Posted: 25 Jan 2010 09:00 PM PST

The family ran like a well-oiled machine. I watched, envious as each child (all 18 of them) dutifully and cheerfully did their assigned chores and schoolwork, played with one another, practiced their instruments and followed their parent's directions.

Of course I'm talking about the Duggar family, whose popular show "18 Kids and Counting" on the Discovery Health Channel, has put many a parent (homeschooling or otherwise) to shame with their orderly household and the soft-spoken way in which they achieve it.

The Duggar home seems flawless in its management, and since my family of five appeared to be floundering like a ship without a compass, I made a resolution to adopt a few of their scheduling methods.

According to their Web site, www.duggarfamily.com, the Duggars credit the book, Managers of Their Homes by Steven and Teri Maxwell, in helping them develop their daily schedule. MOTH was written specifically for homeschoolers, and seems custom-made for larger than average families. Intrigued, I borrowed the book from a friend of mine with a family of seven - another successful homeschooler who has impressed me with the way she manages her home.

One of the book's first claims is that schedules can relieve stress from your life.

"When tasks become routine," say the Maxwells, "they require much less physical and emotional energy. A normal day is easier to get through without having to make numerous draining decisions, answer questions from other family members concerning their direction, or feel the day has come to an end without getting anything done."

I decided to do a three-week trial to see if MOTH could work for my family. I delved right in to making a schedule, writing out an "Activity Worksheet" for each family member - a list of what each person needed/wanted to accomplish each day - and finally charting each task in 30- or 60-minute increments.

My first hurdle to overcome, however, was getting up before my kids - essential to a mom who wants to have personal time, exercise and a shower. Unfortunately, someone failed to inform my teething 13-month-old that he was supposed to sleep through the night! Sleep deprived, and waking up later than I wanted, I decided to follow Maxwell's mantra, that if you get sidetracked, "pickup the schedule wherever it is and go on from there."

All in all it worked, and our days did seem to go more smoothly.

Not only had I scheduled individual time with each of my children, they each had a designated playtime with one another. Even the baby, whose former schedule consisted of nothing but free play, naps and meals, had scheduled music and reading times with his sisters, as well as preschool time with me. My husband even commented that the house was more peaceful than usual.

Though not perfect, and not at all with the precision of the Duggars, we like the schedule. It did work for us, and I highly suspect would work for most people.

Heather Duncan is a freelance contributor to The Knoxville News Sentinel.

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Family shrinking their earthly footprint (Owen Sound Sun Times)

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 01:32 AM PST

Posted By BILL HENRY SUN TIMES STAFF

Updated 1 day ago

Their house faces the sun. That makes a world of difference for Georgie Donais, Alan Shisko and their two small children.

After 20 years in dark, downtown Toronto, the family is spending at least a year in a 1980s-era passive solar home in The Beaver Valley, and doing their best to live a low-impact, greener lifestyle.

They've got a rooster and three hens, to start, a composting toilet to manage much of their own waste, and they try to control their consumption. They have plenty of plans -- a solar-heated shower, an outdoor kitchen, outdoor fireplace, a permacultured vegetable garden on a south-facing slope.

But reducing your environmental footprint isn't always easy, they said Saturday morning as warm winter sunlight streamed through a wall of south facing windows.

Cutting consumption "cold turkey" is more difficult with children, Donais said. The rural location means reliance on a vehicle, and using it as little as possible takes planning and "mindfulness."

"In that respect, living here is more consumptive than it was in the city," Shisko said. "We had a car but we almost never used it. I think about it a lot, because it was such a smaller part of my life in Toronto and it's a big part now, and frankly it's not something I'm particularly comfortable with."

Their new rural environment offers a lifestyle that allows the couple to better understand their place in the world, the impact they have, and how to apply years of reading and research.

"This house faces the sun, which for me was one of the most important aspects of living here," said Donais, raised in rural Saskatchewan, Canada's sunniest province.

It means heating the house only in the evenings, while the sun warms it during the day. "Just being in a house that's facing the sun makes a difference," she said.

"I have been without sun for 22 years. It's been like a physical need in me, a craving to be somewhere where I can be outside in the sun, or I can be inside in the sun. Just by being here, and by virtue of being able to stand in the sun, we have already moved leaps and bounds ahead."

Donais is an artist, builder and graphic designer who recently resigned after 10 years designing The Dance Current, Canada's national dance magazine. Shisko is a musician and motion graphics designer, creating moving titles for TV and cinema.

That means both can work from home, with flexible hours, and time to homeschool their children, Emory, 8, and Sophia, 6, and time for other pursuits.

Donais took an interest five years ago in cob building, creating structures big and small with clay, straw, sand and water.

When health officials closed down a summer kitchen facility at their neighbourhood Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto, she spearheaded a community art project to build a 65-ft. cob wall. It includes kitchen facilities and sinks, a baby changing station, a cooking fireplace and other amenities.

More than 500 volunteers helped during the summer of 2005, and the project cost the city just $3,200 to meet health and other regulations.

"You mix it with your feet and you put it on with your hands. It's just about as elemental as you can get and anybody can do it," Donais said.

But a follow-up project to install a cob building to enclose a donated composting toilet became mired in red tape, miscommunication and neighbourhood opposition. That, in part, prompted Donais and Shisko to start looking beyond the city, toward a simpler, greener lifestyle, with more opportunity to live creatively, they said Saturday.

The experiment is to live closer to their food, and closer to their shelter, Donais said.

"We needed some place where we could go and where we could try stuff and where we could make mistakes," she said. "I want to be able to try stuff. If it doesn't work, I want to take it apart and do it again."

They learned through someone in their homeschooling network last spring that Kimbercote farm, near Heathcote and run by a non-profit ecological cooperative, was offering a live and work opportunity at the property. Their proposal was accepted in April, they moved to the farm's staff house in late May, where they function as caretakers and facilitators for groups who use the property.

"When I got here it was everything and more that I could have imagined," Donais said.

"I'm pretty won over" on the rural, greener lifestyle, added Shisko.

But both said so far, they've only made a start at reducing their environmental impact.

Future plans for the family could eventually include building a cob dwelling, they said, after more research and experimentation.

"I'd like to get closer to the fundamentals, like how do you put a roof over your head without hiring architects and bringing in backhoes and getting experts to come in a do all this stuff."

Donais said the most satisfying example of their low impact lifestyle is "humanure composting" which means using an outhouse and adding their own waste to the compost pile. It's something she's wanted to do for years, but couldn't in the city.

"To me it's an extremely satisfying way of closing the loop of eating and giving back," she said. "There's absolutely no other intervention. It goes into the bucket, goes into the compost, turns into compost to add to the soil and there's no waste."

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Principal removed at Maricopa school (Casa Grande Dispatch)

Posted: 25 Jan 2010 10:38 PM PST

" it appears that humble needs to go back to school! check out the mistakes in just one sentence (well, sort of one sentence). "...is has he..." "...moved..." instead of REmoved; "now" instead of KNOW; "calling" spelled with 3 L's.

Humble, if i were you, i wouldn't call on monday to complain. if i were you, i'd look for the nearest adult education curriculum and sign up. education begins at home. you are a perfect example of why kids struggle in school today. "

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Homeschooling

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

“Duncan: Finding the right family schedule (Knoxville News Sentinel)” plus 2 more

“Duncan: Finding the right family schedule (Knoxville News Sentinel)” plus 2 more

Posted By BILL HENRY SUN TIMES STAFF

Updated 1 day ago

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