Homeschooled Wandmaker

Nick is a homeschooled preteen who makes hand-turned mahogany wands and sells them in his mother's Etsy shop. Are you seeking an excellent and unusual present for your Harry Potter fanatic this season? Have a look:

The wand can be inscribed with runes, your name, or any other small saying. You must click on the image and read the description on the Etsy page -- it's darling. Let's hear it for homeschooled entrepreneurs!

A Big Fat Fight Over Unschooling

Wow, check out this post at The New Unschooler (via), where commenters rage and battle over whether the blogger needs to rethink or embrace unschooling. Fifty-four comments including phrases like these:

"Let the woman decide for herself what advice she is going to take instead of trying to convince her that she belongs in your clique instead of with us losers."

Whew!!! I love it. Does this kind of think happen all the time? Reminder to self: Unschoolers make good TV.

And of course.... they're homeschoolers!

Another homeschooling family makes the news for child abuse.

A New Homeschooling Carnival

Shez at Homeschooled Twins has launched a new carnival for homeschoolers, called the Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers. There are three things great about this carnival:

1. It's new. Therefore interesting. New things are interesting.
2. It's limited in size. Therefore, you can actually read all the content, if you want to.
3. It's edited. Not only is she choosing some posts and passing over others, but she's providing little commentaries and editorial remarks.

Love all of this. This carnial has a personality. Some will not like it. Some will be offended. You might be offended by the fact that it's not a big tent, by some opinion that Shez expresses, or by one of the posts that she finds provocative. You might, however, be intrigued by the unabashed editorial agenda, happy with the manageable size, and curious about what she'll attract or dig up next week. I know I am.

List of Science Fair Links

Project ideas:

http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/category0.html

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/pages/sciencefairzone/topics.asp

http://www.juliantrubin.com/branchesofsciencefair.html

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/science_elem.htm


Using the Scientific Method:

http://www.juliantrubin.com/fairguide/scientificmethod.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/J001402F/

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/bio301d/Topics/Nonscientists/Text.html

http://scifiles.larc.nasa.gov/text/kids/Research_Rack/tools/scientific_method.html

http://www.biology4kids.com/files/studies_scimethod.html

Making Your Display:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_display_board.shtml

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000096

http://www.super-science-fair-projects.com/elementary-science-fair-projects.html

http://www.sciencestuff.com/playground/SF-DbSetup.shtml

General Help:

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/sciencefaircentral/

http://www.homeworkspot.com/sciencefair/

http://www.madsci.org/libs/areas/sci_fair.html

Science Sites:

http://www.funology.com/

http://www.strangescience.net/
http://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/

http://www.billnye.com/

Homeschooling is Another Culture?

Celeste at Life Without School has an interesting take on why homeschooled kids who transition back into public school have a hard time with teachers who expect them to be more like transfer students, when in fact she postulates they're more like foreign exchange students.

Can I just say that I've recently discovered Google Reader and I can't believe how marvelously easy it was to set up and how convenient and perfect it is to use? Now, instead of missing out on my friends' blog posts, or falling behind on blogs I like to read, I can see exactly what's been updated and it comes right to my reader immediately. I resisted using a reader because I was all, "Oh, I like to see the blog posts in their context, not in some inbox." In reality, though, that meant that I was missing out on a lot of posts, or spending a lto of time travelling around to blogs that hadn't been updated, using my bookmarks or blogroll. Google Reader lets me divide all the blogs into categories, so I can click on "Book Blogs" and see every post that's been updated in that set, or I can click on an individual blog and see all the most recent posts. The coolest thing is that it tells me how many new posts are in each category with a (1) or (48) or whatever, so I can see where the activity is. It's like an aerial view of my personal blogosphere. And I can click on any post I want to comment on, and open it in a new tab, no problem -- then there's the context I was talking about. So, GET GOOGLE READER! You don't have to know the RSS or XML address -- I just put the regular blog URLs in the "New Subscription" field and it located the feed for me. It's a no brainer.

Free Financial Comics and Cool Butterfly Migration Project

Two links for you, this weekend:

First, the Federal Reserve System has a catalog full of comics you can get for free, detailing money issues. There's even one called, "The Story of the Federal Reserve System" and one called... wait for it... keep your wig on... "The Story of Checks and Electronic Payments"!!!! Get over there and order 35 copies immediately! For free!

Second, here's a link to the Symbolic Butterfly Migration in Mexico. I can't explain it adequately, probably, but the basic idea is that you and your kids color butterflies, pack them into an envelope to go to Mexico along with the other real Monarch butterflies that make their trip down there in the fall. The symbolic butterflies are tended by school children in Mexico right next to the place where the real ones spend the winter, and then (since you include a return envelope) they send them back to you in the spring. Cool! The point is to build connections between children in North America, and also to include a small donation to help preserve the Monarch's territory in Mexico. We're probably going to do this, this week at Phi Bensa Zoe Academy.