FIRST
Our family has become FIRST robotics obsessed. My son was on a FIRST LEGO League team for 3 years. Their final year his team won the NC State Champion's Award and went on to Nationals in Dayton, OH in May where they won a first place Teamwork Award.
After that intense year, we took a year off and a friend and I took a behind-the-scenes look possible next steps by being the Volunteer Coordinators for NC's inaugural FIRST Robotics Regional. In FIRST terms, we "drank the Koolaid" and decided to form our own community-based highschool FRC team.
2011 was our first rookie year... lots of work but it's an amazing program. And, the team won All-Star Rookie so we ended up at the Nationals in St. Louis in April.
We'll see where it goes this year!...
Websites for the FIRST robotics programs:
- US FIRST
- FIRST LEGO League
- NC FIRST Robotics
- Wake Robotics (our non-profit organization to support FIRST teams)
Team websites:
- The rookie Team PyroTech
- My son's 2009 FLL website: Water 4 Tomorrow
Articles and Handouts
These articles and handouts that I've developed over time as I've answered peoples' questions about homeschooling and for various discussion groups and workshops. I'll add to the available list as I have time. I just need to get them in a useable format! If you have questions about some of these topics before I get them uploaded, let me know.
Background
Thinking About the Why's of Homeschooling
- Developing an Educational Philosophy
- What are some of your underlying thoughts about education, why and how children learn, and what the end result should be?
(for now, this links to the post on my blog)
- What are some of your underlying thoughts about education, why and how children learn, and what the end result should be?
- Learning Styles
- How do people learn? What are the different ways learning styles are described? What impact does this have on your curriculum choices?
(for now, this links to the post on my blog)
- How do people learn? What are the different ways learning styles are described? What impact does this have on your curriculum choices?
- Personality Styles
- Personality styles drive the interaction between people. This interaction is extremely important when people work, play, and live together -- especially homeschooling families! But there are lots of ways to describe different personalities and each one has its own characteristics.
Homeschooling Topics
- Homeschooling High School Topics
- Several links of interest for homeschooling high school, plus some examples of calculating GPA and formatting transcripts.
- Portfolios and Record Keeping
- In NC, there are no legal requirements to keep records or portfolios of class work but there are several reasons to do so. And, there are many ways to do it, depending on why you're keeping records and who you're keeping them for.
- Curriculum Choices
- Different types of curriculum and some of the pros and cons of each one
- Coops
- What is a coop? What are some of the things to think about for getting involved in a homeschool coop?
- Testing in NC
- What does it mean for a homeschooler to test in NC? What tests are available? What are the pros and cons of the different tests?
If you have questions about any of these topics, or if your support group would like someone to speak about these topics, let me know: linda@homeschoolgeodes.com
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