Colorado unschooling list

New statewide unschooling list for:

People to be cognizant of Colorado homeschool law;

Support our kids' interests;

And find other unschoolers in your area.

Colorado unschooling Yahoo list/group

Unschooling Conference near Colorado!

July cancelled; December still on.

Always Learning Live notice.

Always Learning Live conference. July 26 -30, 2011, Albuquerque, New Mexico

This is very exciting to have an unschooling conference so close to Colorado.

Swetsville Zoo

This fun and captivating little gem is full of creatures welded together from discarded metal parts. Dinosaurs, spiders, ants, fishermen, musical cylinders, and more. Swetsville Zoo is located on the SE quadrant of I-25 and Harmony Road near Fort Collins. It's open normal day time hours.

Snoopy and Woodstock.

One of my kids thought this did not look like a worry well that someone would get near enough to throw their worries in. It was more worrisome that someone might trip and impale themselves.

Musical instruments

You can play along the river.

One of my favorites...mama and baby cow.

There are several places to sit and picnic and play along the river.

Dinos

photo by John

An entertaining and sleuthful dvd about Big AL by the BBC, about what life might have been like for a young allosaurus, based on the allosaurus skeleton in the Geological Museum at Univ. of Wyoming.

The museum at the Univ. of CO has an enjoyable, cozy display of fossils, bones, skull.

Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison, CO, preserving fossils and paleontologic, geologic and historic resources of the area.

Dinosaur Journey museum in Fruita has exhibits and opportunities for Dino Digs.

Visit Partner Parks around Colorado, this is part of the Ancient Denvers exhibit from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

A few ideas for things to do at home:

Hide bones in a mixture of sand and plaster and dig away to find them.

Make a dino-like skeleton out of chicken or turkey bones.

Another idea for using chicken bones - cleaning, hiding, and digging them up.

Colorado Home-based education law

Here's my favorite thing about Colorado home-based education law. The legislative declaration "The general assembly hereby declares that it is the primary right and obligation of the parent to choose the proper education and training for children under his care and supervision. It is recognized that home-based education is a legitimate alternative to classroom attendance for the instruction of children and that any regulation of nonpublic home-based educational programs should be sufficiently flexible to accommodate a variety of circumstances. The general assembly further declares that nonpublic home-based educational programs shall be subject only to minimum state controls which are currently applicable to other forms of nonpublic education."

Colorado homeschool law

Colorado Revised Statute 22-33-104.5 Home-based education.

The full law of both home-education and compulsory attendance is on one of the pages of this blog here.

Compulsory attendance law

Colorado Revised Statute 22-33-104 Compulsory school attendance. There are some references in the home-based education statute here, that's why it's included. Also if you are a licensed teacher in Colorado, there is an exemption to compulsory school attendance for your kids in this statute.

The gist for homeschoolers is:

Send written notification to any school district in Colorado each year for ages 6 - 16. (You are not required to "establish the program" until the child is 7 yrs old. This is kind of a funky blip in the law because compulsory school attendance ages changed in 2006, and this is what legislators came up with.)

Written notification only requires: child(ren)'s name, age, place of residence, attendance hours (172 days, averaging 4 hours/day = 688 hours).

Testing or evaluation every other year, starting 3rd grade (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th). Tests need to be a nationally standardized achievement test. Or evaluation by a qualified person (teacher licensed in CO, a teacher who is employed by an independent or parochial school, a licensed psychologist, or a person with a graduate degree in education.)

What is Unschooling?

Close to never ending information about unschooling:

Sandradodd.com/unschooling (A collection of unschooling information gathered over many years, from many voices.)

Joyfullyrejoycing (Answers to many questions that have been asked over the years on lists and message boards.)

Grab a cup of tea and read a spell.