Homeschool Country Fair

Between Carrie and Andrea I had an idea. 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. How does ‘homeschooling for dummies’ sound? If it strikes you as something fun and different, leave me a link in the comments. I’ll try to do the post on Sunday night.

Update: You can email me links at ron at atypicalhomeschool dot net. You can write something new or send me a links to posts you have already written. I had in mind the ‘subject for dummies’ series of books which approach the subject as though the reader starts out knowing nothing about it. That thought came to mind mostly because the 2 posts mentioned above reminded me of conversations I’ve had with people who could use a ‘homeschooling for dummies’ book. But, I’m not particularly stuck on that. If you would like to write something which is sarcastic or funny, please do. Although, my kids (and possibly others’) read this blog and if it’s not clean I won’t link to it.

Deadline? I plan on posting on Sunday night, so I would need the submission by early evening Sunday (eastern time).

A Day in Our Lives: Unschooling Voices #2 is UP!

Update: The Country Fair now has it’s own home. Details are posted there.

A request for submissions has been posted.

Details of the fair are available at the link above. In response to the comments on the previous 2 posts I would like to mention 2 important things about the country fair:

1. Posts will be homeschooling related.
2. The hosting blog owner reserves the right to accept or decline submitted posts. (In fact, I would encourage the hosting blog owner to read each of the posts and be conscious of what they are linking to before including the post.)

No, it’s not your imagination, we skipped last month. There just wasn’t enough entries. But now we have a pile, so let’s see who we can visit today.

Robin of Robin’s Blue Skies submitted her Two Roads Diverged entry, and it’s a good thing too as reading her blog, I’d have a hard time just picking one entry to highlight. At any rate, this entry examines how there is more than one way for children to learn those basic facts.

Over at Tricotmania, her daughter Tigger writes a guest entry about a experiment they came up with, checking core samples of snow. Thankfully the snow is all gone, but the experience remains.

Doc writes about goal setting verses scheduling, something that unschoolers really can do! It’s not chaos all the time, sometimes it’s controlled chaos. We’re a big fan of to-do lists here as well. Sometimes kids need a litte encouraging, or a jumpstart, like examined here at Every Waking Hour. It’s not completely directionless, as these two posts help point out.

In this entry from Jeanne at Why Homeschool, one of the important points I think, is that it shows how she is willing to learn alongside the children, which is really the spirit of unschooling; that love of learning in the whole family.

If you really want to get into some of the meat of unschooling and taking your children seriously, then read Carlotta. Always a good read to get your brain cells working.

Ron had posed two questions here in a previous entry. When posed with the sentence, “Unschooling feels, sounds or appears like a good philosophy to follow, but ________ prevent me (or make me hesitant to) follow through with it.” we got some very interesting responses.

Christina laid it out simply: fear. Fear that when left to their own devices, kids would lay around all day and do nothing. Coincidentally, that same day I read her entry, I read something similar in the book Geurilla Learning on this very topic. The authors pose that the reason we are fearful of this happening is because if left to our own devices, we too would do nothing all day. But sometimes, it’s just what we need, time to recharge. And the mailing list behaviour Christina describes isn’t new to me, but saddening all the same. Like attachment parenting, unschooling isn’t a list of rules you have to follow. How ironic that some people make it so.

WJFR answered both, and in this question wonders how an organized person can unschool. Loads of interesting questions there.

Ron’s second sentence, “Unschooling my child(ren) has enabled me to see ________” brought in some really interesting responses as well.

Joanne at A Day in Our Lives laid it right out, and even changed the “has enabled” to “is enabling”, pointing out that it is a continuing and ongoing process.

Even more from Every Waking Hour, and again a stop at Carlotta’s.

There. Loads of new blogs to read if you aren’t reading them already. Also an important announcement: we’re looking for someone to take over the Carnival of Unschooling – whether independant or merged with one they are already running. If not, this will be the last one. A fun experiment while it lasted.

Note: The Carnival of Unschooling has move to Unschooling Voices.