First Carnival - originally posted April 7, 2008

Monday, April 07, 2008

First Carnival of Canadian Home Educating Bloggers!

Welcome to the first Carnival of Canadian Home Educating Bloggers. Though we are off to a very meager beginning, it is a dream of mine that this Carnival will grow quickly over time. I know there are many, many Canadian Home Educating Bloggers out there and I'm hoping they will come together much faster than the 82 years it took for everyone to come together to form the nation of Canada. :)

Just like the confederation of Canada started off with representation from 4 provinces, so the Carnival of Canadian Home Educating Bloggers is starting off with representation from 4 provinces, but the represented provinces are a little more spread out in the Carnival than they were in the confederation. Also, though Newfoundland was the last province to join confederation, it is a representative of Newfoundland ( me :0) )that was the instigator of the Carnival of Canadian Home Educating Bloggers.

As my submission to this carnival I point you to a very short post of mine from a while back, where I shared a link to a post that resonated in my heart as I reflected on the fact that Motherhood is My Chosen Career.

Michelle, in Nova Scotia, was the first one to respond to my request for submissions. She shares some devotional thoughts about the important jobs of mothers and how our most important job is to work on having a right relationship with God so that we can help our children have a right relationship with God.

Julie in Saskatchewan, encourages us not to be fooled by bow ties as she shares how she discovered another side of Pierre Berton as she read his book The Secret World of Og with her children. I love the comment she made about his children knowing that side of him and it got me thinking about whether my children see a side of me that nobody else does.

Though not a homeschooling parent, Sarah, now residing in Alberta, has devoted much time to helping homeschooling students and parents, so for that reason I agreed to accept her submission to the carnival. She has put together some wonderful information for homeschoolers applying to university. Be prepared to spend much time on her site.

And there we have the first edition of the Carnival of Canadian Home Educating Bloggers. Spread the word and help us grow. Hopefully next time we will have more representations from other provinces and also more representations from the provinces already represented.

I will host the next Carnival in two weeks time so that will give everyone lots of time to submit a post. It can be a new post or an old one, doesn't matter. It can be short or long.

If you need inspiration on what to post, check out the lyrics of My Way, a song written by Canadian Paul Anka. State your case. Tell about your full life. Tell about your travels. Share your regrets. Tell about your planned, charted course, your careful steps. Tell about the times you bit off more than you could chew. Share about when you loved, laughed and cried. Tell about home educating your way.

The deadline for submissions will be April 18 and the next edition will be posted April 21. Send submission to me (address removed).

Edited at 11:45

Before closing my email program for the night I noticed that the sp*m folder was getting pretty full so I decided to delete it. Then I remembered that the last time I went to delete it I discovered that there was a message from my sister in there, so I decided I should check the messages before deleting them. Boy am I glad I did! There were 4 more submissions for the Carnival in there! Here they are:

Linda, in Newfoundland, tells about her son unschooling himself cartooning and shares some of his cartoons.

Penelope, in Nova Scotia, has a great post to remind us about the frustrations that are often experienced when we try to learn something new, and how important it is remember that in teaching our children and to teach them how to deal with frustrations.

Dawn, also in Nova Scotia, tells about how the lovely weather had her picking up butterfly nets for her children and how it reminds her of how she often picks up stuff with intentions that never get followed through. I think we can all relate to that.

Mama Squirrel, in Ontario, shares a funny from her squirrelings.

Thank-you each and everyone that participated in the first Carnival of Canadian Home Educators. I hope you will all join in again in the next one, and help spread the news.