I Might Get Political Sometimes...

but for right now, I'm just going to talk about homeschooling.

See, I homeschool my kids. I'll have to come up with fake names for them for this fake blog. Another time.

There's this catalog that I absolutely love from Rainbow Resources (http://www.rainbowresource.com/index.php, when I actually start blogging, I'll have to figure out how to link decently) it's absolutely huge. It's from a family-run company, and they do a tremendous job reviewing their products. I want to buy everything in it. But I can't. That would be extremely irresponsible. Usually what I do after I get the catalog is take a highlighter and spend a couple weeks going through the catalog highlighting everything I might want.

Then, I wait a week or two, and cross off some things. I go through it a few more times, until I come up with what I really need and maybe a few fun things. I end up getting what we need, and I stay within my budget. What a concept.

Now suppose we had a family CRISIS. Suppose my kids tooks some standardized tests and they performed absolutely horribly on them (which wouldn't happen, because my kids really are quite bright - but just suppose). Suppose I needed to STIMULATE their learning as fast as possible. Suppose I decided to order every single thing from the Rainbow Resources catalog. Would this make my kids smarter? Would all of the stuff jump-start their learning?

Well, perhaps a bit. Maybe just having all of the stuff would make them a little smarter. (Although, one thing I've noticed is that the more toys my kids have, the less playing they actually do. I think they're too overwhelmed with toys, so they just stop playing. I think the same thing would happen with too much school stuff, although I can't be sure.)

One thing I am sure of. We would go into serious debt to pay for all of the stuff. It would take many, many years to pay it off. Our kids would have to sacrifice in a lot of other areas to pay for their mother's panic-stricken shopping spree. Just randomly buying whatever without worrying about paying for it would be placing a terrible burden on my kids.

Okay, I just needed to get that off my chest.

See, if I was actually blogging, someone might figure out that I really was being political here.