Carnival of Homeschooling - Week 44

Since it is Halloween, here's some holiday fun.

Much of the western world is celebrating Halloween. This is a time of tricks and treats, scary stories, and things that go bump in the night. Children enjoy dressing up. Many houses have scary noises and sights in their front yard. So we’ll run with a Halloween theme for this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling.

By the way, this is a picture of my middle daughter. She was born two weeks before Halloween. You can tell just how much she enjoyed her costume.

Tricks

Children knock on doors and yell the familiar “Trick or treat.” The option is given to the adult to either suffer some trick or pay off the children with a treat. There are many tricks to homeschooling. These are the good kinds of tricks.

Kelly, who has just started homeschooling, shares what she has learned in Starting with a Frazzle from Pass the Torch. She has learned a lot in one week.

The Learning Umbrella reminds us about The importance of goals in explaining how setting an end goal changed what she was doing.

One of the important homeschooling tricks for parents is figuring out what and how to teach their children. Alasandra reminds her readers Why it's Important to Teach Facts NOT Feelings.

From Trust The Children is a good reminder that we need to give children down time. It is tricky to find the right range of work and play. Breathing Out -- Breathing In gives some guidance in finding that balance.

Dana of Principled Discovery reports that Math shouldn't be fun. She found a recent study which suggested confident and happy students don’t do as well in math as those who lack confidence and enjoyment of the subject.


Tricks and insights

Homeschoolers are constantly improving and learning how to be better parents and teachers. They are willing and eager to explain the tricks they have learned.

Grizzly Mama in A Day In The Life Of A Sick Grizzly Mama found that you may not get as much done when you are sick, but even in those imperfect days you will have some very nice teaching moments.

Kate of I Think, Therefore I Blog had a similar epiphany in A Much Needed Break as she found that even when she was sick there was a lot of learning without textbooks and classes.

The Thinking Mother explains there are The Two Roles of a Homeschooling Mother; Planning/Scheduling and Actually Doing It. She has some ideas on how this affects what we do as homeschoolers.


Tricks and little children

Homeschooling with a wide age range of children can be a challenge. Kendra shares some ideas she has picked up in Tools at Preschoolers and Peace. I enjoyed her summary of the post: “I once knew everything about parenting. Then I had six children...”

Contentment Acres has some great ideas on how to keep a toddler busy while you homeschool older children in Homeschooling with a Toddler.


Treats - general

There are dozens of benefits to homeschooling. The “treats” include more time with children, being able to do more fun activities, helping children to realize their full potential, and building character.

From far off Australia, Bruggie Tales recounts a recent lesson in Family Maths. My husband greatly enjoys the way this family shares treats.

From My Domestic Church is a nice discussion about the fruits of homeschooling in Socialization. After 12 years of homeschooling a mother is pleased with how her children socialize.

Deanna of Marcy’s Musings also writes about Homeschoolers and Socialization and reports that she has found her children actually have the advantage over regularly-schooled kids when it comes to socialization.

Again and again many homeschool parents will talk about, write about, and explain how their families are stronger, largely because of all the time the family spends together. Julee Huy from Homeschool Daze Blog writes about a We Love Daddy Party which builds greater family unity.


Treats - learning

An important aspect of homeschooling is having a vision that learning can take place in so many places.

At The Common Room the Headmistress explains how Playing Taboo With a Wide Age Range helps the whole family to learn.

From the Little Blue School is a fun post on What did we learn at Disney World? Homeschoolers recognize that we can learn outside a classroom setting. And often we learn more.

Tami of Tami’s Blog talks about her recent trip to the beach and how she incorporated it into their studies in We took our homeschool on the road.

In a Fabulous Fall Field trip some children get great exposure to how education use to happen. Malissa's Merry Go Round recounts the trip Stony Hill School where Flag Day was started.

Homeschoolers are everywhere. Beverly Hernandez writes about California's First All Homeschool Marching Band from About Homeschooling.

From Why Homeschool is our entry this week on how homeschooling has More of life in the "real world."


Decorations

In the United States we are also gearing up for an election. This afternoon Henry took our older two daughters out so they could pass out brochures on a candidate we support. Our middle daughter was a bit fearful by some of the scary decorations. There were hanging skeletons and heads in glass globes.

At Halloween almost every house has pumpkins. At Crafty Mama’s Homeschool are some ideas on how to integrate pumpkins into the curriculum in Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere.

From Apollos Academy the Tutor shares her daughter’s concern about bad decorations in Our Budding Environmentalist. Her daughter not only did her part, but went the extra mile to try and improve the decorations.


Scary

Halloween is known for scary stories and things that go bump in the night. Some people seem scared to teach their own children. They recognize many of the problems in public schools, but are too frighten to step into the unknown of homeschooling.

In What got us thinking about homeschooling Kat of No fighting, no biting shares what prompted her to seriously consider homeschooling.

And from the Dow Blog is another account of a homeschool mother who explains why her family decided to homeschool in Why We Homeschool.

In Wired for Noise Mama Chaos questions the validity of children having to learn to do School before school. She wonders why children have to learn how to do school at ages three and four.

Parenting is not for the faint of heart. From APMFormulators is a post on Parents who Study Pediatrics Naturally.


Who, Witch, Why, Where, When, and How

Spunky of SpunkyHomeSchool might be able to help me out with the above title since she wrote Teaching Grammar and Writing.

Who – Dani of Bureaucratic Daycare writes about Christian parents who are concerned about a humanistic public school education in A Godless Education.

Why - Scott Somerville submitted Spunky’s post about why she switched to Tapestry of Grace.

Where – Laurie Bluedorn explains where to get school stuff in New Internet Auction Site Launched to Help the Homeschool Community at Trivium Pursuit.

When – The NerdMom has some thoughts about when it is time to switch to homeschooling in 7th Heaven and Schooling from the Nerd family.

How – The Homeschool CPA explains how it tends to be more expensive to homeschool our children as they hit the high school years in The Cost of Homeschooling.


Things that go bump in the night

Seeing as how late it is, we’ll end with a post about sleep. Patti, of All Info About Home Schooling writes about teenagers and sleep in To Sleep, Perchance to Grow

If you have enjoyed this carnival, please spread the word. Please mention the carnival on your blog, and other appropriate places.

Go here for the archives of previous carnivals.Next week the carnival will be held at SpunkyHomeSchool.

If you are interested in submitting a post for a future carnival, click here for information.

For those interested, the Carnival of Education will be coming out on Wednesday.

We'd like to thank everyone who has helped out. Thank you to all the participants in this carnival. And thanks to all those who help promote the Carnival of Homeschooling.

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