Category Archives: Clippings

Feast Your Eyes and Ears

A smorgasbord of links to share:

Hone your note-reading skills with this free online drill at MusicTheory.com. (Hat tip: MacBeth.)

Explore free art lessons at the Getty Museum (Hat tip: Tabatha Yeatts. Thanks for sending the link, Tabatha!)

Interested in Australia? Here’s a great list of picture books from Down Under!

The Headmistress treats us to several sites featuring free audio recordings of literature and children’s programming, including this terrific find: Librivox, at which site you may listen to a long list of unabridged classics including Pride and Prejudice, Pilgrim’s Progress, A Little Princess, Notes from the Underground, and Call of the Wild.

And speaking of audio, Farm School‘s Becky has the scoop on audio recordings of poetry.

Left-Brainers, Beware

Scott’s pal Tom, a teacher and mighty fine writer, blew me away with this story about author Daniel Pink’s visit to his school. I thought I saw where it was headed, but boy was I wrong.

Coincidentally, I shared a booksigning table with Daniel Pink at a homeschooling convention a couple of summers ago. We exchanged books; he autographed a copy of Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself for me and I signed Little House in the Highlands for him. He was interested to hear that Scott and I were just the kind of people he describes in his book: freelancers working at home, connecting with our (short-term) employers (in our case, editors) via computer and phone. What, he wanted to know, was our biggest challenge in maintaining this free-agent lifestyle? I didn’t have to think hard about that one: health insurance, I answered. He nodded. Yup, that’s a biggie.

I enjoyed his book. Wish he’d brought that film Tom’s school watched to the convention, though. I’m dying to know what I would have seen….

Everybody Loves a Carnival

Check out the new Carnival list in the left sidebar! (Right below the Recent Comments.) I’ll be updating daily. This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling went up yesterday at Why Homeschool. And don’t miss the latest Carnival of Literature!

Submissions for the next Carnival of Education are due today, and you may submit a post to the next Carnival of Unschooling through Feb. 9th. Saturday is the deadline for submissions to the first Carnival of Children’s Literature. Some great posts have already come in—this is going to be fun!

Quite a Thrill

Winners have been announced for the BOB Awards, and I am amazed and delighted to discover that Bonny Glen was awarded second place in the Best Education/Homeschooling Blog category. I am particularly honored to have come in right behind The Education Wonks, which is truly an excellent blog, one of my regular daily reads. Congrats, EdWonk, and kudos also to the third-place winner, Ramblin Educat, another terrific blog. Many thanks to all of you who voted for me and to the BOB folks for the honor and their hard work.

I can’t resist mentioning that another of my favorite blogs, Mental Multivitamin, placed second in the Best Book/Literary Blog category, and fellow homeschoolers Quirky Nomads won Best Podcast. Kudos to you two, too!

Things that Caught My Eye This Week

This photo: Billi-Jean’s son being edumacated.

This excellent comeback: Karen Edmisten’s response to an ignorant quote in a CNN article.

This lovely look at picture study (and scroll down on Ann’s main page for some beautiful copywork images too).

This bizarre publishing incident.

This account of John Taylor Gatto’s talk on “Fourth Purpose Schooling” at the Mid-Winter Home Educator’s Conference in Michigan.

This yummy-sounding recipe.