Pro-Family Movie
Homeschoolers Rally to Make Pro-Life/Pro-Family Movie
From the press release below, PH College is backing this effort.
With a tiny budget and cast and crew of homeschool students, Advent Film Group (AFG) begins "pickup" filming of its first movie, "Come What May" for a week on location at Purcellville, Virginia in late January 2008. During a special AFG Film Day on January 30th, a contingent of homeschool families from across the country will join the set, some from as far away as Oregon and Texas. Read more...
Labels: business, College, homeschool
Can homeschooled children get into good colleges?
Can homeschooled children get into good colleges?
Advocates of traditional education have many critiques of home schooling. Most of these objections are thoroughly unjustified and stem more from politics than from educational philosophy. Government support of home schooling reduces the resources allocated to public education, and hence many teachers and parents view home schooling as a threat to the quality of public schools. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Homeschooled Tebow deserved Heisman
Homeschooled Tebow deserved Heisman
Once homeschooled, now a Heisman winner. No correlation here, just remarkable. UPDATE: Of course you can also find people who think he didn't deserve it.
The Heisman is sacred. It is not won in a race, and not by a clever political campaign, marketing gimmicks, or in a beauty contest. Tebow deserved it for what he did on the football field, what he did in the classroom, and what he did away from campus.
Remember, just two years ago, he was a home-schooled kid who was able to play high school football in Florida by state law. Now in this, his first full season as a starter for the defending national champion Gators, Tebow had a record 51 touchdowns -- 29 passing and 22 rushing -- becoming college football's first 20-20 man. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool, sports
Tebow's family ties
Tebow's family ties
Another article on the close knit Tebow family. Tim Tebow is a Heisman Trophy contender and was homeschooled.
As a top contender for the Heisman Trophy, Tim Tebow, the sophomore quarterback who has been dubbed Florida's superhero, will have the eyes of the sports world fixed on him.
But while the Gator Nation anxiously waits to hear if he will make history as the first sophomore to receive the coveted award, the tight-knit family who knows him best says instead of focusing on a win, they are focusing on supporting the baby of their family, whom they affectionately call Timmy. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool, sports
Homeschooler Snaps Up Heisman Nomination
Homeschooler Snaps Up Heisman Nomination
Veteran blogger Izzy Lyman is still writing about homeschooling. She gives us a view into this amazing home-grown athlete.
The December 3rd 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated will be of special interest to education reformers.
Next to the cover photo of Chase Daniel, the University of Missouri’s plucky quarterback, is a smaller photo of Tim Tebow.
Tebow is also a QB, but he conducts his business, not on the plains but in “the Swamp,” the football stadium at the University of Florida in Gainesville. All of 20 years old, he is a serious contender for this year’s coveted Heisman Trophy, the annual award given to the most outstanding collegiate football player in the nation. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool, sports
Homeschooled Children finding less hurdles in college
Homeschooled Children finding less hurdles in college
Whitney Sorensen has been taking online and on-campus classes and violin lessons at UVSC for about a year, but she's not a traditional college student. First of all, she's 14, and second, she's a home-school student...
Sorensen is one of Utah County's more than 2,000 students who choose to forgo public school and learn at home. Home schooling is gaining popularity. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nationwide there were more than a million students being home-schooled in 2003, up from 850,000 in 1999. In addition, students with nontraditional backgrounds are becoming accepted at colleges and universities. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Harvard for Homeschooled Christians
Harvard for the Home-Schooled, Christian Crowd
An NPR story about a book about inside Patrick Henry College.
NPR.org, November 16, 2007 · For home-schooled students, Patrick Henry College in Loudon County, Va., is like Harvard University.
Many high-achieving, home-schooled students have passed through Patrick Henry's campus, which is meant to provide a network of connections for the rest of their lives — like Harvard or Stanford does for others. The conservative Christian college is known for attracting top students and arming them with religious training and an Ivy League-quality education. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool, Politics
Homeschooling, then what?
Homeschooling, then what?
When their home-schooling is over, many students have the chance to go to college. But not all define success the same way.
Success can be measured in inches or accomplishments, in test scores or yards, in pounds or progress.
For home-schooled students and students who complete the majority of their education outside a traditional classroom, success is measured in any of these ways and more. Read more...
Labels: Career, College, homeschool
Homeschoolers adjust easily to campus life
Homeschoolers adjust easily to campus life
From Vanderbilt University's student media site...
As the home-schooling movement edges toward the mainstream, its students are applying in greater numbers to colleges across the nation, with some colleges considering them an attractive niche market.
Vanderbilt does not actively target home-schooled students but views them as a crucial component of its institutional commitment to diversity.
"We want to understand each student, and in the broadest sense, home-schooled students bring a different experience," said Dean of Admissions Doug Christiansen. "That's what diversity is all about, whether it's ethnic, gender, geographic or some other type of diversity." Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Mom, Dad and daughters attending college together
Mom, Dad and daughters attending college together
They mention in the article that they homeschooled. It's not too bad an idea and a natural extension for some homeschooling families.
Some college students might not be so thrilled if their parents told them they would be attending the same university.
Katie and Kristen Halloran see it a different way.
“I always kind of thought it would be a cool thing,” Katie said. Read more...
Labels: College, homeschool
Colleges embrace homeschooled
Colleges embrace homeschooled
Alicia Pyle, 20, has no trouble negotiating the range of emotions – not to mention the notes – of Rachmaninoff’s “Concerto No. 2’s” third movement.
Indeed, she knows it so well, she performed it last year as a guest artist for the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.
Now majoring in piano performance at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, Pyle also has mastered something else – the transition from home schooling to college. Read more...
Labels: College
College almost loses funding over homeschooling
In its admissions materials, the University of the Arts says it "welcomes applications from students who are home-schooled," and the university is listed on a national Web site of "Home School Friendly Colleges."
But one disgruntled home-school family from Western Pennsylvania who complained to their state legislator about the school's admissions requirements briefly wound up costing the school $1.2 million in state money for student financial aid yesterday. Read more...
Labels: College
Three degrees at 16-years
Don't get the idea your kids are behind. This is one unusual kid.
Andrew Hsu has not yet been on a date or taken his driving test.
But he does have three degrees -- in neurobiology, biochemistry and chemistry. This month, just weeks after his 16th birthday, Hsu became the second-youngest person to graduate from the University of Washington, and the youngest with a triple degree. Starting this summer, he plans to begin his doctoral research into brain function at Stanford University’s medical school.
For Andrew, the UW is where he has grown up. Not just the 1-foot height spurt that began after his freshman year, but also where he began separating his own identity and destiny from the expectations of others.
According to dad David Hsu, a computer-software engineer, Andrew’s unusual talents began revealing themselves at age 2, when he started assembling Lego robots and teaching himself to read. Read more...
The Homeschooled Advantage for College
In the pursuit of a homemade high school education, Jay Voris played drums in Guinea, Colin Roof restored a 134-year-old sailboat in Ireland, and Rebecca Goldstein wrote a 600-page fantasy novel and took calculus at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
The independent-minded Maryland students and two dozen others gathered at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Annapolis one afternoon this month for an alternative graduation ceremony that is becoming more common across the country as home schooling expands. Now the movement is gaining ground in a crucial arena: college admissions.
Goldstein, 18, of Ellicott City will be a full-time student at UMBC in the fall. Alan Goldstein said his daughter's idiosyncratic education distinguished her from "cookie cutter" applicants from conventional schools and helped her gain entrance into honors programs and win a full scholarship. Read more...
Labels: College
Oklahoma extends scholarships to homeschoolers
The Oklahoma House voted along partisan lines Monday to expand a popular state-financed college scholarship program to home-schooled children.
The measure by Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, would make home schoolers eligible for the Oklahoma Higher Learning Access Program, which grants scholarships to students from families earning less than $50,000 per year who take a rigorous college curriculum, maintain a 2.5 grade point average and stay out of trouble. Read more...
U.S. colleges becoming more homeschool friendly
LOS ANGELES — David Sample wanted to attend the University of California at Riverside but thought it was a lost cause because he had been home schooled.
The University of California system is known for being tough on nontraditionally schooled applicants. For them, the best ticket to UC has been transferring after taking community college classes or posting near-perfect scores on college entrance exams. Read more...
Labels: California, College
On leaving the home-schooling years
This is a subscription site but at least for today, I didn't need to register. Free to register and worth the read.
They were flexible times and enjoyable times; frustrating times and enlightening times; bonding times and arguing times. They were times at a particular locality but with a pertinent universality. They were "the home-schooling years," and I am that creature, the home-schooled student.
How can one describe the transition from a world of three classmates, academic accountability to no one but your own parents, and shelter from the dreaded "real world" to a world of over 60,000 students, several different teachers and classes, and a whole host of social, moral, and practical issues competing for your attention? Many are the days that I reflect and am amazed at how seamless the transition has actually been. Read more...
From home school to college
Thirty years ago, there were fewer than 20,000 students being home-schooled in the United States. The number is probably close to 2 million now. Some families choose homeschooling for religious reasons. Others think the mainstream educational system stifles the love of learning and believe homeschooling nurtures independent thought.
As home-schooling has become more common, admissions officers have become more homeschoolfriendly. Ten years ago, these students were often viewed with skepticism. Admissions officers wondered if they were prepared for rigorous college-level studies. But studies have shown that these students perform as well as or better than institutional-school graduates, and many colleges now welcome home-schooled students. Read more...
Labels: College
Homeschoolers Find Getting Into College Easier
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- David Sample wanted to attend the University of California at Riverside but thought it was a lost cause because he had been homeschooled.
The University of California system is known for being tough on nontraditionally schooled applicants. For them, the best ticket to UC has been transferring after taking community college classes or posting near-perfect scores on college entrance exams.
Read more...
Labels: College
Bob Books: Sight Words Kindergarten
I've taught three boys to read, with each one learning the skill in a different way. My youngest gravitated to easy readers, memorizing whole words while also learning phonetics. One of his favorite books to read was his set of Bob books. He read them daily, quickly committing to memory the simple sentences, which eventually led him and his brothers to develop their own Bob-Book knock-offs. Read more...
The Art of Argument: an Introduction to the Informal Fallacies
My son will be studying introductory logic this year (Sophomore) using this curriculum. I'm excited for him to learn the basics of logic, and it is my hope that when he completes this course he will understand fallacies, and thus learn how to recognize bad reasoning. I'm sure you'll agree that this is an important foundation we should give our teens as they are impressionable, and still forming their belief systems and worldviews. Read more...
Cabin on Trouble Creek
Brothers Daniel and Will are thrilled to help their pa homestead in a lush Ohio forest. At 11 and 9 the boys find all the chores exciting – chopping logs, building the cabin, making a fireplace, and gathering wood. Then comes the day their dad must leave the boys behind to finish readying the cabin while he brings back their mom and siblings. With enough food to last the six weeks before his return, the boys foresee the time will go by fast as they prepare the cabin walls. Read more...
Greek Alphabet Code Cracker
When teaching children, it's always nice to incorporate games or some type of fun into your lesson plans. In the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker, kids will have a great time as they play the role of detective, working to solve the case of the stolen Grecian Urn of Achilles. This novel approach certainly makes this sometimes intimidating subject non-threatening. My 9-year-old loves sleuthing and took a liking to this workbook immediately, and he needed only the littlest help from me. Read more...
Charles and Emma : The Darwins' Leap of Faith
Whether or not you agree with his theories or publications, you'll find out through this book that Charles Darwin was a family man who was committed to his 10 children and devoted to his Christian wife Emma. Ironically, his original life plan was to be a preacher, but then as he collected animal specimens and devoured natural history, he wrestled with the belief of creationism. Despite their conflicting religious views, Emma and Charles married. Read more...
Women of the Old Testament: 14 In-Depth Bible Studies for Teens
Barbara Frank put a lot of work into this bible study for your teen girls, and the result is a dynamic, engaging, and comprehensive look at 14 wonderful woman of the Old Testament. This is not a book you will just hand to your daughter and correct later, rather it requires your input too in the section called "discussion starters for mothers and daughters. Read more...
Med Head: My Knock-down, Drag-out, Drugged-up Battle with My Brain
I sailed through this book, practically reading the entire 200+ pages in one sitting. The story of Cory, a boy who has a severe form of Tourette's syndrome, OCD, and anxiety is both heartbreaking and uplifting. Though written by both Cory's dad and James Patterson, the voice is Cory's and it grabs you from the start and keeps you glued till the final page. Diagnosed at age 5, Cory was compelled to move his body in awkward and often painful ways. Read more...
We hear the Dead
Maggie and Kate Fox were mischievous children, known to play tricks on each other as well as their parents. Then one day their trickster nature goes extreme. Wanting to scare away their disliked niece, the girls pull the ultimate prank. They produce nighttime rapping noises and lead the niece and the rest of the family to believe the house is haunted and "spirits" are the source of the noise. Not only do they scare their family, but their neighbors too. Read more...
Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks
Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks is a quaint collection of stories arranged in a school year format geared toward your younger children. Originally compiled in 1894, Cardamom Publishers has reprinted it with a larger font and inserted numerous old-fashioned illustrations. These gentle stores will capture the attention of eager learners and the "talks" suggest ideas for hands on activities. Read more...
Picture the Dead
Jenny, orphaned and living with her unloving Aunt and Uncle first suffers the loss of her twin brother Tobias, and then her fiancé Will, both fallen soldiers of the civil war. Her relatives have little sympathy for her. As Will was their eldest son, they view their grief deeper and greater. Desperate to "glimpse" his son again, the uncle suggests they meet a man who claims to be one who can conjure images of the dead through photography. Read more...
Goddess Girls: Athena The Brain
12-year-old Athena gets a big surprise – a summons to report to Mount Olympus Academy. She learns she's a goddess and Zeus is her father. Previously she was living a normal pre-teen life at Triton Junior High. She is whisked off to her new school via Hermes Chariot and gets to see first hand what being a goddess is all about. With classes such as hero-ology, spellology and beautyology, she has a lot to learn. Read more...
The Chosen One
I cannot imagine growing up with several mothers, twenty siblings, and a prophet who pronounces who I must marry. Kyra, a chosen one of a polygamist sect, lives this life. At a mere 13-years-old she is ready to be married and start having her own babies. She wouldn't object to being married so young, if it could be Joshua, a boy of similar age whom she has grown fond of. But the prophet decrees Kyra must marry her Uncle, who at sixty is plenty old enough to be her grandfather. Read more...
Sherlock McBiskit Shares His Secrets to Good Character and Respect
Sherlock McBiskit is an adorable West Highland Terrier and in his book he renders some wise advice to children on what it means to have good character and respect. Kids love dogs, and McBiskit radiates adorability as he shares his secrets to getting the most out of life. In rhyming verse, the text is catchy and accompanied by cute pictures of the loveable canine. Here's an excerpt: Here is the first secret that most people don't know. Life gives us lots of tests. I will tell you it's so. Read more...
Little Black Ant on Park Street
It's easy to dismiss the role of a black ant. These small creatures are considered pests by most of us, but if you take an in depth look you'll find these little guys are really fascinating and have their own complex communities. Little Black Ant on Park Street, a Smithsonian Backyard title, is a nicely illustrated picture book that gives young readers a close-up look at the black ant's world. Read more...