Once upon a time in another bloggy life I had a regular weekly feature called “Come Shoot The Breeze With Me,” some of you may remember. It was a big fat collection of a whole lot of nothing and a whole lot of everything all in one place and it was beautiful because it was simple and undemanding and gave you something to take away.
And I stopped doing it??? Who knows why?
I have since come to my senses. And in true “shooting the breeze” fashion (which for you non-southerners is the act of sitting around and chatting informally and comfortably) here’s what I know for this week:
It’s back to school everywhere this month – maybe your kids are homeschooled, maybe they’re public or private schooled. Maybe school has started, maybe it hasn’t. But it’s in the air one way or another and there’s little you can do to escape it (unless of course your children are older or younger than school age or you don’t have any yet – but I digress.) Here’s a few Back To School links for you, either way.
- There’s a NOT Back To School Blog Hop, for homeschoolers, going on over at My 3 Boybarians. Every Monday in August is a different theme, and they’re halfway through, but you can still play along and find other blogging homeschoolers.
- I’ve been setting up and getting used to My Homeschool Plan this week – looking for an online planner? Check it out.
- New Nationwide Study Confirms Homeschool Academic Achievement– I thought the breakdowns about how income levels, parent education and money spent affected (or didn’t) the percentile scores were interesting to see.
- An interesting idea, not sure how I feel about it.. K12 is basically an online correspondence public school program (and just as free as your local public school but no school buses or cafeteria lunches.)
- This week I stumbled across this JAW-DROPPING youtube video of a 20/20 piece called “Stupid in America” which takes a seriously hard look at the state of our public school systems. Y’all this is harsh. And scary. And there are many who are going to argue. I found this article which discussed each of John Stossels points, including some additional background info and article links for some of them. And it was then I realized “YALL! This piece aired in 2006!!” It’s not like this is new news, this is old news that some of us are only just now hearing about. Truly, if you watch nothing else, watch this.
Fun, funny or really cool…I’ve had a lot of interesting things come across my way this week. How about the Evian Roller Babies commerical (TOO CUTE) or the all-natural swimming pool or the theft-proof and anti-puncture bicycle that reads your fingerprints and features a calorie-monitoring system? Cool, huh?
And last but not least I’ll leave you with some juicy morsels I found floating around the blogosphere this week. Feast your eyes on these:
- Alyssa is giving away a free Flip MiniHD Camcorder
- Texans, today is the first day of the sales-tax holiday weekend
- “A Nursing Doll? Oh My.”
- A Different Kind of Christmas Catalog
- The Reward (this made the radio, y’all!)
- My internet hosting company is having a FREE FIRST YEAR special right now.
I know I didn’t find ALL the goodies this week. What did I miss? Now it’s your turn. Come, Shoot the Breeze With Me!
(Link up to anything, anything at all. Any kind of link post, review, question you asked, etc. To limit you further would be well, not in the spirit of good breeze shooting. This list will stay open all weekend so you’ll have plenty of time to share over the weekend.)
Share it! Pin it. Print it. Send it.
wowzer. that video is DISTURBING!! I grabbed it for a “p.s.” post on my why we’re homeschooling series!!!
.-= Kristi_runwatch´s last blog ..p.s. – another compelling argument for homeschooling! =-.
Oh dang! I was going to link to your series! Shucks, darn memory lapses. I still need to read #3 and #4 – I have them open in two other tabs. =P
Thank you for having this and allowing us to link to it. I hope my post suited. lol 😉
fyi – I posted that video on facebook and made a bunch of my teacher friends mad. 😉
.-= Kristi_runwatch´s last blog ..p.s. – another compelling argument for homeschooling! =-.
I bet!! I don’t doubt there are tons of people that would be offended to see that – but just because not every school is that bad, or not every teacher is that bad, or not every teacher is privy to what is going on, does not change the fact that IS going on in public school systems across America. And even though we homeschool, I think the voucher system and the idea of letting some schools fail, both to create a system of accountability, sounds like a great idea. I would love to see the public school system improve… Read more »
I am looking forward to looking at all of your links. I saw that 20/20 video mentioned somewhere else about a year ago, but never watched the full thing, so I really want to do that. I am a homeschooling mom, but I was a public school teacher before I became a mom and it was a sad place to be in. I linked up to a post I wrote earlier this week that was on my mind most of the week.
thanks for stopping by-that 2nd picture is of my bench in the kitchen. It was a bench my father made & my mother had painted-the paint color was waaay outdated and I asked her if she mind if I painted it black-so I painted it and had some left over toile fabric and made a little cushion for it. How did you kitchen re-do turn out? Did you ever decide what color to paint all the cabinets and the wall of cabinets?