July 22, 2008 Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival

Welcome to my very first time hosting the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival!!! I'm very excited to be able to present this as I think this is a fantastic carnival. I always find some wonderful pieces of information and posts. I think this edition is full of great posts as well and I hope you take some time to read through them all.

There are several posts this month on Nature Study. Leila of Freedom Academy has a great idea for displaying flowers found on nature walks. Tammy of Adventures on Beck's Bounty posts on their fascinating nature finds. Barb-Harmony Art Mom of Handbook of Nature Study updates us on her family's year long oak tree study. She has this to say about it:

Charlotte Mason suggests following a tree throughout the year to see
the changes. This is just about the end of our first year long tree study and I
hope it will inspire others to follow her direction.

Makita at Twinkling Stars Family Homeschool shares on the importance of support & comraderie, which is so important to us all.

School For Us shares two really fun handicrafts that feature origami and beading that are beautiful as well as providing opportunities for learning.

Kim at Graceful Girlhood, one of my very favorite blogs, has posted The Young Ladies Library. She describes it as "A Library of Resources for Use in Educating Young Ladies in the School and Home." You mothers of daughters won't want to miss this one.

Also in the category of homeschooling resources, Shez at Homeschooled Twins has found some fantastic resources for poetry and Growing Fruit...Part 2 has a post on living books and some recommendations for a great book to help teach grammar.

Princess Momma has a really helpful post, A Subject by Subject Approach to Charlotte Mason. She has this to say about her post:

This article is based on my notes taken at an all day CM workshop.
Having a simple outline of what was expected for each subject sure made it
easier to figure out what needed to be done without feeling
overwhelmed.

Mother Hen at Ship Full O'Pirates has posted on a topic that has been on my mind a lot recently. She has titled it Habit Reformation. There are some really practical hints in this one.

And speaking of practical, Naturegirl at Kids and Nature has a really fun way to get in some math practice. Your kids may never even know it's math : )

Whew! That's it!! I hope you all enjoy reading them as much as I have. If you'd like to be a part of the fun next time submit your blog article to the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page.

When Mother Lets Us Cook

Homeschoolfreebieoftheday.com is becoming the site I check every morning. They have managed to find so many wondeful freebies. I signed up for their newsletter that gives you a heads up at the beginning of the week as to what they will be offering during the week. That way you can mark your calendar for that one that you MUST have!

Today's offering is right up my alley. A cookbook for children from 1916. Here is an excerpt from the preface:

Recipes include everything from lemonade to applesauce to fudge to omelets. You'll find it here. Hurry up because it's only for today!

P.S. The wonderful Kara has informed me that this is available on googlebooks so you can still get it! Thank you Kara!

P.P.S Kara has gone one step further and recorded it as an audiobook. Have a listen at Librivox!

One Gray Mouse

From Lookybook:

The world of a little mouse is a grand and spectacular place when it is created by author Eugenie Fernandes and illustrated by her daughter Kim Fernandes. Together, this family team has brought us three fabulously vivid and charming stories—each revolving around a single mouse.

The signature of this trio of books is their three-dimensional illustrations. Each is hand-sculpted using Fimo clay—the kind often used for kid’s craft projects requiring baking to harden. Kim portrays each scene with painstaking attention to the tiniest detail and texture—like a sheep’s curly wool coat, or the golden straw piled on a barn’s wooden floor. Given the size of the mouse, many elements are grand in scale—like the bed-sized sneaker that the mouse inhabits in The Sleepy Little Mouse or her teapot house in Busy Little Mouse.

Kim has an expert fondness for plants, flowers and other garden foliage and is anything but shy about expressing nature’s rich palette—like the exploding garden in Big Week for Little Mouse. What’s so impressive is the movement that she creates with what you would think is a stiff medium. As the dog leaps into the pig’s pen, mud goes everywhere. Or the hummingbird that hovers above as the mouse navigates the turbulent sea on the back of a seahorse. And it is the adorable expressions on each of the animal’s faces that will ultimately captivate a child, (and a parent), and draw them deeper into this wonderfully believable mouseland. It will also leave you wondering a bit, “how did she make these tiny worlds with her not so tiny hands?”

Free Audio for Independence Day

One of my favorite websites, Learn Out Loud, is providing a lot of really great audio for free for the holiday tomorrow. I have previewed some of it and it's pretty good stuff. Check it out!

Free Resources & Podcasts for July 4th:
Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death" Speech
The United States Declaration of Independence
The Articles of Confederation
The Constitution of the United States
United States Bill of Rights
First Inaugural Address of President George Washington
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln
History of the United States, Volume 2: Conflict and Independence by Charles Austin Beard
David McCullough's Biography of a Year: 1776
U.S. Presidents Podcast
Great Speeches in History Podcast