My apologies

to those who went to my Math is Beautiful class. Between the technical difficulties and the shortness of the time, I hope that my main message got across. Let me restate it here: Math educators agree that early mathematics shouldn't be just arithmetic, and not just pencil and paper, but in schools they have a hard time implementing anything else. But in your homeschool you don't have to teach math the way you were taught. Many math programs I’ve seen spend too long teaching too little, especially in the primary grades. There is a "more excellent way" and that is to infuse it with interesting non-traditional math and logic topics.
We call this doing “Fun Math” at our house. My eleven-year old does Saxon math every other day, reading through two lessons, doing one problem set, and checking it himself, which takes him less than 30 minutes. On the other days we explore the world of math together. In other words, he's getting the traditional and the non-traditional math, in the same amount of time.
The handout on the LDSEHE web site lists many resources that we have loved, and the three extra things that I threw in were The Elegant Universe, a PBS documentary about String Theory, and tenthdimension.com, which has an animation that shows how we could have up to ten dimensions (my son also got excited by the book Flatland that we read together on this topic.) The other web site which contains lots of pages of recreational math ideas is mathworld.wolfram.com.
In the next couple of days I'll post my full text of my presentation, along with many other articles I've written on homeschooling. I did have them up here, but they were deleted off the server and I hadn't put them back in yet, but I will.
Good Luck!

Transitions

It seems like everyone is moving on to new things. Adri took her AP English test and is finishing a few other things, then her official career as a homeschooler is done. She's got one more piano recital, then her lessons are over. She's going to her last year of girls camp (I'm going too) and then she'll do the Pioneer Trek and finish up her Personal Progress and then her time in the Young Womens' organization will also be over.
Quinn auditioned to move up to the Concert Orchestra of YOPW and made it. He was ordained a priest and the next Sunday blessed the sacrament and had his first baptism, his cousin Samantha.
Lindy is reading great books and drawing a lot and playing her guitar and applying for jobs. She may just do a bunch of babysitting this summer and not bother with being someone's employee. She came back from college all jazzed up about geology, and wants to go on a bunch of geology field trips around here.
Luke moved up to Boy Scouts and has already been camping a couple of times.
This week is the LDSEHE conference, and Quinn, Adri, and I are all going. I'm teaching three classes, and we're all playing a song with a Celtic feel, "The Islander," on violin, acoustic guitar and bodhran (Celtic drum) at the talent show. Adrianne is super excited because Jon Schmidt is coming to give a piano concert, and she is signed up for his class "Jon Schmidt's Darkest Songwriting Secrets."
OH BOY!