Homeschool Showcase (Formerly The Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers) #16

Welcome to another edition of Homeschool Showcase: Where the spotlight's on you! The goal of Homeschool Showcase (formerly The Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers) is to create a unique niche where the encouraging, inspiring, hands-on, and just plain fun ways that homeschooling families live, learn and enjoy life together can be showcased so that we can learn from and inspire each other. To that end, I would like to start recognizing a "featured post" for each carnival. The featured post will be one that reflects the spirit of Homeschool Showcase.

This week's featured post is from Jenny Wren of Jenny Wren's Nest. Jenny tells of her and her daughter's recent experience making soap, prompted by a kid's craft show that her daughter enjoys. Jenny gives us a list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions for the project. Once you see how beautiful the soap turned out and how much fun Jenny's family seemed to be having, you'll want to try this project yourself. I've already decided that it's something my girls would love...and maybe my boy, too, if I could find some Star Wars themed soap molds!

Be sure to check out our featured post: Crafts: Making Handmade Soap!

Once again, Amida has blown me away with her kids' creativity and artistic ability. She shares with us her children's incredible artwork in January 2009 Art Gallery presented at Journey Into Unschooling. Amida's kids made a collage for each letter of the alphabet and each one is a masterpiece. I think you'll love these as much as I did and I bet the creativity and diversity of each of these creations will inspire you to create an alphabet collage with your kids. Be sure to look at the detail and the mix of mediums on each one. Awesome!

Gina shares a funny moment from her homeschooling journey that will have you nodding your head in agreement, even as you chuckle. All us moms can probably appreciate her post, Today I ate my words posted at unpink academy. Out of the mouths of babes. We moms will get it right eventually.

Andrea Hermitt presents a comical look at the No Child Left Behind Act from a homeschoolers point of view in her post No homeschooler left behind act (according to me), which can be found at Homeschool Blog.

Sarah Scrafford, of Learn-gasm, says,

Researching on the Internet means working from home, viewing collections
from around the world and stumbling across rare finds from somewhat obscure
libraries or museums. But it also means linking to garbage, weird conspiracy
theories, and even plagiarized material. To connect you to the best
historical references, we’ve generated this list of 100 terrific sites that
feature primary source documents, recordings, images and more.

Hall Monitor presents Schools spent $67K on cappuccino machines posted at DetentionSlip.org, saying "Anyone else need an argument against public schools?"

I know that not everyone is a fan of offering kids external rewards as incentive for things like schoolwork or chores, but our family has personally benefited from seasons of doing just that. I totally credit a sticker chart system for helping Brianna learn to take personal responsibility for completing her math in a timely manner a few years ago. The reward system lasted only a short season and now Brianna works in a consistently independent fashion without extrinsic rewards.

Dana shares a reading rewards system that has worked for her family and how it came to be in her post, A Buck A Book at The Sunny Side.

I loved Heather Dunham's post, A Timeframe for Learning Colours posted at Mother By Nature. This article is a look into the process of how toddlers learn about colours, and why we shouldn't worry about when they learn them.

Too often we get so caught up in what kids "should" know by this time or that and this is reinforced by the public school system when what a child should know when is usually dictated by what makes it easier to teach and manage a classroom full of twenty or thirty kids. While that holds some significance in a classroom setting, it should hold much less at home where we can allow our focus to be on letting our kids develop at their own natural pace. It's mind-boggling to consider all that goes into a seemingly simple educational milestone.

Kat suggests a wonderful way to bring history to life for your family as you make it personal by Using Genealogy to teach History, posted at Homesteading and Homekeeping at Whisper Wind Farm. We are related to Daniel Boone in some way. I may need to take Kat's suggestion and trace our family tree.

HappyCampers tell us about their family's recent trip to learn about a very historic event in their city in the post, Take Me On A Tour: Sixth Floor Museum, Dallas presented at Reese's View Of The World. In HappyCampers's post you'll learn about their trip to the museum in Dallas where four generations of their family were absorbed in learning about the assassination of JFK, along with some tips for the tour if you get a chance to visit. And, I've got to say, it's worth a visit to Reese's mom's blog if for nothing else than the picture showing how Reese felt about the photo op. Love it!

Michael Gold offer his thoughts on seeing and thinking straight about education, not getting carried away by glitz or side issues in Pedagogical Regifting posted at MGTutoring.com. I remember getting so excited about the commercials he references, thinking that it sounded like a homeschooling train of thought. I was so disappointed that they were simply for a college. I don't know why I thought anyone in the media would be promoting homeschooling, though. I guess it was a temporary moment of insanity.

Vera Lang presents a craft that I predict your older, teenaged girls would love: Craft a Simple, Marvellous Desk Calendar posted at Fine Craft Guild .com. With a little help, even the younger kids would enjoy making a desk calendar, or the craft could be modified to make a picture frame. This would make a really cute Valentine's Day craft project for your kids, your co-op, or your homeschool support group.

This concludes this week's edition of Homeschool Showcase. I want to thank everyone for submitting your posts. If you've done anything inspiring, exciting or just plain fun in your homeschool -- hands-on activities, a field trip that everyone enjoyed, a great science experiment, or a learning activity that everyone enjoyed -- I hope you'll consider submitting the post for the next Homeschool Showcase, scheduled for February 9. For guidelines or information on where to submit your post, please read Homeschool Showcase Submission Guidelines or visit our page at Blog Carnival.

Crayon photo by laffy4k

Genealogy photo by mattlemmon