Hi, again, I thought I would start off the Howdy Do's with me. I live in Seattle, Washington and have homeschooled off and on since my daughter started school. She is entering 7th grade this fall and so I am getting some help from an alternative education program called C.H.O.I.C.E (Children Having Options In Creating Education) secondary.

The program is a partnership of Foundation for Educational Choice and the Kent School District in Kent, WA. The Foundation and the school district also offer a homeschool computer lab program for use by any homeschooling family. My daughter and I were involved in the homeschool computer lab for the last 3 years. Both programs are multiage situations filled with lots of
adults. Parents are still the primary teacher.

The lab is a good place to get a group of students together to do internet projects, and I have been doing just that using Kidlink for many of the projects for the last two school years. I also use NASA programs like Live from Mars.

The computer lab has moved this school year so for those of you that knew me before as being from "Maywood Center", I will now be from Kent Learning Center. Physically we are talking about 2 miles .

So far my daughter is the only student in the Family History project but more will be around when school starts.

She will start on my husband's family and put together charts, then enter the data into the computer. She will look at history surrounding the various migrations of the family. She will interview my husband's cousin, who has done a lot of work already, and take notes to get her information. She will interview her grandmother and write a biography of her grandmother's life. And write her own biography.  Maybe even dad, too.

The class will have similiar assignments so I imagine Washington State History will be the first "unit" or even "neighborhood history". I plan to go backwards in history with the homeschoolers. Should the C.H.O.I.C.E. teachers plan to have their classes participate, then I will check the history units they plan and go accordingly.

The beginning emphasis will be on "How To's: what do you know now, fill out the forms, vocabulary of genealogy, interviews, taking notes, organization - all that basic stuff.  Once all that is clear then the emphasis can switch to history, writing, geography.

It is impossible to learn about new place names, counties, states, or
countries without looking at maps. Following a family's migration
on a map is very interesting. That's enough from me for now.

PS I have been working on my father's family for about five years now and a little on my mother's. Wesley and I will focus on my mother's family - I want to know why they moved to Okalahoma. - I suspect one of the land rushes.

dianes@halcyon.com

http://www.halcyon.com/dianes/