Archive for the ‘Humor / Memes’ Category

Love isn’t a warm, fuzzy feeling. We’re not talking about teenage infatuation, or overactive hormones, here.

Love is a verb. Love is the commitment you make, and the action you take. Love is much more than whether you “feel like it” or not on any given day.

People homeschool for different reasons, but it seems to universally boil to down to the fact the we love our children (and in many cases, including ours, we love our Lord).

Your child has special needs that won’t be addressed in a traditional school setting? Your child is working ahead of or behind the “grade level” the schools would box them into? School teach values with which you disagree?

Of course… But you wouldn’t care if you didn’t love your child, and in some cases the Lord.

So we do “love” (the emotion) our children, of course.

How do we “love” (the committed action) them, as homeschoolers? Let me count the ways…

We Love them enough to continue homeschooling in spite of whatever hurdles life throws at us.

A Pilgrim’s Heart shares the solutions she’s found during a year of travel and travail, in Pulling An Education Together on the Road.

The Why Homeschool blog is right on my wavelength today, exploring the question of Can only the privileged few homeschool?

Sometimes the “hurdle” is nasty winter weather. Sage Parnassus offers a wonderful perspective in Fertile Observations and Family Diaries.

We Love them enough to do what is best for them, even when it doesn’t feel like the best for us.

Everyday Snapshots shares a treat: Beat the Yellow Bus Blues: Combat Homeschooling Burnout

Okay, I only have one Carnival submission that fits this heading, but it’s such an important one for me right now. When they are ill, they would be home from school anyway… But when I am ill, it is easy to feel the longing for an easier path!

We Love them enough to give them the true education we feel they need, as well as providing for the world’s requirements to ease their future.

7 Sisters Innovative Homeschool Helps discusses how to “package” your fine arts learning into a format that will be recognized by colleges and other interested parties, in Fine Arts on the Homeschool Transcript.

Team Gray! ponders on What Is Education?

The Itchy Homeschooler is reciting Shakespeare, in the Merchant of Venice.

Practical Pages has some advice for our growing children venturing out into the world, in 10 Tips for 1st-Time Employees.

We love them enough to push and challenge them. To push and challenge authority, when necessary. To push and challenge ourselves.

Golden Grasses shares her musings on life and learning in Length and Width.

MomSCHOOL discusses the challenge in Homeschool Scheduling – Routine or Rut?

My Domestic Church offers hope with A surprising success with my right brained reader!

We love them enough to explore new territory, expand our horizons, and keep trying to find the best resources for each situation.

Tea Time with Annie Kate describes learning through The Great Backyard Bird Count.

Home School VS Public School discusses ways to look at life, via Why Should Home School Students Take Pictures.

The About.com Homeschooling Blog shares a co-operative idea in Meals and Moms: Meal Exchange Homeschool Group.

MomFITNESS shares some ideas for teaching Lessons on Health and Nutrition.

Dimes2Vines reviews some helpful resources in Home Education – Reading and Spelling.

We love them enough to…

Share a laugh with Our Curious Home, who shares Stream of Consciousness Homeschooling.

Lifelong Learning is very much on the same page as I am today, and shares a wonderful reminder about the role of LOVE in Homeschooling, with If I Knew Then, What I Know Now.

Thank you for reading… Naturally, please let me know if you find any errors or broken links.

I want to thank each of the bloggers who shared with us today. As always, it has been a joy to read through them all while putting this together (I confess I don’t typically get to read through an entire carnival!).

Please take a moment to post a link to the carnival on your blog, your Facebook page, your Twitter feed… help spread the word about homeschooling, and the carnival, and send some traffic to all these terrific folks!

And of course, good Carnival manners includes the hope that everyone will link their submitted post to this Carnival post, as well as possibly including one of the adorable COH Graphics. Thank you!

Don’t forget to send in your post for next week’s carnival! Just visit Why Homeschool for all the details, and email the info anytime before next Monday.

Image credits: Heart pencil from the Thinking Kids blog, which I discovered for that purpose, but actually looks pretty cool. LOVE from contributor LifeLong Learning. Heart Hands from Lifetips by Coach Cat, a website about which I know nothing further.

Wolf can’t hear stuff… Which is not overall a funny thing, but it certainly does lead to some funny moments.

He’s not deaf, or even particularly hard of hearing – except for certain specifics.

• He has trouble “picking out” a conversational voice over background noise.
• And he’s tone-deaf over certain higher-pitched frequencies

So we were sitting in the kitchen, and he was idly shaking his leg – he’s one of those people. But it was causing our “chuck wagon” (have you heard about our favorite piece of furniture?) to squeak at the hinges with each little bounce.

When I finally asked him to stop, he looked at me like I was crazy… He couldn’t hear the noise at all!

It reminded us all of the funniest “tone deaf” story ever.

Our family had gone up to visit Tom and Wanda.

Wolf’s dad likes tools as much as the next guy, and wanted to show off some of his new gadgets. He complained that he had been looking forward to trying a fancy new stud-finder that he’s just purchased, but either he couldn’t figure it out, or it didn’t work.

He demonstrated swiping it along the wall. A little light went on, and it beeped intermittently. We weren’t paying much attention as Tom and Wolf talked about it, and Wolf messed with it and also swiped it on the wall with similar results.

Finally they announced to us that it much be broken. It seemed to light up, but it was also supposed to make a noise to indicated the stud’s location.

After a moment of wondering if we were in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” I had to ask,

So, it’s not that annoying beeping noise that it’s making?

I wish I’d had a camera! Wolf and Tom looked at each other, then at the device, then back at each other, and over at us…

Both of them apparently had the same frequency tone-deaf spot, and neither heard the device’s beeps at all!

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Sorry for the lack of attribution, I found the photo randomly on the ‘net, with no photo credit. If you know, please let me know!

Nick and I had a funny conversation in the grocery store aisles the other day that I thought I would share with you.

He’s snatched a box of junk cereal off the shelf as we happened to be cruising by, and asked if we could get it.

After the “are you kidding me?” look, I asked him to look at the ingredients.

After noticing that something like three of the first five were forms of sugar, he quipped,

Well, I guess I could just go home and pour myself a bowl of sugar, and it would be about the same!

I was on my toes, though, and was quick to point out to him that even that didn’t get to the root of the problem.

“Sugar” is better than most of those alternatives, even if it’s not the best. You’d also have to add in artificial flavors, artificial colors, preservatives and other various chemicals.

When you get right down to it…

Ick!

Welcome, one and all, to the Carnival of Homeschooling!

I think my homeschool lesson for the last week or two has something to do with overcoming challenges.

I had some folks over last Saturday for a canning party (and our little Keepers at Home were earning a badge for their work). We overcame a variety of hurdles before, during, and after the event, including wrong size jars, last minute cancellations leaving odd groupings, a recipe not making as much as expected, and strawberries that went from lovely to rotten overnight (literally). Somehow, we came through it all, and had a great time.

Heaving a sigh of relief, I sat down to start working on the Carnival. Except that, oddly, I only had a few entries… Usually by Saturday, there are quite a few. What could be going on?

Digging around in my Inbox some more, I found a letter from Henry with the explanation:

Tiffany about two weeks ago I found out that Blog Carnvial was not forwarding the entries to the carnival. I checked with the organizers for three other homeschooling blog carnivals and found the same thing. Blog Carnival takes the submissions and saves them as part of the Insta Carnival feature, but the entries are not getting forwarded.

Nice.

He sent me the “Insta Carnival” listing, which was set up to be live links in your email box… But when copied and pasted into a blog post, the links were not, well, links. The code showed the web addresses, but it was missing the html to actually create live links, and was in a scrambled order, to boot. Someone more html-savvy than I might have known a true solution, but I sure didn’t.

I’m not sure if my laborious process of fixing those listings was better or worse than just clicking through each link and copying the address from the browser bar, but by the time I decided that I was pretty far along.

Anyhow, the struggle with merely bringing these posts to you has left me at my wits’ end, and I am totally lacking in energy and inspiration for a cute theme. I present to you, therefore…

To my regular readers, I feel I must add this disclaimer: Since this carnival is open to all homeschooling bloggers, there may be sites and content listed that I would not otherwise link from this blog. I have indicated such content, where possible. We’re not talking about obscene or outrageous, of course, as that is simply not what’s happening here.

And to all carnival participants and any new readers, the corresponding disclaimer for you: Although the Carnival of Homeschooling is not Christian, I am. Please feel free to simply skip over areas of my post (and blog) which do not apply to you, and enjoy the remainder.

Technical Difficulty: What do you do during the summer?

*Alexander Bogomolny* presents First proofs: engaging math activities for the summer break posted at CTK Insights.

*Jarnette* presents Scheduling Over the Summer at Seasons of Life.

*Janine* presents Summer School at Why Homeschool.

Technical Difficulty: Not enough time!

*Mrs. White* presents Education Must Not Be Rushed posted at The Legacy of Home.

*Dawn* presents Easy and Cheap Homeschool Organization posted at Day by Day Homeschooling.

*Lisa Nehring* presents What My Hands Would Tell You posted at Golden Grasses. (Okay, putting this in this category is a bit of a stretch. Call it “Technical Difficulty: No good category for this post!”)

Technical Difficulty: Matters of Philosophy

*Susan Gaissert* presents The Difference Between Knowing and Learning posted at The Expanding Life.

*Kendra* presents Home Education or Home Schooling posted at Pumpkin Patch.

*Chi-ann Rajah* presents Teaching Worldview: Preparing my kids to understand their world posted at A Pilgrim’s Heart.

*Nebby* presents Is there a curriculum for that? posted at Letters from Nebby.

*Dave Roller* presents Thank you Blago for the home school civics lessons posted at Home School Dad.

*Linda Dobson* presents Homeschooling: You Know Your Kids – And Like Them! posted at PARENT AT THE HELM.

*Kay* presents Why We Homeschool on Musings of Croppermom.

Technical Difficulty: [Every kid has their own!]

*Jen* presents Help Your Child Learn Multiplication Facts posted at Frugal Kids.

*Robin Phillips* presents Color in Homeschool Art: A Book For Learning To See posted at Crack the Egg.

Technical Difficulty: Isolation from Other Like-Minded Folks

*AnnieKate* presents Homeschool Horizons: A New Canadian Magazine posted at Tea Time with Annie Kate.

*Mary* presents K is for Keeping it Real on Winecup Christian Academy.

*Barbara Frank* presents Great New Homeschooling Video. [Editor's Note: A fabulous video for your own uplifting, and also to share with the skeptics and critics in your life! To add to the amazing list, a friend's daughter who just graduated from High School (homeschool) just returned from Washington DC where she represented Mississippi for National History Day!]

Technical Difficulty: Keeping it Fresh

*Read Aloud … Dad* presents The #1 Way To Excite Children About Reading posted at Read Aloud Dad. [Editor's Note: This is a GREAT post that applies far, far beyond reading...]

*Angela Gray* presents When did “Educational Game” Become an Oxymoron? posted at Team Gray!

*Kathy* presents How to get started Geocaching at Kathy’s Cluttered Mind.

*Ina* presents Twisted Geography on Ina’s 5 and our Native Homeschool Blog.

*Nadene* presents Re-using Sonlight and Doing it Differently posted at PracticalPages.

—

Whew! We made it!! Thank you for reading… Please let me know if you find any errors or broken links (it certainly wouldn’t surprise me).

I want to thank each of the bloggers who submitted these interesting, challenging, and diverse posts. As always, it has been a joy to read through them all while putting the carnival together (I confess I don’t typically get to read through an entire carnival!).

Please take a moment to post a link to the carnival on your blog, your Facebook page, your Twitter feed… help spread the word about homeschooling, and the carnival, and send some traffic to all these terrific folks!

And of course, good Carnival manners includes the hope that everyone will link their submitted post to this Carnival post, as well as possibly including one of the adorable COH Graphics. Thank you!

And don’t forget to send in your post for next week’s carnival! Just visit Why Homeschool for all the details, and email the info anytime before next Monday.

For the moment, there seems to be no resolution to the Blog Carnival situation, so please check their site and email in your entry. Next week’s host will thank you!

The happy interesection of a chilly night, a child who wants to wear those pajamas (even though they don’t have feet), and two orphan socks whose mates were eaten by the Bermuda-Sock-Triangle.