New Survey on Dating, Courtship and Boy/Girl Relationships!!!

THANKS SO MUCH to all of you who have responded to our home schooling survey and told us what you want to hear more about. If you still haven't taken our survey of what you want to hear more about, you can GO HERE NOW and share your opinions.

But now our son Blake would like your input. This is from him::

I grew up listening to James Dobson and reading Raising a Modern Day Knight, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Boy Meets Girl, Best Friends for Life, Five Love Languages, etc. 

Lately God has been really putting on my heart the study of dating/courtship, honoring of the opposite sex, conservative boundaries, etc. 

So my question to you is this: If you had an opportunity to sit down with Dr. Gary Chapman, James Dobson, Joshua Harris, and anyone else whose opinions you respect about dating/courtship and boy/girl relationships, what five questions would you ask them?

Please take a few minutes and respond to my dating/courtship/relationships survey. It won't take very long and I would appreciate it very, very much.

And if you have a personal story about your dating/courtship or getting married as a home schooler, I'd love to hear it. You can contact me at cblakedavis@gmail.com.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY ON DATING/COURTSHIP AND BOY/GIRL RELATIONSHIPS.

Home Schooling? Wow!

by Ellyn Davis

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This past week I have been driving across the country with my son Blake, on the way to Redding, CA where he will be attending a ministry school until next May. Actually, I flew to Denver and met Blake there on day 3 of his cross-country jaunt, because he spent days 1 and 2 connecting with home schooled friends in Nashville, Wichita, and Colorado Springs.

After Blake picked me up at the Denver airport, we drove to Greeley, CO and stayed with another home schooled couple, Joel and Paula, whom Blake has known since he was about 5 years old. Anyway, as I talked with these two young people, now in their late 20s, I was struck with how interesting home schooled young adults are. They are thoughtful, well-read, up on current events, socially minded, and a delight to interact with because they can actually carry their end of a conversation. There was no awkwardness or “making polite conversation with an adult who isn’t worth my time and attention” as they related to me. It was more of a peer-to-peer conversation.

What a difference from the kind of conversation I usually am able to have with young adults their age who act like they can’t wait to get the “grilling by an adult” over so they can check their Facebook page.

I don’t have much really to write about this time since I’ve been folded up in the front seat of a Honda Civic packed high with most of Blake’s earthy belongings for the past few days as we drove across Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. (Where is a chiropractor when you need one?!?) But the time in the car with Blake and the time spent with his two friends made me think about home schooling in general. So I thought I’d share some recent reports I came across that will encourage you that home schooling your children is well worth the time, energy, and money you put into it.

A few weeks ago, Brian Ray of the National Home School Research Institute released the results of the latest study on the state of home schooling and it seems that in the last ten years homeschooling has more than doubled in the United States and is now the nation’s fastest growing form of education--increasing at approximately 7% to 10% per year so that now there are more than 2 million home schoolers in this country. And home schooling is also growing at a phenomenal rate in other countries.

Compared to their public and private school counterparts:

• home schoolers are outperforming on standardized tests
• home schoolers typically score above average on SAT and ACT tests
• more and more colleges are actively recruiting home school graduates
• more and more businesses are actively recruiting home school graduates
• home school graduates are just as or more likely to go on to college as the general population
• home school graduates are more satisfied in their work
• home schoolers are more involved in civic affairs
• home schoolers and home school graduates are happier with their lives overall

To quote from the report: “Homeschoolers are still achieving well beyond their public school counterparts—no matter what their family background, socioeconomic level, or style of homeschooling.”

The study also found that whether or not parents were teacher-certified had no impact on these high scores. Neither did the degree to which homeschooling was regulated by state governments (which had been a big controversy, with state governments claiming that they need more oversight of home schooling so they can make sure the kids get a quality education--not!).

Getting results

Is there something special that homeschoolers do to achieve such excellent results? The study considered the many approaches that homeschoolers take to education—and found hardly any difference in achievement based on the following variables:

• Degree of structure (ranging from very unstructured approaches such as delight-directed learning or eclectic teaching approaches to very structured, preplanned, and prescribed approaches),

• Amount of time spent per day in parent-directed learning activities, and

• Enrollment in a full-service curriculum (one that furnishes a year’s worth of textbooks, lesson plans, evaluations, counseling, and record-keeping in all core subjects).

Here are some more eye-opening statistics about home education:

• Over 74% of home-educated adults ages 18–24 have taken college-level courses, compared to 46% of the general United States population.

• Seventy-one percent participate in an ongoing community service activity (e.g., coaching a sports team, volunteering at a school, or working with a church or neighborhood association), compared to 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages.

• Eighty-eight percent of the homeschool graduates surveyed were members of an organization (e.g., such as a community group, church or synagogue, union, homeschool group, or professional organization), compared to 50% of U.S. adults.

• Only 4.2% of the homeschool graduates surveyed consider politics and government too complicated to understand, compared to 35% of U.S. adults.

• 76% of homeschool graduates surveyed between the ages of 18–24 voted within the last five years, compared to only 29% of the relevant U.S. population. The numbers of homeschool graduates who vote are even greater in the older age brackets, with voting levels not falling below 95%, compared to a high of 53% for the corresponding U.S. populace.

• 59% of the subjects reported that they were “very happy” with life, with another 39% declaring that they were “pretty happy.”

• 95% of the homeschool graduates surveyed are glad that they were homeschooled.

• Eighty-two percent would homeschool their own children. Of the 812 study participants who had children age 5 or older, 74% were already homeschooling.

So, home schooling as an educational alternative is not only working, but it’s working exceptionally well and not only producing better educated children, but more responsible, content adults regardless of the level of education of the parents, the amount of structure in the home school, or the teaching methods and materials used.

I think that is astounding. So congratulate yourself for choosing to help create exceptional human beings!

Until next time.... 

Ellyn

Resources

Endangered Minds by Jane Healy explains why children (and adults) today have shorter attention spans, are less able to concentrate, and are less able to absorb and analyze information than any previous generation. In short, people today do not know how to think. And why don't they know how to think? Because when they were growing up they seldom were in the company of thinking adults.

I Saw the Angel in the Marble

With over 4,000 copies sold in just a few months, I Saw the Angel in the Marble is becoming a home schooling best seller!

This book represents the best of 15 years of Elijah Company articles. Find our more HERE>>

Turning Hearts: Davis Seminar Set (8 CDs)

The Best of Chris and Ellyn Davis, this set contains seminars given by Chris and Ellyn Davis of The Elijah Company at home schooling conventions. The set contains all of the favorites that home schoolers ask for over and over. People have told us this set of CDs changed their lives. Find out more about them HERE>>


Angel in the Marble/Davis Seminars Set
Order a combination of I Saw the Angel in the Marble and the Davis Seminars CDs HERE>>

Making a Living Online within 279 Days

Several months ago I stumbled across an interesting little guide called 279 Days to Overnight Success. This book chronicles one writer's journey to becoming a full-time, self-supporting writer in 279 days through a blog and several products he created.

The report was incredibly encouraging to me because I’ve wanted for some time to revamp my website and turn it into something that was a real expression of what I believe about home schooling but that also helped others.

 So I resolved to start working on my OWN 279 day path to success. My goal: achieve full-time, self-supporting writer status in 279 days or less. Call it my personal 279 Day Challenge.

You can follow me in my journey to making a living on the internet HERE.

Creating Your Life on-line course at 1/3 off. This is an online, video-based self-study course in which Robert Fritz is your teacher and you learn to create your own life just as an artist paints a painting, a composer composes a symphony, or a poet writes a poem. In this course, Robert further develops the special insights that he introduced in his best selling book The Path of Least Resistance. The course has five lessons that will take you from 5 to 10 weeks to complete and includes a copy of Robert’s book Your Life as Art as well as the course materials and use of tools on the website. This course online is normally $299 and if you took it in person in Vermont it would be at least twice that. But with this special invitation code you can enroll for $199. I highly recommend that you take this course as a family—husband, wife, and high school age children. To enroll in this course, go to www.wisepond.com and enter this invitation code: AFF1455.

Organic Play Dough at great savings!

Our friend Susan is a home schooling Mom and she is very concerned about her children's health. Her son, Liam is allergic to almost every chemical known to man, so Susan has to be very, very careful what she allows him to play with. When he gets together with other children and they play with Play Doh, Liam can't play. The dyes and chemicals in the dough can not only make him very sick, they might kill him.

To read the story of how Susan solved Liam's problem and how you can benefit from what she did, GO HERE>>

Home School and Home Business


Let Your Mortgage Make You Rich. A friend in my internet marketing group discovered this technique for paying down your mortgage incredibly quickly without making an extra payment or refinancing. Using her method, people are cutting a 30 year mortgage down to eight or nine years. It’s true; without extra payments or refinancing – you could save tens of thousands of dollars - even hundreds of thousands - on what you pay for your home. And the best part is that the book comes with a money-back guarantee. If you don't save more on your mortgage than the book costs in the first 18 months of using the techniques, you'll get your money back.
Find out more about this money-saving book NOW!

SALE PRODUCTS!
Limited Quantities 30% Off!

We have the following WRITING IN NARRATIVE books available: The Reluctant Writer, Writing Man 1 & 2, and WIN Twin. GO HERE.

Home Schooling and Home Business Resources


Building the Home School of Your Dreams is a 6 CD set taken from the From Home School To Home Business Seminar and features sessions by Chris Davis and Mary Hood. Find out more HERE>>

From Home School to Home Business
(14 CD Set)

If you missed one of our From Home School to Home Business Conferences, you missed a great time.People who attended told us that it changed their lives—not only in the area of home schooling, but also in the area of creating their own sources of home income.This set is huge and filled with useful and encouraging information about how to be successful at home schooling and at home business! Find out more about this life-changing set of CDs HERE>>

Building the Business of Your Dreams (8 CD Set) We've had requests for just the business portion of the From Home School to Home Business Seminar, so have developed a set of the business CDs from that set. It contains 8 CDs and includes sessions on The Entrepreneurial Mind, Multiple Streams of Home Income, Discovering Your Ideal Life and Ideal Business (2 CDs) , Developing a Business Plan (2 CDs), and The Importance of Business Relationships. Plus, there is a very important and insightful interview on Redeeming the Marketplace. Find out about this life-changing set of CDs HERE>>

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View past ejournals HERE>>

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