I am nearing my 10,000th page view this week. It seems an appropriate time to spread the love around a little bit. A good number of the hits I get are from random search engines and tag surfing. Then there are those wonderful people who are loyal readers of my ramblings, and the ones who take the time to share their comments or send other readers my way.

I’ve been terribly delinquent in my own blog reading this last while, and I know I still owe some lovely people an email (or three!) In the meantime I would like to say thanks to you all here. You know who you are but for the benefit of those who don’t, here are some of the folks who make turn blogging into a reward of its own. Please take the time to visit them, and pass the love around!

One last thing before I launch into my list: a huge thanks to Hubby (my #1 fan) and to Mom & Dad, who always seem to be reading the blog even when I’m not expecting them to

Montreal Homelearners
Sonya has heaped praise on me, but this is a lady who deserves to be congratulated - and thanked - for getting the Montreal homeschooling community organized & making resources accessible to us all! Btw love the new look - Rachel’s design is lovely.

The folks from Carnival of Homeschooling have not only sent me new readers but introduced me to some great bloggers as well.

Heidi of Southpaugh Homeschool has been an enthusiastic supporter & commenter. Thanks Heidi! I’m off to read your commentary on the California ruling as soon as I’m done with this. It seems to take a very balanced look at the issue, compared to the general panic and outcries I’ve seen elsewhere.

Becky of the Farm School has been an amazing resource behind the scenes as well as here at the Freehold.

And here are some other folks whose input should not go unnoticed:

Chris of Watdawat

Crimson Wife of Bending the Twigs

Dana of Principled Discovery

Jacey of Insubordiknit

Kate of Diamonds and Toads

Kate of I Think Therefore I Blog

Kimberly of The Dust Bunnies Will Wait

Nessie of The Biblio Files

There are others, but I’ve tried to stick to the folks who at least sometimes blog about topics related to homeschooling.

I will probably make an effort to do something like this on an ongoing basis, not only to thank my readers for their support but also due to the fact that commenters’ URL’s are not indexed on this blog. As far as I know I can’t remove the “nofollow” tag from your comments, so I’m taking a little time to link to you in an entry that will be indexed.

This is a small courtesy to the folks who refer readers to me, and who take the time to read and comment here. If you’d like to see your link in a future post, please know that I am open to link exchanges. Or you can leave your URL when you write a comment. Be aware, however, comments are moderated and spam is not tolerated. Preference will be given to blogs/sites that deal with a homeschooling topic.

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

If you are interested in following a Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling but wants to do it in a secular manner, the popular resources for starting out can leave you wondering whether it’s possible to “do” Charlotte Mason without the Christianity.

The answer is, yes you can! Charlotte Mason was a Christian, and there are aspects of her writing that deal with a child’s relationship to the Divine. But if you don’t happen to be Christan, or if you simply prefer to leave religion out of your homeschooling, it is possible to follow a Charlotte Mason approach - and indeed to use many of the living books suggested at Old Fashioned Education or Ambleside Online as teaching materials.

Alison at Everyday Best has an entry in her blog discussing the year one books, and which ones she found had a Christian tone or taught morality. Like me, she found most of the recommended reading at that level was perfectly acceptable. Like me, she left out the daily Bible study and Trial and Triumph (which incidentally, many Christian homeschoolers omit in the early years due to the intensity of the stories.) I find that Alison’s experience of Gatty’s Parables of Nature is similar to mine as well.

Having read the first story about the caterpillar turning into a butterfly I thought the book had some potential, and I actually bought a copy because it is used over several years and came out less expensive than printing it myself. When we read the second story, about the bees, I discovered two things: 1) the story was longer and the girls were much less attentive, and 2) I wasn’t sure I cared so much for the message behind the story. Like Alison, we’ve put the book on the shelf for now. I’m hoping for time to go back to it and read a few more stories to myself, to see if this was just a snag or whether we really want to drop the book from our reading list.

If you’d like a secular opinion of the fairy tales and Aesop’s Fables, do hop on over to Every Day best to read Alison’s entry.

Another absolutely indispensable tool for secular homeschoolers who use Charlotte Mason is the SecularCM mailing list. There are some wonderfully intelligent discussions on this list. And if you are looking for books, look no more! You have but to suggest a topic and reading level, and you will likely be bombarded with dozens of great suggestions. There are also a number of Canadians on the list, so if you are looking for Canadian content for social studies it’s a good place to ask. (There’s a Canadian CM list too, though not secular.)

Don’t worry about being a bit eclectic in your approach. Most of the SecularCM members will tell you they pick and choose what fits their family, and unlike the Ambleside Online folks they don’t feel it lessens the impact of the elements they do elect to incorporate. Recitation, narration, copywork and dictation are tools you may choose to try or not. Nature study is usually popular, though most CMers will admit that they don’t go outdoors as much as Ms Mason prescribed. Handicrafts are a unique part of the CM method, and one that a lot of folks will say they do when they can. Of course, the best known part of a Charlotte Mason education is using living books - rich, vibrant biographies and descriptive science and even historical fiction instead of dry old textbooks that talk down to children and bore them to sleep.

All of these elements can be used in a secular homeschool, so don’t be afraid to try it if you’ve been drawn to this method of teaching. You will see the results in very short measure!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

So last night the Bug is playing on the computer, and all of a sudden he starts crying. He’s autistic and his language skills are rather limited. Plus he has a low tolerance for frustration. So he often cries when something goes wrong with the computer while he’s playing. This was nothing new.

I had my hands in dirty dish water so, when his cries turned into full-scale weeping and he began to wander the house, the Banana was dispatched to see what the problem was. The girls are pretty handy at fixing things for their brother. Often, he’s accidentally clicked on an ad which has opened a new window or navigated him away from the site he was visiting. I was pretty confident that between Banana and Dojogirl, they could fix whatever it was. What was the worst case scenario, anyway? They’d have to reboot the machine and he’d start his game over again.

The Bug settled down a bit as his sister went over to the computer. By that time he wasn’t anywhere near it, but he knows if someone is coming there must be help ahead. Ah, silence! This is good.

Waddya mean, this is not good? “Mom! The Bug was playing Timez Attack and the computer stopped!” The disembodied voice of the Banana coming from the office confirms this is no longer a level one emergency. It’s now two minutes to supper time, and I’m dishing up bowls of rigatoni and meat sauce. Sigh!

“We’ll get Daddy to look at it,” says Mama, confident that it’s something trivial like the Bug having turned off the power bar again. So I told the kids to get ready for supper, and asked Hubby to have a look when he had a minute.

Have I mentioned that I have this husband who figures if I ask him to do something, he has to do it instantaneously? Unlike the rest of us mere mortals, this man has no mental to do list. If you ask, he does it. Simple!

So when I come out to bring the kids’ bowls to the table what do I see but Hubby sitting hunched over, computer case pulled out from under the desk. Whatever was going on there looked pretty routine, so I just smiled. The problem would likely be fixed before I brought hubby’s food out from the kitchen.

Wrong! After a few minutes of tinkering Hubby reported that: a) it could be the monitor, b) it could be the video card, c) it could be the motherboard, d) he really doesn’t think it’s the monitor (please, let it not be the monitor!) OK, now we’ve got a Level 5 Emergency! There were funny lines on the monitor, he reported. And he wasn’t able to get the machine to properly reboot. This was really not good. I had visions of having to go to the library to write my blogs and let the girls access their language lessons….

Hubby started disassembling things after supper, and reported that it seemed to have been the video card. Luckily our motherboard has video onboard, so we’ve got a quick backup - and hubby later informed me that he already knows exactly which video card he wants to get, to replace the 9one we blew
But there was something odd about the screens that were coming up when he was trying to reboot, and we both suspected there might be a virus on the system.

He went to take a look at the anti-virus program, and sure enough there were several viruses in the vault. Who knows when that had happened? It’s not like we had any warnings from the virus scans. And what’s worse, Hubby reports that there was a ton of yuck in the temporary internet cache. Now that makes me really angry! My browser is set to automatically dump everything each time the browser is closed! Histories, cookies, cache, everything. How could we a virus sitting in the cache?

You know, if I could have just five minutes with the miscreants who think it’s funny to show off their programming prowess by unleashing disease and destruction on other people’s computers…… Well, you know I’d be using my best “Mama voice” and you know I’d have some pretty choice words for the delinquents in question!

Anyhow, crisis averted thanks to a very resourceful Hubby. Everything has been dumped, updated, picked at, scanned, re-scanned, verified with another company’s scan, and wrapped up in a red ribbon so Mama can have her morning “alone time” with you all.

But if you are the reprobate who set loose whatever infected my computer, I will wish you exactly the same karma my mother wished on me when I was a rotten child: I hope you have a child just like you! ‘Nuff said.

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!