Monday, December 26, 2005

Requests for submissions to the first Carnival of Homeschooling

The overview:

As the town crier strode down the cobble stones he yelled: "Hear ye! Hear ye! Let it be known that the first Carnival of Homeschooling will be gathering at Why Homeschool on January 3rd for your entertainment, enlightenment, and education. Submit your best post on homeschooling by January 2nd. Hear ye! Hear ye! ...."

There was some buzz as the villagers wanted to know details. What was the Carnival of Homeschooling? Who was invited? Where would it be? Why should they come? Behind the town crier were a couple pages who were handing out pamphlets with details and information.


The request:

Please submit a post about homeschooling, either one of your own, or a really good one you have seen recently. The first Carnival of Homeschooling will be published on January 3rd, submissions are due to Henry Cate on January 2nd, at 6:00 PM. For information on submitting a post, click here. To learn more about carnivals, click here.

If you are crafting a post for the carnival, think about first time viewers, people who don't know much about homeschooling. Try to be engaging to catch their interest. Spell check and proof read your submitted post several times.

If you are hesitant about submitting one of your posts, read here for some reasons on why it is a good idea to be part of the Carnival of Homeschooling.


Some additional thoughts and details:

If you haven't paid much attention to blog carnivals, you are in for a treat. They are a great way to sample a variety of blogs all from one post. If you have followed some carnivals, like the Carnival of Education, then you know just how useful carnivals can be for finding new interesting blogs to read.

The Carnival of Homeschooling will expose you to what other homeschoolers are blogging about, and it will also give you a chance to show off one of your best blog posts.

If you are ready to submit a post, click here.




Over the last year I've been a bit surprised that no one ever put together a carnival of homeschooling. I sort of figured that there weren't that many blogs out there on homeschooling. (After working on trying to start the Carnival of Homeschooling, I now think at least part of the reason is putting together a carnival is a lot of work.)

I have followed the Carnival of Education pretty much since it got started. Typically there are 20 to 50 posts in a weekly carnival, and a few of them will be homeschool related. Since about three percent of the children in America are homeschooled this made some sense, that there weren't that many homeschool blogs. But Spunky's homeschool blog contest blew that thought out of the water, as there were over 200 different blogs in the various categories.

After some reflection I realized that while there may be a couple million public school teachers, with the several million children being homeschooled, we had at least a million parents who were involved in homeschooling. So it made sense that there were lots of homeschooling blogs.

If you would like to help make the Carnival of Homeschooling a success, click here.


To find out how to submit a post to the Carnival of Homeschooling, click here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Mrs. Cate

Dory over at Wittenberg Gate has some real great Carnival Participation instructions that could be mirrored.

http://dory.typepad.com/wittenberg_gate/2005/02/christian_carni_1.html

Maribel Hernandez

Henry Cate said...

Thanks for the link. You are right, there are a number of good ideas there.