This is week 212 in the carnival of home schooling. If this was the carnival of home schooling for dogs it would be week 1,484.
Before I get started with the theme of this week, I thought this would be the best time to talk about the big news story going on right now. I certainly don't mean Leno vs. Conan. Laura presents
21 Ways For Your Children To Help Haitian Earthquake Victims posted at
Practical Homeschooling.
Twice a year, our family embarks on library week. It is a week where we go to at least 1 library every day during the week. It serves our family as both a break in the academic year and also an opportunity to discover the various amenities and learning
opportunities afforded at these libraries. In past years, we have crossed state lines to see how the other book lives. This year we kept it strictly in Illinois. Interspersed amongst the fine articles that I have assembled for you this week, I will tell you of our library travels during our Christmas break.
Our first
home school article comes from Jenn who presents
More Homeschooling (Plus Bonus Funny Interlude!) posted at
Rational Jenn. She says: "As the needs of my kids (ages 7.5, 4.5, and 1.5) change and grow, things are getting harder to juggle in our
homeschool! Yikes! "
Speaking of juggling, Cristina presents
Home Spun comic strip #435 posted at
Home Spun Juggling.
Not all schooling takes place indoors as Becky Johnston informs us in
Animal Tracks posted at
Wide Open Campus.
The outdoor
learning continues, as Amber presents
October Nature Walk posted at
The Mommy Earth.
Day 1: St. Charles Public Library. I previously blogged about our trip there but for those who missed it is Emma's report of our time there:
Name of Library: St. Charles Library. St. Charles, IL.Something I liked: I liked all the Animal Ark Books they had.One thing I didn't like: They didn't have one of my favorite books, Bunnies in the Bathroom.
A book I read while I was there: 2 Minute Mysteries by Donald Sobol author of Encyclopedia Brown.Dad asked me to ask the Librarian a question. Lucy said she would, so I followed her with my notebook. Lucy: Knock KnockLibrarian: Who's There?Lucy: EmmaLibrarian: Emma Who?Lucy: Emma Kayrene (My Middle Name)Next up, we have Cindy who wanted to get into the
nitty gritty world of the planning of her unit studies. This she has done with gusto in
Unit Studies Revisited, an informative Q&A, posted at
Our Journey Westward.
A good homeschooling book to add to your personal library is The Socialization Trap by Rick Boyer. Click
here for my review. I thought of that book when I received a carnival submission from Molly Cook of
Southern Spunk. It seems she wrote this piece in response to having had her fill of ignorance outside of the homeschooling circle. She had heard the socialization word one too many times
and decided to set some people straight. Well, you go girl! Here she is with,
Don't Go Hatin' On The Homeschoolers.
Molly is not the only one out there confronting stereotypes and misinformation. There seems to be a plethora of education "experts" out there essentially making up their own facts and bending those facts to meet their agenda. To that end,
last week's host
Alasandra presents
Robin L. West takes a potshot at homeschooling posted at
Alasandra's Homeschool Blog.
Elena
LaVictoire weighs in on the Robin L. West issue with
The Double Standard of Robin West - Author of The Harms of Homeschooling posted at
My Domestic Church.
Day 2. Our library Journey continued to Lake Zurich, Illinois where we visited the
Ela Public Library. Emma and Lucy had a play date with some girls from our church. Things we liked: We could use our library cards there and what we checked out would show up at our regular libraries website. They also had a cool super hero section that Charlie enjoyed.
Sebastian from
Percival Blakeney Academy has submitted
Egyptian Art Projects for Kids. It is an
insightful post rounding up links on ancient Egypt.
Sandra
Foyt presents A response to the New York
homeschooler arrest case, describing our typical
homeschool day, and arguing that there is no such thing as "no-schooling." in
Homeschooling, Unschooling, But Not "No-Schooling" posted at
On Living by Learning.
e-Mom presents
Family Life: Top 100 Books for Kids posted at
C h r y s a l i s. This is an excellent list. A great place to get a hold of those books would be your local library.
And speaking of libraries that brings us to
day 3.
That's a picture of Charlie and me at the entrance of the Oak Park library. Oak park is a lovely
Chicago suburb that actually feels more like downtown than a suburb. No offense to my friend Patti who grew up there, and has fond memories of the previous library building, this one has all the warmth of a
bus depot. A
children's section that is on tile rather than rugs did not add to that impression. They did have a very good selection of books to choose from. I also taught Charlie how to use a microfilm reader, which he was extremely keen on.
When I visit libraries I spend a lot of time with a kid and a book in my lap.
Lapbooking is the subject of our next post, as Lynn presents
Lapbooking Ideas posted at
Eclectic Education - Homeschool Blogger.
Here is a quick family science experiment submitted by The Family which I give two big thumbs up. It is aptly titled
Genetic traits of the thumb and posted at
Once Upon a Family.
Michelle Dennis Evans presents an excellent work titled
Freedom and Kids posted at
Michelle D Evans.
One thing I have noticed about libraries, is that they often have good craft ideas especially around holidays. Libraries aren't the only ones with good holiday ideas. Here are some valentines day articles worth looking at . . .
Shannon
Dodds demonstrates with
Valentine Craft (sun catcher) posted at
Mommyapolis.HappyCampers presents Valentine's Day Homeschool Ideas posted at Reese's View Of The World.
Day 4
Johnsburg is a small town in
Mchenry County in Illinois. It has a population of less than 7,000 people. Yet it boasts one of the finest libraries I have ever been to.
For
homeschoolers it is a special library. It houses a
homeschool resource center with shelves of curriculum and other materials available for checkout.
Homeschoolers can check out material for 6 weeks at a time and renew for an additional 6 weeks as long as there are no holds on the material. I am test driving an
Abeka spelling book I checked out from there with Emma.
Since socialization gets brought into the home school discussion so often, I have decided to bring it into this week's carnival again. Janine Cate wrote a very insightful article on socialization based on a recent conversation she had. She says it comes down to what socialization means to you. I proudly present
It depends on what you value posted at
Why Homeschool.
Kathy says Read my review of the first Camp Club Girls book, a fun new book series for your tween girls. You can find
Camp Club Girls and the Mystery at Discovery Lake posted at
Homeschoolbuzz.com Reviews.
Misty shares a couple of tricks to make multiplying by 9 more fun. Check out (Library Pun Intended)
Fun Multiplication Tips and Tricks – 9’s posted at
Homeschool Bytes.
Katherine from
No Fighting No Biting went out on the first non-frigid Saturday in a long time and took her big kids to see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. She says the
inspiration was worth the long lines. Read all about it in
National Archives.
You know what else has archives? That's right, libraries. Let's get this fun over with and move on to
day 5. Amy read on-line that Downers Grove library was having a game day so we decided to end our library week there. There were tunnels and little rooms for the kids to explore. Lucy played on a children's computer while Amy and the kids played games. Their favorite was a dice game called Shut the Box. We liked it so much we ordered one from amazon.
Speaking of Downers, very few downers are more depressing than thinking about the many terrorist acts that have been in the news lately.
ChristineMM shares ideas about how to talk to young children and
tweens who ask about news stories about terrorist attacks against American civilians. Take a peek at
Thoughts about Parenting Kids in Times of Terrorism posted at
The Thinking Mother.We check out all manners of things out from our library. The main 2 staples are books and
DVD's. With that in mind, Rachel Lynette presents
Comparing the Book to the Movie posted at
Minds in Bloom.
Linda
Dobson revisits
The Animal School saying it's a wonderful classic. It's posted at
PARENT AT THE HELM.
Lynn presents
10 Ways Save Money on Homeschooling posted at
Lynn's Gather Page. I just want to say that 3 of the 10 ways include using the library. Way to stay on theme Lynn!
Well we did it! We got through library week. 5 days, 5 libraries in 5 different counties. There were several things we did during library week that didn't involve going to the library. I'm sure we ate, shopped, I think we might even have bowled once. I didn't really go into detail about them here because I was
focusing on the library part of library week.
In the same way, I received many submissions this week that had nothing to do with homeschooling. Some were fine articles, but I just didn't think they fit here, so I left them out. One exception to that was a fine article from Leah,
The Danger of Parenting Books posted at
Ingathered. It really described a perspective to parenting that I think is similar to my home school tale on it.