Throwing Marshmallows

My friend and fellow Virginian, Shez, has started a new carnival: the Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers. The inaugural edition is up and ready and looks like some good reading.

She is planning on making it a weekly affair, so if you have a post you want to share, be sure to send it in! (directions are at her blog)

Enjoy!

Kim over at Relaxed Homeschool is hosting Unschooling Voices #12.

Wherever you live in this fine, big country-or adjoining country- chances are pretty good that you will spend February 1st gazing out the window at some snow or rain. If that is the case, then you have found the perfect antidote to all of that boring shoveling or digging around for raincoats. Why not sit on your duff a little bit longer and read these many great posts by unschoolers about why they unschool, how they unschool, what types of things will get you verbally pummeled on unschooling listsserves, how to transition from schoolish ways to unschooly ones and so forth? There is no shortage of ideas here and lots of fun and images to keep you unaware of the vitamin D that has been gradually oozing out of your system since late November.

Enjoy!

OK, so I am about a week or so late on getting this link up. But it is not like I haven’t had lots going on, so I will use that as my excuse.

Check out the latest offering of the Country Fair Homeschool Carnival. Back after a bit of an absence, it looks better then ever. The theme was diversity…

~Stephanie

Be sure to check out Unschooling Voices #9. Lots of great posts and even some photos. This month’s topic is how unschooling has changed you (the parent, not the child). Lots of newcomers to check out this month too!

Enjoy!

~Stephanie

Check out all the great posts from folks who actually remembered (unlike me!) to submit something to Unschooling Voices #7.

And now I am off to bed…yes before midnight! I must be getting old…I find that I actually need sleep lately…

~Stephanie

I have two posts up this week.

The first is over at Life Without School and is called Who’s In Charge. All about my take on child-led learning and why it seems to be such a touchy issue.

It seems that the biggest worry that people have about “child-led” learning comes from the belief that the parent has no input and that the kids are in complete control and only do what they want to do. Which, according to the critics, will lead to sheltered children who can not function in the “real world”. These children will have no experience in dealing with the fact that they can not always do what they want and sometimes need to do things they do not want to do. Not to mention that kids are kids and thus less experienced then adults and do not know or understand everything that they need to know.

What it seems to come down to, is that people want to know who’s “in charge”. Is it the kids? Or is it the parents?

And the 52nd Carnival of Homeschooling A Year and a Day is up! Rebecca of What Did You Do In School Today did a great job pulling together a wealth of great blog posts from all over. Lots of great reading…so check it out!

~Stephanie

So Kyle and I were checking out Mo Willems blog when I remembered that MotherReader (gosh, she is going to think that I am stalking her like she stalks Mo Willems now…two blog references in two days…) also had a link to a webcast of when Mo Willems had given a talk at the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival earlier this year.

We decided to watch it and what fun! He read from Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, discussed his new book Edwina, the Dinosaur that Did Not Know She Was Extinct, showed how to draw the Pigeon and talked about writing and drawing and doing what he does. He was incredibly entertaining and Kyle loved it (as did Jason when I showed him it later). They especially liked how Mo explained that the Pigeon does not like Mo writing books about anyone other then himself, so he ends up sneaking into Mo’s other books.

Then we poked around some more and found Tony DiTerlizzi’s (author of the Spiderwick Chronicles and other fun books) webcast. Wow! What a great speaker. Again, he read from his new book and talked about being an artist. What was really cool is that he said how he got started was when he was 8 or 9 and would make up stories about how aliens would try to take over the world but the dinosaurs fought them back and ate them and then got destroyed by a meteor (I am not doing him justice at all here!). But it sounded a lot like the stories that Jason loves to tell and reminded me that I really need to start writing down more of his stories.

What I really love about these two is that you can tell that they really love what they do. And I love how they talked about getting started and about the goofy stories they used to tell when they were kids. And how they loved to draw all the time…I am sure that a lot of right brained kids would relate.

Storytelling is an area where I really want to encourage Jason…he hates the physical process of writing, but he LOVES telling stories and is good at it too. He gets a gleam in his eye when he is working on one. He and his Grandpa Elms have had this running oral story that they have been doing since Jason was around 3 or so called Baggerbusters. It has morphed several times (I think that now it is about developing spaceships and weapons to take over the universe) but he really looks forward to doing it each time they get together. And he and I have done what I call collaborative stories, where we start with an idea and then gradually make up the story together. These are a lot of fun and I mostly play the role of asking questions, helping him think a bit and fill in more detail.

We have not gotten to check out the other Children’s Lit authors yet, but plan to do so. And I am kicking myself for not going! (it was held here in Washington DC.) I had heard about it back in September, but did not really realize exactly what it was. I think that we would have had a blast and it would have been cool to actually see them in person (not to mention getting our Pigeon and Spiderwick Chronicles books signed!). Ah well. I will definitely keep my eye open for it in 2007.

Oh and then to top off the afternoon, I just found out that Lane Smith (illustrator for Jason’s favorite books The Stinky Cheeseman, Math Curse, and Science Verse) has a new book out called John, Paul, George, and Ben about the founding fathers. It looks really neat and from what I can tell has a running “big underwear” gag throughout which might be what it takes to finally interest the boys in my favorite part of history!

Man! I love the internet! The only problem is that I keep finding out about these neat new books when they first come out and then I have to debate about waiting to get them when they come out in paperback. Thank goodness for libraries!

~Stephanie

Appeared in the 52nd Carnival of Homeschooling.

Check it out! Lots of fun ideas for activities and things to do with your kids. And yes, yours truly actually remembered to submit something this time…

Enjoy!

~Stephanie

Check it out. Some good reading over there. The topic this month was finding support.

One of my Life Without School posts is included.

Enjoy!

~Stephanie

Check out the newest Unschooling Voices #4. The monthly topic is unschooling math and it looks like there are some great ideas.

~Stephanie

Tags: Unschooling Voices, Math

Check out Unschooling Voices #3! Looks like an interesting group of posts…I wish it was not so late so I could check them out tonight. But I need to be good and get some sleep…

Keep your fingers crossed that the water in the canal out back does not get any higher…it was almost to the top of the dock, but it looks like it has gone down a bit. High tide is around 3am though…and they said that Ernesto was heading west and would miss us…they should have told that to him!
~Stephanie

I meant to link to this last week, but things were a bit hectic. Ron over at Atypical Homeschool decided to pull together a Homeschooling for Dummies collection of blog posts.

The premise behind the collection is:

Since non homeschooled kids are off to school over the next few weeks, this is often the time of year when HS parents get a barrage of questions/discussion with parties who haven’t given alot of thought to what they are asking/saying. I’m interested in doing a post of links to blog posts with answers to such questions.

Very good reading (including two by me!). You should definitely check it out. I hope that he makes this a regular thing!

~Stephanie

The Homeschool Country Fair #6 is looking for submissions! Deadline is next week, Monday August 21st. Don’t delay!
~Stephanie

Check out the great posts that are part of Unschooling Voices #2. I completely forgot to submit something this time, but I am enjoying checking out those who had their acts together better then I.

~Steph

Susan did a great job at pulling together the 5th Homeschool Country Fair. Lots of great stuff to read and think about.

I hope to have time to write more soon…I have lots of great beach photos and tons of posts swimming around in my head. What I don’t have is tons of time to actually type them up! At least not if I want to get the sleep that I need to be a patient, warm, loving mom…

~Steph

Homeschool Country Fair

Susan over at Imperfect Genius is putting out calls for the 5th Homeschool Country Fair. Check out the previous Fairs and if you have a submission let her know!

Deadline: July 18th

Unschooling Voices

And Joanne over at A Day in Our Lives is collecting posts for the 2nd edition of Unschooling Voices. The first edition had lots of interesting posts…let’s continue the tradition!

Deadline: A couple of days before August 1st. (hey, it is an unschooling carnival…who needs concrete deadlines!)

~Steph

Looks like Doc has a great line-up for Country Fair # 4. Check it out. The Country Fair is a great place to find new homeschool blogs and it is fun to read everyone’s different take on this wonderful thing we call homeschooling.

And, yes yours truly has a submission that was included…

~Steph

Joanne over at A Day in Our Lives is hosting an Unschooling Carnival. Basically interested people send in a blog post about unschooling and she will compile them and post them on July 1st. Sounds like a fun way to find new, interesting bloggers…like I need more blogs to read! I swear this is getting almost as bad as my email lists. But it is so much fun!!

Read more about the Unschooling Carnival and check out the rules.

~Steph