Manchester Area Homeschoolers
February 22, 2010
Parent Support Newsletter
WEBSITE:  http://manchnh-homeschoolers.tripod.com/ 
Editor:  Kimberly Lacerte
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"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
-- William Butler Yeats 
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE
1.  Overview of our February meeting
2.  Newsletter Editor and Webmaster (Mistress) Still Needed
3.  Overview of our new website

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1.  Overview of our February meeting

This month we discussed a variety of topics, including fun summer field trips, curriculum choices, making your daily homeschooling easier, “how to” homeschooling books, and local homeschooling groups (other than ours).

One of the summer field trip ideas we discussed was the Free Fun Fridays program from the Highland Street Foundation in MA (website:  http://www.highlandstreet.org/special-programs/free-fun-fridays.html )  You can sign up for their 2011 E-mail list by sending a request to info@highlandstreet.org. 

Some of the “how to” homeschooling books various members of the group recommended are:  Home Learning Year by Year by Rebecca Rupp (concepts of homeschooling) and What Your (K - 6th ) Grader Needs to Know by E.D. Hirsch Jr. (overview of curriculum content each year)

Some books recommended for those who were interested in the public school system in America are:  American Education by Joel Spring and Lies my Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.

WeARE Home Educators is a homeschooling group in Weare, NH.  They have many activities that you may be interested in joining.  
Website:  http://whe.dimentech.com/ 

Our support group meets at Barnes and Noble’s on South Willow St., Manchester on the 3rd Sunday of each month from 6:30 - 8:30pm.  We meet in the café out back and Maureen Doyle is our facilitator.  Maureen usually sends an Email just before the meeting to give us the topic for discussion.  Our next meeting is March 20, 2011.  
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2. Newsletter Editor and Webmaster (Mistress) Still Needed

I will be retiring from homeschooling in 2011 when my youngest goes to West High School in Manchester.  It's his choice to attend West and I'm actually looking forward to the next phase of my education journey.  This also means that our group will need someone or ones to handle the things I usually handle for the group.

We have a volunteer to facilitate the monthly homeschooling meetings.  Anyone out there who would be interested in learning how to maintain the website or write the monthly newsletter, please let me know!  

Specifically, I do the following with the website and monthly newsletter:  (1) edit this newsletter, (2) maintain the MA Homeschoolers website, (3) moderate the Yahoo Group, and (4) manage the Email.  All told, I spend about 3 hours a month on all of these tasks.  

Please contact me if you are interested.  I'd like to start transitioning these tasks over sooner rather than later so I know you are comfortable with the tasks before I retire.

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3. Overview of our new website

I’ve been making changes to our website and wanted to share these changes with you.  The new website is in the header of the newsletter.  The homepage contains the date and time of our next meeting as well as 4 links:  Home, Newsletter Archive, Blog, and Field Trips.

The Home link returns you to the home page from any page on the site (it is displayed on all of the web pages).

The Newsletter Archive link takes you to a page where you can open any newsletter from the past 2 years.

The Blog link brings you to our new blog.  The first few posts are ready to view.  They include an overview of the basics of homeschooling in NH.  This includes the notification, evaluation, and portfolio requirements.  NOTE:  This page is the only page where the Home link does not exist(technical difficulties).  Use the Back button on your web browser to return to the Home page.

The Field Trips link brings you to a page that contains field trip ideas for various areas of NH.

Hope you enjoy using the new website!