Homeschool Through High School... and Beyond
Everyday Education- August 2006 Newsletter

Contents

Note from Janice
Events and Deadlines
Excerpt from My Blog
Coming Next Time
Guest Article: "Homeschool High School the Third Time Around" by Barbara Frank
Featured Free Resource

You are receiving this newsletter because you signed up for it on the www.EverydayEducation.com website or at a homeschool convention. If you would like to change your contact information, or stop receiving the newsletter, please see the bottom of this e-mail for instructions. Thank you!

If you don't see all the articles listed in the contents list, please go to the articles page on the website to read the full newsletter. I have discovered that some people receive shortened versions, but I don't know why. In g-mail, I was able to see most of it when I clicked on 'show quoted text' at the bottom of the part that showed. Very strange!

Note from Janice

It's late summer, and I don't know about you, but I'm thinking "back to school!" I love fall, and the start of the school year is always exciting. It's going to be a bit different at our household this year, though. If you've been on my mailing list any length of time, you know that my two oldest sons have graduated from college, one at 20, and the other at 19. Now it's time for my last two boys to start taking a few classes at the community college. They're both scheduled for placement tests this week, and are alternating between anxiety and excitement.

If any of you e-mailed me between mid-June and mid-July, and received no response, it's because the spiffy new spam filters installed by my webhost had a default setting of filtering out EVERYTHING. I have other e-mail addresses, and communication usually drops off during summer break, so it took me awhile to figure out that something was wrong, and how to fix it. Please e-mail me again if you e-mailed earlier and received no response-- I always respond if I receive mail, so please, write again!

The summer was busy and productive, though. I was able to finish Get a Jump Start on College! A Practical Guide for Teens in time to have a beta version out for the summer conventions. I have the e-book available at the Everyday Education website [www.EverydayEducation.com], and hope to have a print version available in the near future.

I've also published Connie Schenkelberg's wonderful Grammar Made Easy; Writing a Step Above as an e-book. If you need a comprehensive, inexpensive grammar program to teach several grades at once, you can read on the website why I highly recommend this resource. You may have seen it in previous years as simply Writing a Step Above, but if you visit the website, you can read the story behind the name change.

The next exciting project that is coming up is my Zeitgeist Literature courses. Many of you have asked when the classes would be available in book form, and I'm happy to tell you that I hope to have them ready in e-book format by late August or early September. If you're not sure about e-books, be sure to read the article below. I'm sold on the benefits of e-books for homeschoolers, and I hope that after you read my article, you will be too.

I did post a family photo from the wedding on the Contact page on the website, in case you're interested. The wedding, and the acquisition of a delightful daughter-in-law (who is also an excellent piano teacher!) was the highlight of our summer, but it was a pleasure to meet many of you at the conventions we attended. The remainder of the summer will probably be spent finishing Zeitgeist Lit, and battling Japanese beetles (I spray them with olive oil-- they seem to find it unpleasant!).

Enjoy the remainder of the summer, and remember to keep quick and easy records in your Transcripts Made Easy book!

Blessings,
Janice Campbell

P.S. This newsletter was ready to go out last week, and just as my hand was poised over the 'send' button, a construction team from our local cable company cut through our phone line. So, after several days with no internet access or telephone, I'm back online. Just another event in the saga of trying (since June) to transfer to high-speed access...

P.P.S. If all that weren't exciting enough, our oldest son broke his collarbone playing softball Sunday night. He won't be able to drive stick shift for a month or so, and since his job requires driving an average of over 1000 miles a week, I think I see some chauffering in my future!

Excerpt from My Blog: Summer Reading

What have you been reading this summer? Here's a partial list of what I've been reading:

-CS Lewis- The Weight of Glory
-Dante- Divine Comedy: Inferno
-Nicholas Kilmer- A House in Normandy
-Boswell- Life of Johnson
-Augustine- Confessions
-Suze Orman- 9 Steps to Financial Freedom
-Edgar Lee Masters- Spoon River Anthology
-Alexandra Stoddard- Creating a Beautiful Home
-Stanley and Danko- The Millionaire Next Door
-E. Christian Kopff- The Devil Knows Latin
-H.R. Rookmaaker- Modern Art and Death of a Culture (There's more on this in my July 5 blog entry.- www.janicecampbell.blogspot.com)

Coming Next Time
A book review of The Latin Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell
More links to free resources for homeschooling through high school and beyond
Events, Deadlines, and More!

What's Up With E-Books?

I've been buying and using e-books for years, and now I'm making my own books available as e-books. Why? Because the e-book concept is particularly practical for homeschoolers who may need more than one copy of reproducible worksheets or a workbook. E-books can be downloaded almost instantly, even with a dial-up connection, and they are immediately useable.

For books such as Transcripts Made Easy, Get a Jump Start on College, or Grammar Made Easy: Writing a Step Above, which have reproducible forms or exercises to fill in, you may print as many copies of these as you need for your immediate family. I remember the days when I had to buy more than one workbook for each child-- that got pretty expensive. I have encountered moms who have actually cut the pages out of a single workbook to reproduce for multiple children. This is not only inconvenient, but it is also illegal under copyright law, unless expressly permitted by the author.

Here are some tips that will help you get the most out of the e-books you buy:

• Save them onto your hard drive in a folder called 'My e-Books' or something similar.
• If you don't have a laser printer, you may wish to print them at night, so your ink-jet printer won't be occupied for too long.
• If your printer doesn't duplex, or print both sides of a page, text-only books may be printed two pages to a sheet.
• For some books, you may want to read the text on-screen, and just print copies of the reproducibles.
• For some books, you may want to print a master copy to store in a binder. All my e-books come with a cover graphic that may be printed to insert in the front of a view-binder for a professional look.

If you'd like to read more about how e-books work, see the article, How e-Books Work on my website. It will open in a new window. I have enjoyed reading many e-books, and while they'll never replace print books (p-books), they are efficient and useful for certain applications. I hope you'll try one someday!