8/24/2006

Girl Scout Day Camp

Last month Jacqueline went to a week-long Girl Scout day camp and the leader was nice enough to take pictures and send them the parents. Here's some that had Jacqueline in them. You can click on it to make it larger.

The first three are of Jacqueline being part of the Color Guard. She's the one in the middle, wearing the green shorts and holding the flag.







This is the 3rd grade troop. Jacqueline is in the middle row, fourth from the left.



She had a great time at the camp and wants to go again next year! They earned two patches, made lots of crafts, went swimming and had a pizza party one day. :-)

Build-A-Bear

Jacqueline and her Brownie troop went to Build-A-Bear with the money they collected from their dues all year and each girl had $50 to spend. Billy volunteered as one of the drivers (it was in Gainsville which is about 30 minutes away) and bought Jacqueline an extra outfit. She picked out a dog and it's SO CUTE!!! :-)

Brownies starts again tonight and Jacqueline is very excited! This will be her 4th year in Girl Scouts (she started in Daisy's) and her last year as a Brownie. Next year she moved up into Junior Girl Scouts. I just bought her a new vest and one of the Brownie skorts. Shawna will be starting tonight also, as a Junior Girl Scout in a different troop for older girls. She's looking forward to meeting new girls and making some friends. :-)

8/23/2006

Day 133

Wow..it's been a busy month for us. Some good, some not so good.

We just celebrated Jacqueline's 8th birthday. I took them (my three) to Chuck E Cheese in the morning (we had the WHOLE place to ourselves for about an hour before some other homeschooled kids came) and the staff gave her ice cream, a hat and a balloon because she told them it was her birthday.
Billy & I gave her a small Barbie backpack (not the school size, more like a purse size), a watercolor paint set with brushes, a technique book, watercolor pad and brushes, a very girly plastic case with tons of girly stuff in it like lip gloss, hair things, bracelets and glitter, a Disney CD with all different songs from different movies, a Disney Princess sticker book, a solar system sticker book and a t-shirt that says Rock & Roll on it with guitars and all kinds of rock symbols (loooong story with this shirt-she wanted a guitar for her birthday and I bought the shirt to go with it. We ended up not getting the guitar because she's left handed and I think I have to switch the strings for her but then I need someone to tune it and I hadn't had time to find a place that does that yet. So...we're going to try and get the guitar for Christmas but the shirt probably won't fit her by Christmas so I had to give it to her now.LOL!!)
We had a small cake for her on the actual day of her birthday but Saturday her friend Jasmine slept and Sunday my cousin Maryanne and my Aunt Mary came over for our monthly Italian dinner, so I ordered one of those big Barbie cakes for her, but it was a surprise. She actually asked for it but I told her that I wasn't going to buy a big cake like that unless she was having a party. hee-hee. When we bought it out I thought she was going to self combust! LOL!!
My mom renewed her subscription to Disney Princess magazine, Cimion & Shawna chipped in and bought her a CD that she wanted....All American Rejects, Jasmine gave her a Barbie doll and a dress up skirt and my Aunt gave her a Strawberry Shortcake journal and activity book.

All in all...a nice 8th birthday for a beautiful little girl who deserves all this and more. :-)

There's more to tell but I'm being called to look at the tattoos my girls are putting all over (and I mean ALL OVER) their bodies. LOL!! Billy said they got it from me...I have six tattoos. :-)

8/15/2006

Links to Unschooling Voices #2

Thank you to the following bloggers and site owners who posted about the second edition of Unschooling Voices! It really helped get the word out.

If I missed someone that I didn't know about it, please leave the link here, as a comment and I'll include it. :-) By the way, Deanne...your link is not working. If you can correct it and leave it here, I'll add it. :-)

Unschooling Voices #3 will be out on September 1 and the (always optional) question for the month was submitted by a fellow unschooling parent!

Every Waking Hour
Homeschooling News
TRicotomainia
Dare to Know
Corn & Oil
Homeschool News & Muse
Wired for Noise
A Typical Homeschool
Sandra Dodd
Just enough and nothing more
Adventures in Living
Avec Mes Zebres
Zamozo
Living in Freedom Everyday
Organic-Learning
Throwing Marshmellows
Why Homeschool

PS: Am I the only one on blogger that can't save drafts? It's been like that for about 3-4 weeks now. Anybody else?


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8/01/2006

Unschooling Voices #2: Radical/Whole Life Unschooling

Welcome to Unschooling Voices #2!

The third Unschooling Voices will be out on September 1. If you'd like to participate,
click here for the details. If you post a link to this months installment, please let me know (by leaving a comment here) so I can thank you with a link back. :-)

This month there are 18 participants who submitted 21 fascinating blog posts. As you click the links that take you to the different blogs, I encourage you to comment on the ones that you particularly enjoy (tell 'em we sent ya!) or maybe offer some words of wisdom to someone at an unschooling crossroads. As you read, keep in mind that everyone who participated is at a different place in their unschooling journey.

I was asked two questions recently and I updated the main information page to reflect the answers. One was about answering the monthly question after the month had ended. Of course! Feel free to answer any of the questions at any time. Someone else wanted to know if they could participate even though their blog was not an “unschooling” blog. My reply was that only the submitted post had to be unschooling related, not the main blog theme.

The (always optional) question for August was "Do you extend the principles of unschooling (trust, freedom, etc) into any other areas of your child's life"? September's question was submitted by Laurie!

On with the show! There were so many informative, witty and passionate posts this month. I hope your hungry…there’s a lot of food for thought here.

The first two bloggers are women who have helped me tremendously (and probably don’t even know it!). Thank you Ren & Sandra for your voices!

Sandra answered the
question for August with some great links from her website. This is a must-read site for anybody interested in unschooling.

Ren submitted several great posts! The first one answers the
August question. Here she blogs about a shift in thinking and then about how learning is all around us

Diana at Bodhicitta shares her honest and heartfelt thoughts on
unschooling through chemotherapy.

Cher submitted two great posts. The first, she says, is
“a taste of what unschooling looks like in the rest of our lives.” Her second post describes what reading looks like in their home.

JoVE talks about the
relationship between unschooling and life and the difference between a philosophy of education and a method of education.

Carlotta submitted a post on of the
"importance of freedom in learning and of how this freedom may be realized”.

Laurie talks about how her
family came to unschooling.

Vicki, part of an on-the-road unschooling family (how cool is that?), talks about
extending the principles of unschooling.
Chris answered this months question and shared her thoughts here.

Mama Chaos shares a post that takes a look back on “how I did most of my learning as a child through unschooling in my life and how I hope to pass that along to my children”

Schuyler submitted a post on
“resolving doubt or at least examining my children as people and not as statistical anomalies”

Ron and Andrea (who originated the Unschooling Carnival)
share their thoughts on this months question

Cindy blogs about
“how I have attempted to parent and learn with my children as organically as possible by being aware and mindful about what each child is telling me they need in their lives at any given stage.”

Janine blogs about a study
that shows benefit and value of play time with mom

Phoebe describes how “it became clear to me that
unschooling was a meaningful path for us , not only the "school" part of it". (By the way, you did a great job Phoebe! Thank you for submitting a post))

Tammy blogged about learning to
read in this post.

Laura answered the
question for this month in this blog post.

Dharmamama shares her thoughts on unschooling her children.

There you have it! Thank you to every blogger who partcipated.
It was an absolute honor to put this together. :-)