Your Kids’ College Competition Can’t Write

Do you worry that your kids aren’t good enough writers?  Are you concerned that by the time they get to college, they won’t have the skills to write papers that will help them pass their courses? If so, don’t worry.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t teach your kids to write well. It’s an important skill to have. But maybe you shouldn’t worry so much, because according to this writer, the competition isn’t too tough. In fact, he says that unless they have a lot of money to pay term paper writers, the competition can barely put a sentence together.

This man writes term papers for a living. College students buy them from him and claim them as their own. He says it’s big business, and that many, many students pass their college classes this way.  How depressing is that?

By the way, he claims that college students in one specific course of study provide him with more work opportunities than any other:

I, who have no name, no opinions, and no style, have written so many papers at this point, including legal briefs, military-strategy assessments, poems, lab reports, and, yes, even papers on academic integrity, that it’s hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I’d say education is the worst. I’ve written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I’ve written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I’ve synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I’ve written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I’ve completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

Remember that the next time you hear someone say that only parents with teaching degrees should be allowed to homeschool…..

A Thought-Provoking Project for Parents and Teens

Most of us don’t understand the extent of our government’s indebtedness, but we do know that we’re saddling our kids and grandchildren with a ton of debt. No one’s happy about that, but what can we do?

Here’s an interesting interactive graphic that will help you and your teen get a handle on exactly what can be done to pay it off. It’ll get you both talking about where cuts should be made and/or taxes should be increased. Each decision you make reduces the debt….but also has repercussions.

Try it and see what I mean. I actually got the whole thing paid off fairly quickly. But I have a feeling some of my decisions wouldn’t be very politically popular. Oh, well, I’m not running for office. But I’d vote for anyone who would make the same cuts I did  🙂

P.S. The time your teen spends on this should count towards a civics or government unit.

A Simple Homeschool Thanksgiving

Hard to believe Thanksgiving is next week already! Here’s how I used to do Thanksgiving when I was homeschooling all four children:

If you’re one of those lucky people who are having Thanksgiving at their house this year, I’ve got some advice for you. Don’t do school that week!

I realize this isn’t an issue for you unschoolers out there. But there are others who are emotionally attached to our lesson plans, whether we have written them out to the tiniest detail, or just have a few goals we like to keep in mind. Ever the optimists, we think we can get plenty of school done on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving Wednesday night to get our dinner cooked in advance. That’s called dreaming.

Here’s a Thanksgiving plan for the homeschool mom that I developed after many years of running myself ragged trying to do school Thanksgiving week while planning, shopping for and cooking a Thanksgiving dinner. It’s the result of years of fine-tuning, careful consideration and a few mommy meltdowns. These days, my goal is to keep things as simple as possible. Continue reading

Free ESV Bible

This morning, my husband told me that an English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible is now available on Amazon for free!

I’ve already downloaded it and it’s really nice. It’s the Kindle edition, but even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download “Kindle for PC” to your pc and then get your free Bible.

Here are instructions for how to download “Kindle for PC” to your pc.

Here’s the link for the free ESV Bible on Kindle.

Enjoy!  🙂