Inspired Blogger Awards

secular parenting humanist homeschool blog raising atheist skeptical freethinking humanist parenting Atheist parenting, homeschool secular

In my small corner of the Blog-o-Sphere I have had the distinct delight to have been befriended by some truly wonderful writers and people. I find the internet to be a true source of inspiration and delight and I have decided to share some of my favorite blogs and posts with you from time to time.

In the spirit of making such distinctions I have created this meme that I will use to share my favorite bloggers and I invite you to share this meme with your favorite bloggers as well.

If you have been directed to this page by following the links on a meme, it means that your writing has been an inspiration to another human being, a reader who found their way to your small place in the ether and wishes to thank you for your contributions to the blog-o-sphere.

My Sincere THANKS to bloggers all over the world who share their insights, struggles, hearts, integrity, and honesty so bravely. People who are introverts, extroverts, brave, weak, everywhere on the spectrum. People who take a moment and reach out a hand...

I have a few versions of this award, so look for it in several designs and colors

If you are given this small token of esteem on your blog, you are welcome to mention your award in any way you wish, if at all.

Some suggestions might be:

• List your favorite underdog posts from your own blog - those posts that contain your heart but that are seldom read
• Explain why you blog what you blog
• Invite your readers to extend the award to other bloggers
• Create a special blog post celebrating something new and innovative
• Offer the award to some other blogger or two
• Thank the person who offers this award to you
• Create some other way that fits your personality
• Include an image of the award in conjunction with one or more of these ideas
• Or do nothing and just know that you are appreciated.

The Award is not intended to be a pyramid scheme or a self-aggrandizing event or a thing makes the receiver beholden. Just a celebration of the pioneer blogger spirit!

Now let's go out there and blog! 

Karen

 

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You may also like this post:

My Writing Process Blog Tour

Carnival of Atheist Parenting Blog Posts

The Ten Most-Read Posts on my Blog this Year

My Atheist Parenting Blog

Dear Reader

Do You Know Why I Started Blogging?

Strategies and Stuff for Successful Homeschooling Parents

It's that time of year again when we all begin looking for the best way to homeschool, educate, parent our children. I am finding tons of great links myself tonight and thought I'd go ahead and throw my hat into the ring...because I really do know some things about what has made our journey such a success.

First things first. 
Getting to be a great homeschooling parent takes time. That first year of homeschooling, be prepared to go to bed each night with some fear in your heart. Fear of messing up the very kids you are trying to free.  Fear of failing your most beloved children. Fear of being inadequate. I remember feeling anxious much of the time.

It took me about a full year of nocturnal fears before I realized that we were doing it:  We were homeschooling! (In fact, we had been doing it all along!) 

There is no silver bullet for homeschooling a child, of course. Part of homeschooling our kids is knowing that each child is unique and wanting to preserve and celebrate that uniqueness. So why do we think there should be a known, prescribed way to teach our children? It makes perfect sense that homeschooling this child will be a unique journey! (good point, eh?)

I'm sure you found this blog post quite late, late at night as you are surfing the internet for advice on how to best educate your child at home. Imagine those early parents who didn't have the internet! How did they do it????


Anyway, on to the wisdom, hey.  (grin)

1.  Use this evening time to research learning theory, learning styles, and how kids learn. Figure out what it means to be educated. What are your real goals for your child's education? How does your child best learn? What would you consider true knowledge and wisdom? In doing this, you will learn that your ideas of homeschooling will change over time.

OR DON'T!

I loved having an appreciation of learning styles and learning theory as I entered the homeschool lifestyle. But you might have the need to educate yourself in another way. So do that! Use your me  time in other ways.

2.   Maintain your own willingness to learn and grow. The more you educate yourself, the more confident you will become as a parent who homeschools. 

The learning theories are absolutely fascinating and will inform your role as a homeschooling parent; take some time to learn about learning theories. I took time and read about these people and concepts:  John Watson, Howard Gardner, Lawrence Kohlberg, Jean Piaget, Maria Montessori, John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, David Kolb, B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov, Albert Bandura, Abraham Maslow, Cognitivism, Behaviorism, Constructivism. I'm sure there are many more things you can research. My point, even if you don't read materials by these people or about these topics, I felt informed from my research and so will you. 
And I'm sure I missed some of the best; these are just the things I recall from memory from my research a hundred years ago... granted, I am a research hound.  lol

OR DON'T!
Again, this is MY way, not necessarily yours.

3. Allow yourself and your family flexibility to keep humor, independence, current activities, and innovation in your day. I am not a big fan of structure, though I appreciate the place for it. In a given day a family can find so much time for enjoying the world around them...the news, the weather, impromptu walks or activity, dance and song, hobbies, unstructured play, tangential activity of all kinds...  Consider these moments well spent.

4.  For me it helped to avoid most curriculum talk with other parents. No two families homeschool the same way and the choices that other families make are fine and great, for them. There is simply too much going on out there to continue to second-guess yourself on materials. At some point you have to tune out all of the noise and just get on with it.

Anyway, it was essential for me.

Because as I always say, where ever two or more homeschooling parents are gathered, there is curriculum talk.

5.  Learn to live with the fear and with the trust. Homeschooling is such a unique approach to family life. One day you are quite certain your children will be living in your basement forever and you start to wonder if they like bean bag chairs and the next day you are bursting at the seams with pride. Some days I felt certain that I was on the wrong track and other days I was even more sure that these children were getting the best upbringing possible! 

Life really is like that. 
Parenting is like that.
And over time, you will have far less fear and far more trust.

6. Change is the norm. Change is a part of every single day, homeschooling or not and that can be quite difficult for many people, adults and children. I think there may be an art to accepting change while relying on the steadier parts of your life at the same time. 

Both of my children appreciate knowing what to expect each day. They love knowing where things are, what is going to happen, what the change points of the day are, things like that. I provide that as much as I can because the truth is, I can't always predict what our day will be like. We have all learned that having those tried-and-true parts of our days help us to feel in control and grounded. We love the gather on the bed and talk, sit at the table with lessons and snacks, time in our yard, certain TEDtalks that we love... 

Having those touch points, whether we are talking about crazy weeks that are too busy or the onslaught of changes that life can bring, help each of us to feel connected to one another...our bedrock.

7. Live with the failures and the successes. Again, life is full of these moments every single day. Keep your cool and accept each moment as a life lesson.
It is life.

8. Expect people to not understand. During those times when you are ill, someone will suggest sending the kids back to school. When you are caring for an ill loved one, someone will recommend calling up the school bus driver. When the summer nearing its end, Some Person will say that this is a good time for thinking about sending the kids to brick and mortar. When you are stressed out, busy, traveling, ill, tired, out of contact, or a million other things, SOMEONE will always suggest that you change the way you educate your children.

I don't think they mean it as a rude suggestion, I think they simply don't understand that it isn't your lifestyle that needs managing. Life contains difficult times. 

I mean, REALLY, when a schooling family has an ill person does everyone say, HEY, is THIS a good time to homeschool????

9. Love them. Your children will bring the craziest things into your home and, somehow, you will be enriched for all of it! 

 

The kids and Grandma JoAnn

So anyway, my real wisdom to you:
RELAX and ENJOY IT!

Please, other homeschooling parents:
Please comment below with your suggestions!

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You may also enjoy these posts:
Thirteen Things I Wish I Would Have Known About Homeschooling When I Got Started
A Willingness to Learn
Top Ten Habits of a Happy Homeschool Mom
Advice from Expert Homeschoolers
Five Battles I No Longer Fight
Strategies for Your Homeschool

Unschooling, Our Fall-Back Mode

I often call our family Eclectic Homeschoolers, but we are so UNSCHOOLY that I can't keep using the first term. We have used books and materials whenever the urge hits us, don't get me wrong, but we aren't married to anything. We put the books down as soon as we lose interest, returning to them if and when the feeling strikes.

I was talking with another unschooling mom earlier tonight on an unschooling board on Facebook and she was very angry with me and felt like I was being unhelpful. Her original question was something along the lines of:

Help! My three year old son is obsessed with reading!

What should I do?

I replied something cray cray like this: 

 SERIOUSLY?!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just give him books!
My daughter honestly and truly started learning how to read, TEACHING HERSELF HOW TO READ, at the age of 2 and a half. People kept accusing me of PUSHING her! LOL
If your son wants to read, (why use the term "obsessed?") Encourage him, find out what books interest him, and sit back and let it happen!

And she writes back:    

Yikes Karen, I was using the word obsessed in a funny sense, not negative. And as much as I give him books if what he is asking for is a bit more involvement from me why not give him that? He's expressing an interest, which is child led. Not everyone just naturally teaches themselves to read, but it's nice that your daughter did. I remember as a child being frustrated that I couldn't read and was extremely happy when my.mom started helping me learn phonics. 

I find your reply to be a bit abrasive and not the least bit helpful.

Well, OK.
I'm abrasive and unhelpful.
I wrote back that I had not intended offense in the least and I apologized.

Man, Facebook and other social media sites 

can be freaking EXHAUSTING.

But it is true, my daughter did teach herself to read when she was 2 1/2 years old! She asked for more and more phonics help with books that she carried around and I gave her any help that she asked for.

She had one book in particular that she carried with her, it belonged to my husband. It was a huge, heavy book on how to manage a team of computer professionals and she loved it! Ten thousand books in the house and she chooses one entitled something like The Death March of the Project Manager. LOL. I remember my aunt asking me in an appalled way Why did you give Elizabeth that book to read?!

Elizabeth started out by looking through the words of the books she perused until she found one or two words that she could read. She would look and look and then say, Look, Momma, here is the word moon! I would be in a state of complete FLABERGASTEDNESS and amazement at my 2 1/2 year old toddler daughter doing such a thing. Reading!

But my family, did they find it amazing?
NOPE. They accused me of pushing her and controlling her and micromanaging every aspect of her life. 
As if this amazing child of mine would allow me to control her...HA!

Anyway, my point is not that my family didn't get it, that's another post entirely, my point is that Elizabeth taught herself in her own time. 

On the other hand John didn't want to read until he was past twelve years old. I fretted a bit.      (understatement)

But now he has a book going all of the time and he can be found kicked back on the couch, feet on the back cushion, arm thrown up over his head laughing, tittering, celebrating, generally enjoying the read! In his own time.

I had to remind myself again and again to trust the process, to recognize his strengths, and that this child was going to be OK regardless of his interest in reading or not.

Reading Percy Jackson isn't the be all - end all. But he is enjoying it and he is learning that he enjoys the story far more from the book than from the screen.

Too bad I was pushing him so hard...Pshaw.

Carnival of Homeschooling #450

Are you thinking about homeschooling this fall? This is the time of year when many families begin thinking about whether they want to reenter the local elementary school and get a bit skeptical about all that goes on there.

If you are already homeschooling, this is the time of year when we marvel at the YAY, Kids Are Back in School posts because we are thrilled to not be back in school. We are thrilled to have the parks and attractions to ourselves. We are ready to see the change of season with our children. 

In this, the 450th Edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling, let's look at the experience of Starting Fresh. 

 

I hope you visit the blog posts in this carnival,

and if you do, Please leave a comment!  
Bloggers appreciate your feedback.

If you like what you read, please share the goodness on your blog, 

on Facebook, Google, in your homeschool group, 

other social media, and with friends!

• Carol at journey-and-destination blog has a lovely post that reminds me of why I love homeschooling. In a collection of posts about reading and books, especially the post How We Use Books, Carol discusses the points of Charlotte Mason work that have inspired her family with regards to their reading. I enjoyed her post called Ambleside Online Year 3 - Shakespeare, Plutarch, and Poetic Narration. How I love how her daughter Moozle ran with the narration idea! Carol, thank you for sharing; I have enjoyed your blog!

• Becca at her blog Hyperactivity in the Head (formerly A Pocketful of Purple Butterflies blog) offers the consummate guide for not-back-to-school-shopping called A Homeschoolers's Guide for Back-to-School Shopping. I don't think I'm giving too much of her blog post away if I say the words: avoid the consumerism! In a second post called School's IN for the Summer, Becca reminds all homeschool parents that School is ALWAYS IN for homeschoolers! This homeschool mom talks aboaut how this unschooling - homeschooling family has grown and adapted their learning styles to find what works for them! She explains how her children's education is centered around their ability to learn important lessons in the most unexpected ways. Check out the post; you will love it.

• Blair at blairleeblog is fairly new to the carnival. WELCOME, Blair! She offers a post entitled Teaching a Homeschool Science Co-op: General Notes. The blog post focuses on her experiences teaching a middle/high school level biology co-op class for the 2013-14 school year. It is the first in a series of posts about her experiences and is sure to interest you. Some of the posts to follow are specific to her RSO Bio 2 book (R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey Biology 2, Publisher: Pandia Press), but the posts will give general advice and insight about what she has learned in teaching this course. I also recommend a piece that Blair shared at her blog, a piece entitled Homeschooling is Hard.

• Rachael, a gorgeous mother of five, from Diamonds in the Rough blog and Frugal Homeschool Family blog, in the spirit of Not Going Back to School offers this first post called Top 10 Tips for Preparing for Back to School!!!  Don't mind the irony. Rachael also sends a blog post to this carnival that is so enriching! Homeschooling Inspiration Round-Up #4 is a fab post with blog links to other helpful blog posts, encouragement for families considering homeschooling, and support for all things homeschool! I appreciate your submissions, Rachael!

• For an adorable homeschooling blog check out Crista at Little Log Cottage School blog. If you are looking for ways to make the first days of homeschool special, check out this blog post from ex-teacher Crista called Making the First Day of School Special. Make it fun for your child by trying out some of Crista's great ideas in this post! While you are there, explore the blog a little and check out the tab called Fall Semester Themes for new ways to make your homeschool special this fall. If you are homeschooling a kindergartener you will want to follow this blog.

• WELCOME to Canadian homeschooler Amber at Adventure Hollow blog. Amber and her family of homeschoolers has discovered the pleasure of geoboxing and submits this blog post called How You Can Learn from Geoboxing. She and her two gorgeous children have swapped geoboxes with other interested  families and have enjoyed the experience tremendously! Give her post a read and see if your family might be able to include geoboxing in your life. If you are interested in exploring this hobby for your family, check out Homeschool Swapping Adventures or Homeschool WORLD Swapping Adventures on Facebook.

• Allow me to introduce you to Betsy at BJ's Homeschool. Betsy enjoys helping newbie homeschoolers get started, a mission with my sincere approval!!! The post she submits to the carnival this week is entitled Top Picks for Preschool/K where she reaches back into the early years of the homeschooling of her daughter and shares her favorite top picks for preschool and kindergarden. She freely shares the fun that her family had in the early years with math, phonics, reading, and handwriting. Betsy, I so appreciate you sharing the experiences of your gorgeous girl in her early years; especially now that she is graduated and moving out into the world!

• Anna-Marie at the aptly-named blog Life's Adventures is another Homeschooling Mother Extraordinaire! She and her family are travelers and enjoy taking their tricks on the road. This time her post is called Scavenger Hunt 250 St. Louis Cakes, referring to the 250th anniversary of the city. The city placed 250 birthday cakes around the region and Anna-Marie and her family is motivated to locate as many of the cakes as they can possibly find. You will enjoy this adventure and ALL of the adventures that Anna-Marie shares on her blog. You are going to need a nice cup of tea for this adventure blog, preferably Earl Grey.

• Welcome Kathie from The Character Corner to our carnival. Kathie's blog post 7 Ingredients for Successful Homeschooling reminds us all that we want to be our best as homeschooling mums. With that in mind as a goal, Kathie started noticing certain characteristics that were common in veteran homeschooling moms. Check out the list she compiled in this way. May I also recommend a post called 4 Reasons We Should Expect the Unexpected in Homeschooling. Lots of great info on this blog!

• Denise at Let's Play Math blog is on a mission to make math fun and applicable to the lives of your children. In the post Fraction Game, My Closest Neighbor she shows a fun game to help your kids practice comparing fractions, equivalent fractions, benchmark numbers, and stragetic thinking. It's brilliant! I know that this is the blog you have been waiting for!

• Kathy and Gary at Homeschool Buzz.com blog submit this blog post entitled Dictionary.com Insults Homeschoolers. I wonder if incidents of this nature impact all of us and I appreciate knowing that some families are on top of the news. This blog is interesting in that it is written by the entire family. Now that's excellent homeschooling.

• Rachael at Parenting and Homeschooling in Faith: Diamonds in the Rough blog epitomizes the theme of this Carnival of Homeschooling with her post entitled Back to School Inspiration. If you feel the need to prepare yourself as we near the time when many families restart their homeschooling in earnest, then this post is for you. This post is also a linky and welcome you to add your own blog post!
  

• My own submissions to this carnival here at My Own Mind blog begins with Strategies for Your Homeschooling. This is a post that I worked on for quite a while as I collated and collected as many original ideas as I could to give basic information to newbies and to all homeschooling parents. (Too cheeky?) In my post Are You a Good Homeschooling Parent? I talked with the kids about what qualities they felt were necessary for a homeschooling parent. This post is the collaboration that we came up with and I felt quite proud of their work on this one. And, finally in Co-op Planning, Homeschooling for Mutual Benefit  I tried to give a basic plan for how our small co-op created the next semester, for those of you who are considering getting a co-op off of the ground floor.

 

WHEW! What a wonderful carnival this week! My thanks to the wonderful parents who submitted blog posts and my thanks to Henry Cate and family for the Carnival of Homeschooling!

If you would like to submit your own blog post to an upcoming Carnival of Homeschooling, it's easy! Just send the following information to:  CarnivalOfHomeschooling@gmail.com

Name of your blog

URL of your blog

Name of your post

URL of your post
Brief summary of your post

That's all it takes and YOU can be featured in the next carnival.

Other blog carnivals exist if you are interested in a specific area of homeschooling. You can also send your blog posts to these carnivals:

• Secular Homeschooler Carnival is found here.
• Homeschool High School Carnival can be found here.
• Charlotte Mason Homeschoolers can submit here.
• Classical Homeschoolers can find out more here.
• Unschoolers can go here.
• Check out the Homeschooled Kids blog carnival here.

Have a wonderful school year!

Ta!

These First College Years

homeschool

Woo HOO!
My daughter has completed her first semester at the local community college with a 4.0 GPA! She is celebrating and feeling very good about her accomplishments.

I'm not a lover of the GPA. I don't think that it truly shows what a person has learned, how they have improved, how they have mastered the material and/or their challenges.

BUT, Elizabeth is cheering!
I told her, Honestly, Honey, with a 4.0 GPA, your GPA can only go down.  
So expect that.  *wink*

Ex-Believers, Come Hither!

I made the large meme down below some time ago and thought I'd share it here.
What do you think?

I would love to hear from you about the WHYs of your EX-believer status. I often feel such a sense of community with ex-believers. So many of us have experienced enough cognitive dissonance that we found it intolerable to stay in the church.

As for me, the mind games and shame didn't sit well with me. I couldn't ignore them in the church when I was working so hard in my life at the time to be completely honest and healthy with my thinking. Making the decision to live a highly ethical life meant that my brain was in turmoil over my religious beliefs.

The internal struggle for me began in earnest in the early 90s, I guess. I have always been a heavy reader and my reading at that time was deeply spiritual and widely religious and psychological. It didn't take long for the cognitive dissonance to set in.

I tried to make it all work for so long.

First I decided that it was religion in particular that I couldn't live with. I left the church but kept on with my belief, my reading, my thinking. The intellectual struggle kept me upset and in distress quite often in those days.

How about you?
Have you read any of Karen Armstrong's books? It might have been her book A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam that nailed the final nail in the coffin of religion for me. Not the final nail for a god, but for religion.

The final nail for any belief of a supernatural being of any sort came to me while I was reading The Bible.

Carnival Submissions?????

If you are a homeschooling blogger, please submit your blog post for the upcoming Carnival of Homeschooling to be hosted HERE next week.

Join me and other homeschoolers as we celebrate NOT going back to school!

You can submit your blog posts to the carnival in this way:


Submissions are due to: CarnivalOfHomeschooling@gmail.com by 8:00 PM CST, Thursday, August 14th, 2014. Submissions even earlier are appreciated! Please send the following information:

Title of Post
URL of Post
Name of Blog
URL of Blog
Brief summary of the post
(With "carnival" or "submission" in the subject field of the email.)

I will post the carnival either Thursday night or Friday morning.