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

Looking for Summertime Blog Posts!

Hi Everyone!

The Unschooling Blog Carnival took a little break in July and now we want to share what everyone's been up to!

Did you go on a Vacation?

Or was it more of a Stay-cation?

Visit any Homeschooling Conferences?

Do you do anything different when it's Summertime?

What did you do THIS Summer?

It's time to blog and share what's been going on with you and your unschooling family!

Send your blog posts for the Carnival to UnschoolingBlogCarnival@Gmail.com

Deadline: August 15! 


Please share on unschooling lists, Facebook pages, Twitter, etc.! 

~Sue

June Carnival: Dads

Dads are often a little overlooked in our community. Moms seem to take center stage with seeking out information and resources and contacts. But this month, with Father's Day around the corner, we decided to share what our unschooling bloggers have to say about Dads and how they've influenced our lives.  We have some very touching & WONDERFUL posts from unschooling bloggers writing what was on their hearts. You'll find tributes to husbands and partners as well as tributes to our own dads below.

In looking for a theme this month, we had a few options. We could go with songs and lyrics about dads... but so many of these were sad songs.  When you look up the Top 10 Father's Day songs, it was kind of disappointing! Papa Was A Rolling Stone by The Temptations made the list? How could that be celebrating this day? If you're looking for music, here are the Top Tens for Father's Day:  Country Songs, HipHop Songs, Rock, and even a Bollywood collection!  Fun, but not what we were looking for.

Then we brainstormed about poetry or pictures but this is the

UNSCHOOLING Blog Carnival.! 

Visualizing gruff carny workers shouting, "Try Your Luck!" from their booths, we decided to take a different path this time. The unschooling dads we know are cool with irreverent fun dad stuff.  So we've interspersed some photos and comments from a couple of outside sources. Awkward Family Photos combined with Asylum.com to create a special collection for Father's Day. If you like this kind of humor, you might like the Awkward Family Photos book.  Our other contribution comes from Dads are the Original Hipsters with fantastic photos, primarily from the 70's. They also have a book called, of course, Dads Are the Original Hipsters.  Some of what cracks me up about these photos are that some of MY husband's pictures could probably be in this collection! But I'll save that for another day. ;)

Thanks so much to the Unschooling bloggers of our community who shared a little about their worlds.  And we hope you are entertained by the other dads out there who are influencing the world of tomorrow.  We hope it will make you laugh... think of it as the House of Mirrors or Bearded Lady or some other Human Sideshow. We are, after all, a CARNIVAL!

Enjoy! And please take a second to comment at the unschooling blogposts. It's always nice to know who's stopping by!

Love,

Cydney and  Sue

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

You can always spot the dads who will have trouble letting go
(Awkward Family Photo)

Kelly Hogaboom So tell me, tell me did you really love me/ like a Friend in her blog: Kelly Hogaboom | Life in HQX

Frank Maier's blogpost is a Tribute to Dads - June Unschooling Blog Carnival from his blog Singularity.

Lisa Nalbone's gives us an Ode to An Unsung Hero from her blog: Fruitful Solutions for Parents and other Lifelong Learners

Gail Higgins blogpost shares about Two Dads at her Hummingbird Haven.

If he couldn't blow out the candles,
his father was always there to help him out
(Awkward Family Photo)

 Sue Patterson shares that For Some People, It's Just Natural in her blog Lifelong Learning

Shannon Burton blogs at The Unfettered Life and shares Jim Burton - So Much More than a Dad! 

Linni blogs at Radical Ramblings and this month is Celebrating Hedgehog.

It's amazing what Dad can get done when he puts his mind to it
(Awkward Family Photo)

Sylvia Toyama asks What Makes Him Dad? in her blog My Square One.

Jennifer Armstrong blogs that it's almost inexplicable, my love: a tribute from o frabjous day.

Katie Pybus writes from Outside the Box and shares Who's the Daddy?

Angela blogs about Taking a Break with Daddy at her blog EarthMamasWorld.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

And here's a little more humor from Dads are the Original Hipsters:

"Your dad was the original risk-taker before you were born and hospitals knew him by name to prove it. He's surfed Harleys, dove from planes, and done just about everything else that could get a man killed. He was an addict who couldn't live unless his blood was intoxicated with adrenalin. Sure, he's snapped bones from top speed falls and had countless skin-suit alterations, but it was worth it to be the king of the streets. Fear was a foreign thing to him and his scars were a daily reminder of awesomeness past." (10/12/11)

                                                                                       "Your dad was a filmmaker before you were. He was the Kubrick of domestic cinematography who made monumental documentaries like Baby's First Steps, Christmas 1985, and the widely acclaimed Accidental Nut Shot, When Baseballs Strike Back. While never reaching the cocaine filled heights of Hollywood, his films can still be seen today on your beta max or VCR." (6/27/11) 

"Your dad was a wild man before you were and he's got the shirtless primal-screaming skills to prove it. Now docile inside the suited, shaved, and aged body of your dad is a chaos part-wolf that yearns to howl freedom into the night. He lived his youth in a raging-haze of whisky hangovers, sun-weathered skin and adventure time. Each day doctors gave him a life expectancy of hours, but he middle finger saluted the reaper and kept ripping through life. His parents, your mom and the police all tried to tame him, but time was the only thing to slow him down. Your craziest nights out would have been the tame forgotten evenings of your dad's life!" (11/16/11)

"Your dad knew about irony before you did and had 'Le Car' to prove it. For $300 and half roll of mint Lifesavers, he purchased rolling satire. His "chariot" cemented his place as "The Most Ironic Man in the World" because he bought a car that wasn't a car, but called itself a car by writing car on the car. He was a visionary of irony that liked everything everyone else hated so once he made itpopular, he could hate on it and say he liked it before it was cool. He liked disco in the 60's, hair metal in the 70's, and wore Clarkston High School track shirts even though he never ran and didn't go to that school. Everything he has ever done has been ironic, including having you.

Your dad is so ironic that after spending his entire youth rebelling against his father, the most ironic thing he could was become him by having you and being a dad himself (which is also the same track you're currently on, and yet another example of something else he did before you.)" (12/19/11)

We still left you a lot of hilarious photos to look at and read about at Dads are the Original Hipsters  and Awesome Family Photos! 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Next month, we'll be taking July off and coming back in August with the theme:

 Vacations

Remember when all school kids had to write a paper on "What I did for my summer vacation?" 

Gone are the days! 

Unschoolers have the freedom to have vacations all year long! 

Have you had a great vacation with your family? 

Or maybe you all had a Camp-in instead of a Campout? 

How about a fun homeschooling conference? 

Tell us all about it and send your blog URL to Sue and Cydney at 

UnschoolingBlogCarnival@gmail.com

May Carnival - Ode to Motherhood!

I've always thought that it takes a certain kind of mom to unschool. As I write that, an entire list of traits pops up in my mind. One of the interesting facts about that though, is that it's probably nothing like the list that pops up in your mind. And that's okay. There's room for all of us!


In this May's Unschooling Blog Carnival, some of the moms and dads in our unschooling blogging community share what the "mom" in their world is like.  This Carnival has a few less entries than usual, but I really want to thank everyone who continues to share their blog posts with the rest of us. Sorry, I haven't been pounding the cyberspace, reminding and nudging bloggers out there. I'll need you to help me do that. 


So step right up and let the Unschooling Blog Carnival begin! The theme, "I am THAT Mom" has surfaced on the internet before. We thought that since Mother's Day is just around the corner, we should celebrate the theme again! Here's a glimpse of some of the moms in our unschooling community. Hope you enjoy it! 

Keep on Blogging, 

~Sue

~*~* ~*~*~Celebrating Moms~*~*~*~*~

 I'm that Mom- NATURALLY, from Shan Jeniah Burton at her blog, The Unfettered Life.  Shan reflects on her journey from a mainstream role of "good mom", to a place of living peacefully with my family, today.....and looks forward to what's next!

Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.  ~Elizabeth Stone 

I Was That Mom, in Cathy Earle's blog: Homeschool Scrapbook . Cathy shares some stories of earthquakes, public bathrooms, um...angina, and the valuable discussions that can come from children's story books. This is her journal reflecting on years ago when they first started homeschooling.

Now that... my kids are grown, I understand how much work and love it takes to raise and to keep a family together.  The example of your strength, devotion, and patience is now rippling through the generations.  Thank you!  ~Forest Houtenschil

For Mother's Day 2012, Cap'n Franko has wonderful ways to describe his wife, Ronnie: kind, thoughtful, unselfish - to name a few. But his tribute to her here is a story of her bravery while they sailed through stormy seas in the Gulf of Mexico.  Frank's blog is Singularity.

A mom's hug lasts long after she lets go.  ~Author Unknown

Yeah, I'm that Mom, Jen Armstrong shares a short look at how she became "that" mom, and what it really means to her: relationship with her child. I love her Jabberwocky references in the title of her blog: o frabjous day (as well as her beamish boy in her URL. Clever!)

Mother - that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.  ~T. DeWitt Talmage

Post 170 , from The Honey House Kindgarden. The Honeys make waffles - A LOT of them! And they start to apply their Grandaddy's favorite phrase: "Everything in moderation, especially moderation!"

A mother understands what a child does not say.  ~Author Unknown

I'm THAT Mom is my entry from my blog, Lifelong Learning. Now that the kids are almost all out of the house, I can look back to see some of the times I walked to my own beat as a mother. Eyebrows were raised along the way, but we pressed on.  

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.  ~Washington Irving

Notes About Future Unschooling Blog Carnivals:

Sadly, the Unschooling Blog Carnival's numbers are shrinking instead of expanding. We figured that everyone is out Living Life!  We're pondering how we want to approach this, and so the Carnival is going to be a little Irregular. (surprise, surprise!)

For the June carnival, we want to do a Tribute to Dads, our unsung heroes. While some take very active roles in our unschooling worlds, others are happy on the sidelines. Many work all week, and come home to a loving, yet chaotic, family setting. Let's let them feel appreciated. Send your post about the Dad in your life for June's Unschooling Blog Carnival to:

UnschoolingBlogCarnival@gmail.com

We will take July off, and return in August with a Carnival full of encouragement for those choosing NOT to go back to school this month. So start writing this too.

Leaving you with a little musical collection of songs for Moms 
I found on YouTube...

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I like these lyrics