Dragon practice

Hi, my name is Dave. But if you read this blog, you knew that. I am not typing this post. I am dictating it to Dragon software. I purchased the software for my sons spiderdroid.  I am just trying it out, to see if it works.  I am a pretty slow typist, and sometimes it is easier for me to dictate my posts to my wife. She is a fabulous typist.  I think sometimes I will use the software to type my blogs. When I  said typist a moment ago, it wrote down type s. When I said it in context,it got it right.

I hope this will help my son  with his writing.  This is working much better than the Dragon app I had with my ipod touch. I lost my iPod touch hospital years ago, that's a different story. Do any of you use Dragon software? How is it working for you?

Well, this was just a practice. I will be reviewing boyhood very soon.  Please check out my daughter's blog Wolfina's Secrets and  her most recent  post, my Christmas vacation.

My name is Dave Roller, and I approve this message!

Dave Out Loud Relocated

Sunday's Cool: A Link Up and A Look Ahead

A Link Up: I am going to say something, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way.  I hate Word Press.  I have tried on several occasions to use Word Press blogs, even taught a blogging class using a Word Press platform.  They are about as easy to use, as Millard Fillmore is easy to rate as one of the top 3 presidents ever.  No offense to Millard Fillmore, in fact more on him tomorrow.

But back to my disdain for all things Word Press.  The latest debacle came a few months ago, when I tried to start a vlog, called Dave Out Loud.  I had a Word Press account with the nickname DaveOutLoud, so I thought using Word Press might be a good idea.

Big Mistake. Huge.

It took me almost an hour every time I posted to just put a video from my You Tube account on the blog.  Yesterday, I finally stopped the madnes, and started a Dave Out Loud Vlog here at Blogger.

Here is yesterday's innuagral post.  In the next few weeks I will be rerunning the videos I posted at the previous platform.  Which, as it turns out, won't take an hour for all 8 episodes, let alone 1. 

A Look Ahead:  Tomorrow, I will be posting about a special project we will be doing at school this year regarding American Presidential History.  This is one of the reasons, I had Millard Fillmore on the brain earlier.  Not exactly what else I will be blogging about this week.  It seems like it will be a rather eventful week, so I should have plenty of material.

HSBA Award Profile

Today's category: Best Homeschool Vlog

One reason why I started a vlog is to compete in this category next year.  This year's winner, Women Living Well does so much more than vlog.  Here is a sample post with an encouraging video about involving your family in your misistry.

Christmas, Libraries and More

Sunday's Cool

A Link Up and A Look Ahead



A Link Up

This week we started Library Week amid all the hustle and bustle of the Holiday Season.  I hope to utilize our home school blog more in the months to come and will post our library adventures there.  Here is the first installment

We interrupt this post with a Holiday Message

Hope you are having a wonderful Christmas.  We hosted our family today as there were few enough people coming to fit comfortably in our house.  With all the travelling we have been doing lately, it is nice to stay home and celebrate here.

A Look Ahead

This week in real life, we will be visiting loads of libraries,  and posting snippets here.  That won't start until Tuesday.  Tomorrow we will engage in a little excitement call Do Nothing Day.

You can read all about it next time.

Merry Christmas! 

Sunday's Cool HOF Edition

Sunday's Cool!
A Link Up and A Look Ahead

A Link Up: Crazy Uncle Dave's sports blog had some exciting Ron Santo news this week.  I hope you enjoy 1 down 2 to go.

A look Ahead: Another busy week in real life life that will culminate with Spider Droid's Robotics tournament.  Here on the blogosphere will be busy as well with some posts featuring the carnivals and meme's I participate in.  I will also continue featuring HSBA winners at the end of each post.

For instance, today we will look at the Laugh With Us Blog which was the winner of funniest home school blog.  As another blog, that gets it's bread   and butter from quoting family member's crazy sayings, I must say I heartily approve.  Here is a sample post. 

Next Time:Thankswimming

Dave Out Loud

Sunday's Cool

A Link Up and A Look Ahead

A Link Up: I started a new vlog this week.

A vlog is a blog where the main content are video entries. The name my vlog is Dave Out Loud Dave Out Strong, Dave of Happy Not Sad, Dave of Good Things not Bad. I am not sure how frequently I am going to make entries, as this house doesn't often get quiet enough for video journalism. When it does, I will link my vlogs over here.

A Look Ahead: Thanksgiving Week was a pretty busy one for us. We had our co-op's closing program, a quick visit to Indiana, a bout with sickness, the premiere of the Muppets, Thanksgiving with relatives, and some swimming thrown in for good measure. This week I plan to post about one or two of those activities, starting tomorrow with my HSD review of the Muppets.

Sunday's Cool: Fragments of a Tweenaged Spider Droid

Sunday's Cool

A link up & A Look Ahead

A Link up: Friday my son posted on his blog for the first time in a long time. He also made a lot of changes to it. So I suggest after you read his most recent post, that you spend a little time there admiring what he has done with the place. He would also like followers. Unlike my daughter, who is content just to write her blog whether people read it or not, SD wants people to actually see what he does. So go ahead make his day and follow his blog.

A Look Ahead: The week just past, was a busy one for me in the blogosphere and in real life. This week should be as well. I am hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling on Tuesday as well as getting ready for our co-op semester to end a week from Monday. Add to that some home improvements and our regular school week and it should be a very eventful week.

Sunday's Cool: Bunny Circus

Sunday's Cool

A Link Up & A Look Ahead

A Link Up: In September and October when I was all but an absent figure in the blogosphere, I was also not pushing my children's presence there. Now that things at the Izola Becker Home School or more or less to back to normal, I hope my kids will get back to blogging as well.

On Friday, Bunny Girl wrote a post about our trip to the Circus. You can get to that post my clicking on the picture of the 12 year old ringmaster or by clicking here.

A Look Ahead: This week I plan to blog about birthdays. My son's that just passed and a birthday my late brother would have loved. I also will be working on the Carnival of Homeschooling that I will be hosting on the 16th of this month.

Next Time: Birthday Training

Sunday's Cool: Dead Mice

Sunday’s Cool

A Link Up & A Look Ahead.

A Link Up: Spider Droid is our featured blogger today. A recent visit to a local prairie yielded two posts. I hope you enjoy Dead mouse on the prairie and Questions for a dead mouse.

Speaking of Spider Droid, he mowed the lawn for the first time this weekend unless you count this.

I was thinking it would still be a few more years before he would be up to the task. But he has been bugging me for days to let him try to mow. So even though he’s just 9, I’m thinking when someone wants to mow your lawn. you say yes!

A Look Ahead: This is going to be a short week school wise with Memorial Day tomorrow and me away at the home school convention on Thursday and Friday. If the weather ever gets slightly summerish we will get a pool pass and do some swimming. Blog wise, I will be putting up a post tomorrow about a fractions lesson we did last week. I hope to post it just in time to submit it to the Carnival of Homeschooling.

Memorial Day weekend also marks the start of my summer reading season. Each summer I try to read at least 10 books and review them. Besides reading for just myself, I also spend time reading to the entire family. We just finished Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder the American Frontier author (not to be confused with Laura Impala Wildebeest the African Savannah author). I will post a review in the days to come.

When I hosted the Carnival of Homeschooling earlier this month I mentioned a contest Circle of Moms was holding to pick the top 25 homeschooling blogs. The voting has been closed for some weeks now and I have decided to feature the top 25 blogs in a sidebar here. Mine are not listed in the order of votes received, (for that info click here) but rather by most recently published. 5 of the top 25 vote getter's were already appearing here, I hope you enjoy them all. Well that’s it for today’s edition. Thanks for stopping by.

Next Time: Raising the Bar on Fractions.

Ereth's Birthday

Sunday's Cool

A Link Up & A Look Ahead

A Link Up: Bunny Girl read this book and enjoyed it. So I asked her to read it again and write chapter summaries for it. She has been placing those book summaries in her blog, Bookworms & Bunnies. Click here to see her first entry. clicking the title of her blog or the cover of her book will bring you to the latest entry.

A Look Ahead: My next idea has a variety of people I need to thank for. First: The good people at Why Homeschool who manage the Carnival of Homeschooling. Secondly, Life Nurturing Education, who hosted this past week's carnival. Thirdly, Arby of the Home School Apologist who wrote this very good post about culture where she referenced a post giving the same old recycled opinions why home schooling is not such a great idea, and finally for Sandy Laurence who wrote the aforementioned piece entitled Homeschool Disadvantages.

Why all this build up? Because in reading Sandy's post and the myriad of comments that followed said post, I was given material for no less than 3 future posts of my own. You know the maxim, if life gives you lemons make lemonade? Well until I read Sharon's post, there hadn't been a lemon like that since the Yugo came on the market. The pieces I have planned should be pure lemonade. The first of which, "How to get 50 or more comments on a post about Home Education" should roll out tomorrow.

Selection Sunday

Sunday's Cool
A Link Up and a Look Ahead

A link up: Crazy Uncle Dave's Sport-O-Rama is my sports blog. I don't update it nearly as often as I'd like to. That may explain why today's link-up about our NCAA Brackets is over 11 months old. It is timely though as the field of 68 was just announced and the tournament starts on Tuesday. Last year Amy and I kind of split our contest. I picked Duke to win it all and they did. Amy picked Butler to win it all and they made it to the championship game. She ended up scoring more overall points than I did. Amy and I will make our picks tomorrow and I will try to post them at Sport-O-Rama prior to Tuesday's tip off.

A Look Ahead: I will try to continue with the Lenten observations I began last week. I also have a few promised posts that might come up this week. Puppy will probably say or do something crazy. So you never know what you will get. One thing I can tell you is that sometime in the next fortnight I will explain what I mean by countdown to 500 which has appeared in the upper left hand corner of this blog for the past few weeks.

Good luck making up for that lost hour and have a great week!

Sunday's Cool

I am trying out a new feature today. It's called Sunday's Cool: A Link up and a Look Ahead. Our family has several other blogs here in the blog-o-sphere. The majority of them go untended for and ultimately unread. I have decided that each Sunday I will link up one of those blogs here. This should give me the encouragement I need to have those update more often. That will be the link-up portion of the title. The look-a-head will just be a sneak peek at what may be appearing on this blog in the coming 7 days. As my loyal readers may have noticed, I used to end each post with a sneak peek of what my next post would be about. Sometimes the hardest part of writing a post was simply writing the next time tag. So, I gave up on it. This will give me a chance to give you a warning if I'm starting a six post series on lawn furniture feng-shui.

So with that build up here is the innaugural episode . . .

Sunday's Cool

A Link Up and a Look Ahead

A link up: A few weeks ago our family went to Springfield to indicate our disapproval with proposed Senate Bill SB136. It was tabled so we must have done some good. At our home school web site : Izola Becker Home School, I put up a few pictures from our time there. We chose this picture because past Puppy and the Liberty Bell replica you can see the lines of people waiting to enter the Capitol building and attend the discussion on the bill. Click on the picture to see the entire post.



A Look Ahead: Speaking of SB 136. I plan to post this week parts of an epilogue to SB 136 I saw at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). I will give it a HSD twist and plan to call it "Of Carrots and Sticks." On Monday, I will be announcing the winner of the home school conference mp3 give-a-way. This is your last chance to enter. Click here to do so. Hopefully the week won't get away from me and there will be loads of interesting tidbits here. Enjoy your Sunday and have a great week!.