May's Unschooling Pinterest Carnival!

Earlier this month, we shared the Spring 2013 Unschooling Blog Carnival. Wasn't it FANTASTIC?  So many fabulous blogposts from unschoolers around the world. If you haven't gotten a chance to get to them all - don't worry! You can still go there to read about unschoolers' lives and be inspired!

As promised, we're ready to add 3 more Unschooling Fun Boards to our Unschooling Pinterest Carnival Collection!

Unschooling Pinterest Carnival 

• Trains

• Doodling

• Birds

• Greek Mythology

• Whales

• Hair & Make-up

• Just for Fun

• Science Experiments

• Solar System

 

I'm just loving the Unschooling/Pinterest Connection! 

I hope it helps make your unschooling lives fuller and richer!

Please continue to share the carnival on email lists, FB, Twitter, G+ing and re-blogging. Nothing helps dispel mischaracterizations of unschooling like seeing (in this case, reading) about unschoolers and all the learning that's going on in their lives!

See you next week with new Unschooling Pinterest Boards. Please follow the UBC here or over on Pinterest, because then I can add YOUR pins to our boards too! I'm learning how to "collaborate"on Pinterest. So if you are interested in adding more to a particular board, I'd love to have you collaborate with me!!

Have a Wonderful Week!! 

Happy Pinning!

~ Sue

Spring 2013 - Carnival Time!

The Unschooling Blog Carnival is back with blog posts recommended by unschoolers everywhere. And WOW! We have a lot of great blogs for you to read - you're bound to be inspired!!  I'm happy to say our Grown Unschooler Blogs section was a hit and is growing! If you know of others, please put them in the comment section or email the links to me for next time. (unschoolingblogcarnival@gmail.com)

And our next big announcement....

*New 

Unschooling Pinterest Carnival!

If you go to the  Unschooling Blog Carnival's Pinterest page, you'll see that we've expanded a little bit.  I've always thought that Pinterest is a HUGE gift to unschoolers! My kids were grown before it ever made it onto the social networking scene. But to have a place where you could easily collect ideas and share them with your kids? Brilliant!! With that in mind, I'm going to start adding "Boards" to our area on a variety of topics. As questions or ideas come up on email lists and Facebook pages, don't be surprised if you see a Pinterest Board on the topic. I've just started this - in the middle of creating the carnival and putting on a wedding in real life - so it's in it's early stages. I wrote a little more about it here:  The Unschooling Pinterest Connection.  If you have ideas or suggestions, email me!

So...back to the first Unschooling Blog Carnival of 2013!  Hope you enjoy it!

Be sure to leave comments at the blog sites - or even just click "Like" at their site. That way they'll know you stopped by.

Happy Unschooling!

    ~Sue

Unschooling Moms & Dads share...

Catherine Forest blogs at Catherine et les Fees.  She shares some of the unique experiences that are filling her children's days in Central America in her post This Traveling Unschooling Life of Ours.

They probably will not know what it feels like to wait for the summer holidays, for Spring break or for the Christmas vacations, because their life feels like a never-ending holiday... and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Ronnie Maier writes at The Blog of the Zombie Princess. She has created a Facebook page called My Unschooler is Interested In... She explains more about the concept with a blogpost of the same name, My Unschooler is Interested In...

People create posts about something their kids (or they - we're not age-ist!) are interested in, and other members put in ideas for learning more... In a little over five months, we have gathered 1250 idea-makers together.

Heather Boothe blogs at Today Was Amazing.  She shares a short blogpost with a big message in Looks Matter.

As I sat there drinking my tasty, yet disgusting looking smoothie this morning I thought about what it must of been like for Austin when I would tell him he had to eat his vegetables.  

Sue Patterson, blogs at Lifelong Learning: For us, it's a Life Full of Saturdays. Readers can follow the process of how her son went from hating writing to getting a degree in Journalism, and how Sue deschooled along the way in her post, Boys & Writing: Our Journey.

It was at that moment, I felt the shackles of school fall away. We weren't going to turn in writing, hoping to squeak by with her approval and a passing grade. We weren't going to turn in any writing at all! Michael looked at me and grinned. I picked up the pencil and snapped it in two. Done!

Flo Gascon shares a fabulous post at her blog, Flo Gascon.  Don't let the busy-ness of life keep you from noticing that  It's Not Just a Moment, It's All there Is.

Time was so quiet and so still and I could have spent forever in that place, just holding her head in my lap, cradling her youth. Being her mama. Being her mama. Her continued rest with me affirmed that she was feeling it, too.

Michelle Conaway, blogs at Living,  Learning, and Loving Life. She started to look at why she was sayng "no" so often to her child. She shares how she turned this around in Choosing to be a YES Mom!

Our kids can be our greatest teachers in life. The things that bring joy to them are the things we get the opportunity to say Yes to. Our kids can show us our own road blocks if we are willing to examine our fears.

Alex Polikowsky blogs at Holy Cow is Polykow. In her post, My Sweet Children, and What Happens When You Are Sweet To Them, Alex shares the ripple effect of thoughtful parenting.

The more sweetness I  bring into my home by my tone of voice and the way I treat my kids and husband, the sweeter our lives are. 

Frank Maier blogs at singularity and this time, feels his post this time might be a bit harsh. I disagree. It's all about getting our priorities straight. You'll have to read the entire post to see if any of it applies to you or others you know in [Something] Radical Unschooler.

You are an LOA believer (or libertarian or vegan or videogame hater) who talks about unschooling and folds it into your LOA (or whatever) when it’s convenient and when it fits your weltanschauung; but radical unschooling is not a genuine part of your core weltanschauung. It’s an add-on.

Shannon Loucks blogs at Breaking Daylight. She reminds us that  Love Without Conditions can be the one sure thing we can offer our children in a world that can sometimes seem chaotic and frightening.

When my child knows my wide open and loving arms are always here to catch them, they are more willing to boldly take on life. To head out and take chances, make big messy mistakes and when necessary retreat in to the comfort of us, their family, to heal and strengthen in order to stretch out again. 

Linda Wyatt blogs at Unschooling Me. In her post, I Wish My Son Would Still Do That, she shares how unschooling has strengthened her family bonds.

Popular cultural assumptions about teens include that they don't want to be with their parents, especially not in public, and especially wouldn't want to be seen expressing any sort of affection.  I guess most teens don't sit on their Mom's lap where other people can see them?

Laura Grace Weldon shares a variety of ways parents can encourage or interfere with a child's internal motivation to learn in her blogpost Respecting a Child's Urge to Discover.

Conventional thinking tells us that children benefit from the newest educational toys and electronics, lessons, coached sports, and other adult-designed, adult-led endeavors. Well-intentioned parents work hard to provide their children with these advantages. They do this because they believe that learning flows from instruction. By that logic, the more avenues of adult-directed learning, the more their children will benefit. But learning has much more to do with curiosity, exploration, problem-solving, and innovation.

Sara Schmidt blogs at the Education Job Market. In her post, Unschooling Really Works, she describes how her child is pursuing her passions and learning independently.

The system, however, is designed to make us average. We need to change our entire culture. I think any child given the time to explore his or her own interests like this with so much passion and encouragement could be exceptional—and imagine where we could be if we allowed all of our children to be exceptional.

Nicole blogs at Verde Mama. She examines the roots of anger and how it affects the dynamics in her family in her post, Parenting, A Joyful Partnership.  

I wonder why anger towards children and control of them seems to be held in such a high esteem. While, friendliness, joyful partnering, kindness and respect, these parental traits are often ridiculed. The thinking is, children will become spoiled, parents will get walked all over, in short, nothing less than total chaos will ensue. This has been so far from my experience.

Sasha Zaring blogs at One Rich Mother. With two very different daughters, she shares one of their paths in A Tale of Two Educations: The Motivated Learner.

It was a hard lesson for me, but one well learned, that education is so much more than just how much knowledge you can acquire.  It is just as important, no, more important to have your child stop and smell the flowers than to teach them how to diagram one.

Kelly Auriemmo blogs at Teacher Goes AWOL. In her post, Multi-Age, Multi-Sensory, What the ?!?! she addresses what is sometimes seen as one of the biggest challenges to learning at home.

School focuses on visual and auditory learning and expects all kids to conform. By offering learning through multiple modalities, you can use each child's strength to help them overcome their weaknesses.

Mani Sheriar blogs at Sharing Along the Way. When asked about unschooling through the high school years, she writes about some of the questions and her responses in, What about Advanced Algebra or Chemistry? Self-Motivation is the Key. 

What about all the other things that a young person might miss while slaving away at higher math and science? All the things they won’t have time for – dance lessons, learning to fix a car, writing a novel, learning to code, traveling, painting, carpentry – whatever their passions are! Are these not valuable? These things that, by the very nature of the fact that the child WANTS to do them, are more likely to actually factor into their future endeavors? 

Teresa Honey Youngblood shares about her family at her blog, The Honey House Homeschool. Teresa shares her struggles about her son's first day one an organized sports team in, First Day of Baseball.

I have heard horror stories all year of Fayetteville baseball parents, and I may have heeded a bit too closely to the particularly nasty ones. I was playing out hypothetical scenarios where tucked-shirt, crew-cut, angry-faced dads yelled at my gleeful, silly, wooly-headed boy. 

Christeil Gota blogs at Play, Rest, Repeat. In her post, When you Are Homeschooling and Your Kids Are Better Than You at Something, she examines how unschooled children are able to be successful.

This is where my kids succeed, and I struggle.  Children naturally live in the moment.  They are less concerned with steps or completion and put themselves completely in the process.  This is true whether they are learning something new, repeating a favorite technique or messing one up.  

Susan May blogs at Together Walking. She writes about making An Attempt at Capturing the Magic that is Unschooling.

every time one of my children does something for the first time, completely of their own volition, my heart leaps and then pumps joy to every cell in my body. Each time this happens the truth: that children will learn all they need to, in their own time - becomes etched a little deeper in my bones. And this is where the magic lies - not so much in the "firstness" of each new skill or idea, but in the fact that they completely own these moments. 

David has just started blogging at rothklee: Design for Life. In his post, Food for Thought, he shares how he is recognizing learning happening in his children, but is still trying to get a firmer grasp on the idea of unschooling.

I’m still not sure how to describe what I do to ‘educate’ my children, other than to say that I help them learn and then watch what happens. 

 Unschoolers Around the World

Miranda Hughes blogs from her rural log cabin in BC, Canada, at Nurturing through Love. She shares how easy it is to learn and dwell In Between Subjects.

This fall has been a case in point for Fiona. She's been learning about... how does one describe it when it isn't a traditional subject area? ... learning about where math, art, and nature overlap.

Hema Bharadwaj, from India, blogs at The Bharadwaj Shine. She shares a peaceful post about an evening with her children in Questions.

So yeah... Questions.  They abound.  Sometimes the answers are easy, sometimes we google, sometimes we just have to trust that we do not know the answer but one exists somewhere.

 Grown Unschoolers 
(and one younger unschooler too!) 

I'm SO thrilled to share our expanding Grown Unschooler blogs!  Twice as many as last time and I'd love to see even more.  Do you know grown unschoolers who are blogging and sharing some of their thoughts? Send me the links!

Cameron Lovejoy blogs at One Wandering Poet.  I'm so excited to share with you all that his book, Mud Foot: Highway Prose and Poetry, is complete and has been published! Find out more about it from his blogpost The Release of "Mud Foot".

After months of traveling, writing, rewriting, editing, reading, rereading, and editing even more, I've finally completed my first polished collection of work.

Lindsey Muscato started a new blog, The No-School Kids: A Homeschool Retrospective, examining notes from her mother, Cathy Earle's, early days of homeschooling. She compares those thoughts to her own, as she reaches parenting age  and opens with The First Pages.

My sisters and I are our mother's life's work - this is a thought that hit me with some impact when I first articulated it. She is a fiercely capable, opinionated and intelligent woman - who grew up in the height of the women's liberation movement of the 60's and 70's - but she made the decision to quit her job, be a stay at home mom, and homeschool thee kids for 20 years... When she decided to journey into homeschooling in the 1980's, it was anything but mainstream. It was map-less.

Roya Dedeaux has a blog at her Counseling: Confidence, Creativity, and Connection website. She has shared a fabulous Natural Learning Handout that she and her mom, Pam Sorooshian, used at a local event.

The idea is that - you have thngs you will want to your children to learn, but you do not need school to be involved. Think creatively about other ways they may learn these things - and be open-minded about the timeline of WHEN they might learn them.

Michael Patterson is still blogging from his Peace Corps assignment in Nicaragua, at In the Nica Time. You can read about volcanos, and monkeys, and living in a rainforest there. But here's a look at him participating in a local festival in Ride On, Gringo!

The Hipicas are a real phenomenon. All classes of society come together for the event as complete equals. You'll see fancy dressed aristocrats riding horses worth more money thn I've made, right alongside poor farmers on their mules. But no matter. They toast their Toñas with each other and raise their cans to the patroness of La Paz all the same.

Quinn Trainor primarily writes poetry at her blog, sunlight and silence. But here, in A Series of Journal Entries, we feel the twists and turns of a poet's mind.

My life is a project half finished. One that you always come back to but do not know what the next step should be. My ambivalence consumes me on a day to day basis. How does one so sure of herself manage to get so lost? My compassion, sanity and doubts, all rolled up into one and tied so delicately...

Roxana Sorooshian has just started blogging at Upstaged. If you have a child interested in theatre, you'll love her witty yet helpful post, 5 Songs to Avoid in Auditions: the Teen Girl Belting Edition.

Look. I get it. Those dramatic mezzoland ballads make you feel powerful and significant. The lyrics are so generic, you can imagine any story you feel like acting onto them. The key changes generate a false sense of excitement. I GET IT.

Brenna McBroom shares pictures of her fabulous pottery and writes at her blog, Pottery and Pastry: The Blog of Brenna McBroom. She shares details about what life has been like and what she's learned in 10 Things I Learned During My First Year of Self-Employment.

I’ve been self-employed making and selling pottery for a full year. That was my goal when I moved to Asheville- to make a living by being a potter. But I honestly didn’t think it would happen so quickly. 

Brycen R.R. Couture shares his responses to a reporter in An Interview with Brycen about Unschooling. His blog is called Brycen R.R. Couture: Unschooler, Musician, Activist for Children, All People; the World.

There is no typical day for an unschooler, because everyday is based on what we want to do that day. My family is extremely spontaneous, aside from all of the regular groups, band practices, activities and events in the community that I have chosen to put into my schedule. Every day is  different. 

Ethan Wolfe, an eleven year old unschooling blogger, shares a little bit about volunteering at the Experimental Aircraft Association's event in his post, Volunteering at the EAA. Follow him at his blog, Ethan Wolfe's World.

This summer I will have the chance to fly in an airplane for the first time through the EAA's Young Eagles Program. The program lets kids like me and you have the chance to go flying in an airplane for free. How cool is that?

Lastly... Just a Reminder 

Spring Carnival Time!!

Spring 2013

Unschooling Blog Carnival!

Our December Unschooling Blog Carnival was so awesome! We had fabulous blogposts from new unschoolers and veterans, from grown unschoolers as well as unschoolers from all over the world.

Let's do it again!

✸ Submit unschooling blog posts that YOU find most inspiring! Sharing these posts may be just what some struggling unschooler needs to read. 

✸These Unschooling Favorites should be fairly recent - but if you stumble across something wonderful, that the blogger wrote within the last 6 months, that will work too!

✸ Unschooling Bloggers can still submit their own blogposts - just pick a post that you think is your best writing/most thought-provoking or encouraging.

✸ Email Sue at Unschoolingblogcarnival@gmail.com to submit your favorites. 

Inspired by an Unschooling Blogger? 

Share with us!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NEXT DEADLINE: April 20, 2013

Planning to Publish: May 1, 2013

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Spread the word!

December's Blog Favorites

Welcome back to the.... 

Unschooling Blog Carnival!

This year came and went pretty quickly, wouldn't you say? Sure, most of us packed in a lot of excitement for the year - still, it's hard to believe it's December already! Luckily, the Mayan predictions of the apocalypse are expected to be fiction and we can all happily fill this last month of 2012 with no concerns that The End is near! ;-)

December! So many holidays all in one month! Maybe you have wonderful traditions - I hope you're blogging about it! Or maybe you are soaking up as many new ideas as you can possibly handle. Perhaps you're in a part of the country where cocooning at home is the best approach.  And luckily, as unschoolers, the choices are all up to us! No schedules or "have to's!" Our time is our own!  Unschoolers around the world are simply making the best choices with our families, looking at what's needed and acting accordingly.

Thanks so much to everyone who recommended blogposts for the Unschooling Blog Carnival! We have such a great assortment this time. If you're a new unschooler or even if you're not new, you'll be able to relate to unschooling moms in the trenches, inspired by the veteran unschooling moms whose kids are grown or nearly grown, and reassured by the grown unschoolers who share their perspectives and lives with us.

So with this, the last Unschooling Blog Carnival of 2012, we'll start and end with a couple of videos. Take a few minutes to watch them both! And be sure to leave comments at the blog sites - it helps bloggers know you're out there!

Happy Unschooling!

    ~Sue

TED Talk: Bring On the Learning Revolution:

"Human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process."
All you can do is create conditions under which they are going to flourish."
"Everyday, everywhere our children spread their dreams under our feet. And we should tread softly."

Unschooling Moms & Dads share...

Lisa Nalbone, who blogs at Lisa Nalbone: Fruitful Solutions for Parents and other Lifelong Learners was published at CNBC.com. Her piece, A Mother's Tips on How to Raise a Thiel Fellow shares her ideas that can easily be translated into great pieces of advice about parenting and unschooling.

Lyla Wolfenstein blogs at The Adventure Continues: Musings and Resources for Exploring the Primacy of Trust and Relationship in Parenting. Lyla shares her scripts from her Life is Good Conference talk in The Only Parenting Mistake I Ever Made... and Over and Over Again (or - The Illusion of Control) 

Sue Patterson, blogging at (my new Wordpress blog!) Lifelong Learning: For us, it's a Life Full of Saturdays shares how One Little Word can make all the difference: WITH.

Mary Gold blogs at ZenMommas Garden. Mary's blogpost,  Reality Check, shares her thoughts about reality television, including her concerns about having unschoolers participate.

Linda Wyatt blogs at Unschooling Me. She shares how the concept of giving kids Whatever They Want really does work.

Flo Gascon's blog January's Girl reminds us that life can change in an instant in How Are You Spending It?

And from both sides of the TV or No TV, Video Games or No Video Games Controversy:

Laurie A. Couture shared her perspective in Unschooling Without TV and Video Games: A Freeing Experience.

Sandra Dodd has a collection of articles from a variety of unschoolers called The Values and Uses of TV and Video Games for Unschoolers.

Alex Polikowsky shares what makes up My 12 Days of Christmas at her blog Holy Cow is Polykow.

Leo Babauta shares The Beginner's Guide to Unschooling from his blog, ZenHabits.

The Wonderful Happens blog gives us a glimpse into their busy lives and the fun of photographic traditions.

Brie Jontry writes at Noor's Blog. Noor is working on a Cats for Kids Fundraiser. Check it out, and maybe make a donation for a worthy cause and a philanthropic unschooler.

Colleen blogs about their unschooling adventures in her blog, Milking Ducks.  This post, A New Interest in Dead Presidents and Cemeteries is Born, shows how one thing leads to another when a child is curious.

The Elemental Mom blogs at The Excellent Adventure and writes about Learn Nothing Day.

Laura Grace Weldon wants to share How Kids Benefit from Chores at her blog.

Shannon blogs at Breaking Daylight. Her post, Bleary Eyed Parenting, shares the parenting challenges that accompany sleep deprivation when you have a sick child.

Nicole blogs at Verde Mama.  Sharing her blogpost, radical, Nicole shares what the word means to her and  how it translates into their lives.

Gwyn blogs at Gwyn Raimondi.  Her post, Loving Home, helps us see how readjusting our attitude about our homes might be just what needs to happen!

Unschoolers Around the World...

Kjerstin Stanavige blogs at Homeschool 101.net . Kjerstin shares 5 Things You Should Know About Unschooling.

Rippy Dusseldorp blogs at Seeking Nectar.  Rippy describes why they chose to live in the Netherlands in the blogpost, Effervescence.

Hema Bharadwaj blogs at The Bhardwaj Shine. Hema shares about connections and how her children learn at a deeper level than facts and figures in the post, On Capone, Elvis, and Learning .

Katie Pybus in West Sussex, blogs at Outside the Box. In her post, she shares Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Why We Home Educate But Were Afraid to Ask.

 Grown Unschoolers Share too...

Brenna McBroom blogs at Brenna at the Writing Retreat. In her post, Unschooling and Class, she shares her thoughts and questions about how people in poverty in India, as well as lower income Americans, can successfully unschool. 

Michael Patterson blogs at In the Nica Time from his Peace Corps assignment in Nicaragua. He describes what he found when he was Infiltrating the Tents of Circo Zuary.

Cameron Lovejoy blogs at One Wandering Poet.  This is a glimpse of one leg of his cross-country adventures in The Makings of a Book.

Idzie Desmarais blogs at  I'm Unschooled.  Yes, I Can Write. Read about her thoughts on her unschooling journey that she shared in her Occupy Education Conference Talk.

Lastly... RSA Animate 

The surprising truth about what MOTIVATES us

Let's talk about Motivation! While this video pertains to the workplace, Daniel Pink is talking about human nature. As unschoolers, we'll see that. And if you need a little reassurance, watch this:



"You probably WANT to do something interesting...let me just get out of your way!"
"The science shows we want to be self-directed."


Be sure to Follow the Unschooling Blog Carnival on Pinterest.

Looking for Unschooling Favorites!

Have you found a really inspiring unschooling blogpost?
Are you a blogger trying to reassure unschoolers that it's a great way to learn?

We want to hear from you!

There are certainly more unschooling blog READERS than BLOGGERS, so we need your help looking for unschooling blog posts that you love reading. We want the Unschooling Blog Carnival to be somewhere unschoolers can go to find a little encouragement.

So here's the plan:

• Submit blog posts that YOU find most inspiring! 
• These Unschooling Favorites should be fairly recent - but if you stumble across something wonderful, go ahead and share it!
• Unschooling Bloggers can still submit their own blogposts - just pick a post that you think is your best writing/most thought-provoking or encouraging for other unschoolers.
• Do you want to be part of the "Searching for Unschooling Favorites" Team?  If you're already reading blogs, why not participate!  This might even end up being a cool way to become more involved WITHOUT writing your own blog!  
• Email Sue at Unschoolingblogcarnival@gmail.com to find out how you can help! 

NEXT DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 27, 2012

Spread the Word!

October: The Best Thing!!

Hi Everyone!!

It's time for the Unschooling Blog Carnival to roll back into town! Our theme this time is 

The Best Thing!

That's up to interpretation, don't you think?! Ha!

Only a handful of unschooling bloggers submitted their posts this time.  Who knew this would be so tough?! So thanks to Frank and Teresa for hunting around for The Best unschooling blogposts out on the web to add to this carnival.  We've listed them below as Unschooling Blog Favs. We know you'll enjoy these posts from unschooling bloggers around the world.

Be sure to read the bottom of the Carnival - we're planning a little Carnival Tweaking in the future. And as usual, please leave comments for the bloggers when you stop by their blogs. It warms their hearts to know you read about their lives or their thoughts on unschooling. And let them know you found them through the Unschooling Blog Carnival, okay?

As usual, spread the word! 

The October Unschooling Blog Carnival is back and ready to share all The Best Things! 

Please share the carnival on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, your email lists - 

wherever you think someone might need a little inspiration!

Enjoy!

~Sue

The Best Thing!

Frank shares The Best Thing in his blog singularity.  As usual, Frank stretches our brains a bit with his roundabout journey to identify THE best thing.

Isn't that what unschooling is all about, learning how to love your own life and live it so fully that maybe it even spills over to other lives? Yes, you're right. It's what everybody's life should be about, not just unschoolers' lives. 

Teresa blogs at The Honey House Homeschool. In The Best Day of the Week, she shares a delightful trek through the caves and forests of Northwest Arkansas.

Every day can be the best day of the week. You can wake up on your own time and do what you like best for the whole day. The day is yours. What you eat, read, play with, wear, listen to or watch and when; who you talk to or how long you stay quiet; where you go or don't go -- most of these things (with some real life realities in there) can happen the way you like best.

 Sue makes a list of "best things" in her post The Best Thing? As in ONE Best Thing? at her blog Lifelong Learning.

 While this might be the "short list" of all the Pattersons' Best Things, they all came about because of the parenting choices we made and our decision to be unschoolers. For us, it's all about Relationships. And these relationships can bring so much joy BECAUSE of the time we spent nurturing and trusting.

Sheena writes about Enjoying Life with the Ones We Love Most in her blog, Mighty Sparrows Academy .

I absolutely enjoy the hours upon hours I get to spend with my children every single day. I love how much time we get to spend with family and the irreplaceable bond it creates.

Susan blogs at Together Walking. In her post, The Best Thing, she shares some of the best things in her life.

But then one night, cuddled up in bed, Marisol whispered to me, "I love my life" and I thought, now *that* is the best thing.

Unschooling Blog Favs

Engaging with Texas from The Elemental Mom helps readers see how to tackle moving to a new place - from an unschooling perspective!

"We've been here a month, and I'm already totally overwhelmed by the possibilities. And that is a beautiful thing."

A Change of Perspective is a wonderful post from Heather about shifting her mindset at Today Was Amazing!  

"Because as soon as one thing ended, another began and there wasn't really any time for picking up. And that is where perspective went from resentment about a messy house to gratitude that I could provide the space for such adventure." 

Money, money, money, mon-ey from the Blog of the Zombie Princess, Ronnie writes a little here about how "allowance" has worked in her home.

"Our philosophy is one of cooperation and sharing, with a healthy dose of ignoring society's arbitrary, different-from-country-to-country rules about the ages by which kids **should** be doing certain things like driving cars, paying their own way, moving out, and so on. Society doesn't get to decide those things, we do."

Parents from Stephanie's blog Learning Through Living shares some insights about the concept of spanking your children.

"Kids who are living with respect, learn it and give it back."

Which Way Do I Go? from Linda's blog Unschooling Me gives an explanation of why it's so hard to really internalize the idea of unschooling your children through a simple question & answer format.

"If I share an experience with you, it is so that you can see ONE of the possibilities of how things can work out when we give attention to finding a real, equitable, comfortable and fair solution to something that was a problem for us. It is intended to give you some different ways to look and think about your situation, and to encourage you that it is possible to find that working solution, but it is NOT intended to suggest that your solution would be identical, because the people in your family are not identical to the people in mine, nor is your situation identical to ours. "

Snapshots at the blog o frabjous day shows a look at how one thing can lead to another.

 "A one day snapshot of radical unschooling, in response to the oft asked questions, "What does it look like?' 'What about math?' 'What about science?' 'What about history?' and so forth."

 Unschooling Blog Carnival Morphs!

We are always thinking about how we want this carnival to flow. It seems many of our unschooling bloggers have some trouble with our more abstract topics and themes... so let's change this up! Part of the wonderfulness of unschooling can be attributed to the ability to Be Flexible. So the Unschooling Blog Carnival is no exception.

And we need YOUR help! We're going to look for Unschooling Favorites. There are certainly more unschooling blog READERS than BLOGGERS, so we need your help looking for unschooling blog posts that you love reading. We want the Unschooling Blog Carnival to be somewhere unschoolers can go to find a little encouragement.

So here's the plan:

• No more themes (too restricting)
• Submit blog posts that YOU find most inspiring! 
• These Unschooling Favorites should be fairly recent - but if you stumble across something wonderful, and the blogger wrote it within the last 6 months, that will work too!
• Unschooling Bloggers can still submit their own blogposts - just pick a post that you think is your best writing/most thought-provoking or encouraging.
• Do you want to be part of the "Searching for Unschooling Favorites" Team?  If you're already reading blogs, why not participate!  This might even end up being a cool way to become more involved WITHOUT writing your own blog!  
• Email Sue to find out how you can help! 

NEXT DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 27, 2012

Summertime Carnival !!

Ahhh... just the words "Summer Vacation" make me smile a little.  As a school kid, it was that carrot on the stick, that prize for lasting all year.  We would watch the calendar for Memorial Day in the same way we'd watch the clock sloowwwly tick toward 3:00 every afternoon.  It was clear: the human body and mind were hardwired for FREEDOM!

So fast forward a few years - or even decades - and some of those school kids grew up to be unschooling parents!  Vacation time is no longer relegated to June-July-August. We don't need a carrot on stick to help our kids survive the Fall, Winter and Spring months.  That paradigm has been tossed out the window. Most of our days September through May look like vacation days for kids who do school (in a building or at home!)  I had a friend in Alaska tell me that she loved hanging out with unschoolers because they were always so creative and fun. It's true! When you read through these blogs of what unschoolers have been doing all summer, you'll surely agree!

Thanks to our Unschooling bloggers for sharing glimpses of how they've been packing in the fun this summer. Because that's what this issue of the Unschooling Blog Carnival is all about! Some went on vacation, some stayed home and played, but all of them look like they're having a great time enjoying life with their kids.  We all hope you are doing the same!

Click the links, visit the blogs and and leave a comment letting them know you stopped by!  It's nice to hear from others in the unschooling community.

Welcome to the 

Unschooling Blog Carnival!

Step Right up to the Carnival Tent full of TRAVELERS

Shady Lady had a lot of beach fun on her family's Oregon Coast Weekend . She blogs at Unschooling Royalty.  

SaraMcGrath blogs at Unschooling Lifestyle. Her family started with an epic West Coast Road trip in April and then continued the fun throughout the summer. Read all about it in What We Did This Summer.



Christina Pilkington blogs at  Interest-Led Learning.  Her Travel Edition - July Unschooling Adventures is a fabulously detailed description of her family's 19 day trip through Canada and the Upper East Coast.  If you're planning a trip up there, you'll want to see all the things they did. 

Frank from Singularity helps us understand some Latin terms in Let's Disco! It's not what you think...but then again, it is! Frank's family is bracketing their summer with a couple homeschooling conferences, have some road trips planned, and "a concentrated dose of unschooling."

The Windwalker Duo post at 1Dad 1Kid and 1Crazy Adventure. This single dad has packed up his son and headed out on adventures around the world. Check out their life lessons from turtles as they shares photos and thoughts on a sea turtle release in Mexico.

Sometimes traveling means learning about events that we wish HADN'T occurred. Such is the case in this blogpost from Jenn's (fantastic) Family Travel blog for Nomadic World Travelers: Bohemian Travelers.  Still, it's a must-read: The Killing Field Tour in Phnom Penh. 

This Carnival Tent is Full Of Local Adventures!

Gail Higgins shares what she, Broc, Brenna and Logan have been up to in Summer What's Up? on her blog Hummingbird Haven.

aNonyMous @ Radical Ramblings is blogging about how different summer is now that she's sharing it with her baby in First Summer.

Heather Booth from Today was Amazing takes us along with her family to The Garden at Krause Springs, in the Texas Hill Country. A beautiful place to relax and cool off! 

Lisa Nalbone blogs at her own blog Lisa Nalbone: Fruitful Solutions for Parents and Other Lifelong Learners  about the ABC's of Learning Beyond School.  Read her little poem reminding us that P is for Play! Perfect for summertime anytime!

Nicolas shares his family's plan for a Stay-cation at his blog Multum in Parvo.  Check out his plan at Our Home-Based Vacation.

And it wouldn't be the Unschooling Blog Carnival without a 

Tent with a little Reminiscing!

 
Linda Wyatt answers the infamous question What Did You Do On Your Summer Vacation?  in her blog Unschooling Me. She shares how her summertime looks a whole lot like the rest of her year - fun, family, activities together.  

Sue Patterson blogs at Lifelong Learning AND A Life Full of Days.  In A Long Line of Lake Lovers, she takes us on a retro look at summer times of bygone days and shares what it was like to go sailing this summer with some of her grown children. 

And there you have it!
Please share this Carnival with your friends online - Facebook, local and national email lists.
Help us grow the unschooling blogging community! 
The Unschooling Blog Carnival will roll into town again in October.  

The topic for the next Carnival will be 

The Best Thing! 

What does that mean in a house full of Unschoolers? Tell us!

Send your blogpost to Sue by September 30th!

Happy Unschooling!

    ~Sue