I’m particularly looking forward to Home is Where You Start From‘s look at Homer’s Odyssey.  As I’ve mentioned, we’ve recently shifted to a Charlotte Mason style with my 10yo son, Flipper.  Into week 5 now and still liking it!  For history, we’ve been doing “introduction to history” things this session (each of our sessions is 6 weeks), looking at archaeology and what history means, as well as a wee bit on the earliest civilizations   Our next session will be Ancient Egypt, and I’m all planned up for that.  Following that, we’ll be taking a session on Ancient Greece, which I haven’t done too much planning for as yet.  I’ve heard about only a couple adaptations of the Odyssey for kids, so I’m very keen to check out all the great ideas in this post.

The Recession Depression Therapy blog has a post on Cookbooks for Kids, and I think I’ll have to search out the Little House inspired cookbook!   I’ve recently been exposed to Montessori’s teachings on little kids in the kitchen, and so my 2yo daughter Pomme helps me a great deal with food preparation.  But I was none so enlightened when Flipper was a wee boy, and boy oh boy it’s a struggle to get him interested in helping.  Or doing anything for himself.  “MOM!  I need you to butter my toast!” is a refrain heard far too often.  One trick that sometimes works is dangling the carrot that girls like boys who can cook… he’s only 10, but he’s already looking forward to finding a wife!  What works the very best, however, is one cookbook we have, a Company’s Coming cookbook for kids.  He’ll do absolutely everything by himself when he finds a dish in there he wants to try.  He even made breakfast for himself and his sister this morning, a toasted “cheesy apple melt.”  I’ll pass, thanks.

The Thinking Mother ponders about Self-Directed Learning Moments, and how not every “teachable moment” has to involve parental interference.  Once again, I find Montessori parallels… Dr. Montessori observed, very wisely I think, that parents and teachers should not automatically jump in and help, cheer on, encourage, enrich, advise, or otherwise interfere when a child is absorbed in something.  We want to help, it’s a natural impulse, but in fact we’re breaking their concentration.  Since learning this, I’ve found myself having to restrain my impulse to ‘jump in’ with Pomme fairly often (although like any habit, this has gotten much easier with practice), wanting to show her how to do something, or — even worse — just do it for her.  I’ve been gratified, amazed, and enlightened to see that when I just sit back and let her do her own thing, she’ll figure it out on her own.  Not only does this foster confidence and independence, but it’s practicing her own problem-solving skills.  Of course, if she gets frustrated and ASKS me for help, I will.  The idea is not to never help your kids.  It’s just to realize when they really do need help, and when they just need some time to work it out for themselves.

And finally, Dad’s Homeschool Blog sings the praises of StumbleUpon as a search tool for homeschooling resources. I’ve been using StumbleUpon myself for awhile, to help promote my articles at Eco Child’s Play as well as my little blog here.  I’ve also randomly stumbled through their listed sites, and have found some really amazing things.   I’m a bit annoyed right now, in fact, that my latest Firefox upgrade seems to have deleted my StumbleUpon toolbar, so now I have to go find it and install it again.  Such is life, I guess.

I liked the clean simplicity of this one, but I really wanted the cute date calendar graphic rather than the boring old “February 22nd” text.  It’s a visual thing, it snazzes up the site, and gives quick focal points for the eyes.

But, this theme didn’t have those.  So, I played with a theme that does, and messed around with the css stylesheet files until I figured out which lines did what, at least in regards to the dates.  I copied the image to the right folder, added the necessary lines to the main stylesheet, and added the necessary instructions to the main page template.  The worst trouble that I had was that the site’s file manager tool kept putting the image file in the wrong folder… I didn’t realize this at first and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t showing up.  Once I realized and fixed that issue, BAM suddenly there was my cute little calendar.

It then took some fiddling to get it in just the right place, and then to delete the former boring text date.  Along the way, though, I figured out quite a few things about how this script works.  And so I tweaked a few more things, like the space between posts on the main page (they were too squooshed).

I’m pretty pleased with myself here.  I learned html the same way, just by fiddling with existing web pages until I figured out what did what.  But I had no intentions of learning the css script.  Too little time, more important things to be working on.  But this wasn’t as tricky as I’d expected, and now I have the theme the way I like it!

Well, almost… Next I’ll just figure out… and then… hmm, and maybe…

We’ll see what I think of it in another week or so.

It’s, um, very pink.

But, it’s quite pretty.  I’m thinking of even keeping the tulips as the header rather than my ‘growing hands’ header.  It’s still “nature”, right?

It has most of the features I’m looking for, especially the little calendar icon for each post.  I’d prefer the block quote style that has the big punctuation marks (too cute!) but this one will do, until I can figure out how to build my OWN theme…  I’d also love three columns instead of two.

But, I think this one is kind of cool.  We’ll see if I still like it in a few days…

Besides which, used as carriers, they promote isolation and detachment at best… and at worst, are downright dangerous.

Check out Baby Essentials We Don’t Need: Part 2, Infant Car Seats.

This week, the 3rd edition of 2009 visits five blogs in four provinces.

They’re looking for more contributors, so if you happen to have a Canadian homeschooling blog, or know someone who does, please spread the word!

What little time I have had for writing, I’ve been putting into my work at Eco Child’s Play.  Please check out my latest post, Häagen-Dazs Loves Bees – Should We Love Häagen-Dazs?

And I promise I’ll write something soon about homeschooling, or babies, or some such thing.