* Green Book Festival Winners

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* Heat Your House with Soda Cans

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* Weekly Earth News 05/26/09

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* Shades and Textures of Green

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* Green Guilt?

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* Green News Sites

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* Growing Green

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Learning Links

I'm not sure what you'll learn, but it's gotta be something! For your enjoyment and perusal today:

• Cool for cats, Cat Trail Tunnels. I'm sure Big Cat and Princess Kitty would love these instead of the emu feather toy I've bought them for Christmas. Whatever will they think of next? Ummm, apparently a pink, kitty purse! Princess Kitty might be a princess but she'd rather have 10 minutes of attention!
  
• Are you a Christmas movie buff. Apparently I'm not. Try the Can You Name That Christmas Movie challenge at Hooked on Houses. Boy, that little stone-built house is so appealing to me. That's what comes of growing up in a country littered with old, crumbling, stone houses.
  
• Got kids? They might want to write a letter to our new President and have it delivered on National Handwriting Day. Details at Handwriting Without Tears (thank you to Sara of RainSolace for bringing this to my attention).
• Need some reading about living wisely? Check out Mother Earth News. One of their articles is on planting edible ground cover. Need some irreverent commentary and inspiration on being kind to the Earth? Try Crunchy Chicken. Is bamboo really Earth friendly -the New York Times on bamboo.
• Bloggers are giving back instead of giving away at Bloggers Give Back.
• What do new moms do all day? The RookieMoms blog brings stuff for new moms to do each day. Cool, it's like homeschooling from Day 1!
• Looking for a new blog design? Smitten Blog Designs has a variety of nice looking, free blog templates and some nifty limited edition designs for a surprisingly great price. Are you putting a new blog design on your holiday wishlist?
• What Christmas ornament are you? Go on, nip over there and find out!
  

There are lots more learning links where these came from, but they'll have to wait for now :-)

Brought to you by GreatFunbooks.com - with Christmas titles from Usborne and Christmas sets from Usborne

Favorite Blogs

I've decided to celebrate my first three months of blogging (my first post was August 13th, 2008) by saying thank you to the special bloggers who's words I enjoy reading every day. Many of my bloggy friends are regular visitors to my little blog, but others are likely much too busy with their large readership to come over here. Nonetheless, I enjoy you and I want you to know that. This list of blogs is by no means a complete list of blogs I read regularly; I already have over 80 rss feeds in my Google Reader. Just because you don't see your name here doesn't mean I don't read you and appreciate you!

• Janet at Adventures in the 32-Aker Wood is very supportive of other bloggers. She is a regular visitor not only to my blog, but to a long list of blogs. I enjoy her mix of humorous stories and thoughtful commentary at her blog and I'm always thankful to receive a comment from her.
• LindaB over at Occasional Scotland reminds me of the beauty and humor of my first home country with her not-so-occasional photographs. Thanks LindaB for making my day a little brighter with some not-so-gloomy views of Scotland!
• I have to say that Peak Oil Hausfrau is not a laugh a minute. Her job is to remind me that we need to care for the Earth for the sake of ourselves and future generations. Life could change; we all need to think some about being prepared. I am more prepared from reading her posts and from keeping up with her adventures in solar cooking and her regular thoughtful postings.
• I've long admired, well OK for 3 months, both Michelle at Scribbit and Julie at Homeschooling Ideas. Each of them was very gracious and supportive toward me with my early blogging questions and I enjoy keeping up with what they have to say.
• Tonia at Study in Brown conveys her graciousness and love through her blog. She has recently committed to following her heart to meet the homeschooling needs of her family. Tonia, you have my admiration.
• Holly at Unschool Days seems to have a wonderful pace of life, following her daughter as she explores the world. I enjoy sharing your adventures and your journey Holly.
• Little Window Shoppe does a wonderful job of showcasing small businesses. I love the graphic they made up to present my book business. Emily the Editor is gracious to work with and asks nothing in return while offering much. I'm not much of a shopper, but I must say that two of today's posts have really caught my attention. Fingers crossed that I win the free limited edition blog template!
• Last, but by no means least, Crunchy Chicken puts the mental in environmental. Crunchy has a good sense of humor, sets interesting challenges, and gets great discussions going. I may not be up to freezing my buns off, but I am inspired!
• Oops, I can't believe I forgot to mention my friend at Home Spun Juggling. JugglingPaynes, I voted for you in the Best Homeschool Blog Awards, though I'm not going to tell you in which category. Actually I've not finished voting yet, so I'd better get my skates on! I enjoy your art and your humor :-)
  

If I've chosen you as a favorite please feel free to take a copy of the above graphic and display it on your blog with a link back to this post or to my blog. However, this is totally optional.

Read my book reviews. In association with Amazon.com - home of the Kindle.

* Green Cooking

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Bits and Bobs

Another attempt to share the hundreds of Firefox tabs I have open for your perusal and enjoyment! Hopefully you'll find something of interest and I might one day get few enough tabs open that Handyman Hubby can persuade me to shut down my computer for the installation of a bigger disk drive.

Here goes:

• Sierra Permaculture Guild Listserv - when I was seeking a place to ask permaculture questions this seemed to be one group that was actually active.
• Complete solar cooking campers kit - includes the solar reflector panels and dark colored cookpot you'll need, plus a cookbook and a solar water heating pack.
• Usborne Quicklinks for Reading - lots of information related to using Usborne books for reading. A site I refer to frequently when writing about how to teach reading with Usborne books.
• Appleseeds Magazine - recommended to me by a reader of this blog.
• LiveMocha.com - a very intriguing concept. A way to study a foreign language and find native speakers who'd like to mentor you while you mentor others. It seems like this would be great for adult and teen learners.
• Some homeschool ideas from Successful Homeschooling - I like that these ideas are based on inexpensive family activities that are not at all school like. Did I say life-long learning?
• The Simple Dollar blog - it looks like they have lots of sensible, down to earth advice for family financial management, something that is on my list for my kids to understand for sure!
• First 100 Items to Disappear During a National Emergency - from The Bacon Report blog. I'm pretty sure this list could raise some interesting discussion with your pre-teens and teens.
• Michael Palin for President which I discovered at ZenMommasGarden - rated teen/14? Monty Python humor is not for the faint-hearted!
  

Catching up on September

Monarch Magic at Amazon.com
Sometimes weeks go by and I wonder what on Earth I've been doing with my time. I find that writing is a great way to review what is going on in my life and to realize that I really have actually achieved something. With that in mind, her's an update on items I've blogged about in the last month or so:

Monarch, Mini and Tiny, our monarch caterpillars, successfully transformed into beautiful butterflies. We had the amazing pleasure of watching them fly off to a new life. I'll never tire of raising monarchs!

Four weeks after planting, my fall vegetables have given us our first green salad. I wasn't sure what to expect with this gardening adventure. Germination was faster than I expected, then the weather cooled and everything seemed to grow very little. The weather warmed back up and now the greens are at least six inches tall. I picked a salad while thinning them out a couple of days back. That was 4 weeks from planting to yield the first food - not bad!

My green improvements have not gone anywhere to date - they exist only in my head.

The spikey trees are still standing, but Handyman Hubby has studied and so have I. He has a plan and is ready to go as soon as he has some time to get out there. Everything we've read and everyone we've spoken to says that herbicide is the way to go when removing trees for prairie restoration. I don't like to spray, but I reluctantly agree that in this situation that carefully targeted herbicide is the best approach. OK, send me the hate mail now for using herbicide if you must! Humans have created this problem of trees invading the grassland and we need to be responsible and clear it up.

I'm on my own so far as I know with the Green Laundry Challenge (no readers told me they joined in yet). I've successfully cut my use of the tumble drier down to practically zero. Initially I planned to just air dry when I felt like it, but soon I began to do this for more and more laundry. To date I've air dried 18 loads of laundry - some of them were very full loads too. I've even started making crunchy towels; I discovered that if I really want softer towels 10 minutes of no-heat tumbling in the drier will soften them up reasonably. This is nice because that uses a LOT less electricity.

I'm happy with our homeschool choices for this year. It's the first year I've been able to say that. I'm particularly happy with Rosetta Stone. It's totally awesome to hear Japanese and German coming from the other side of the room; it feels like my kids have been replaced with strange counterparts! I'm proud of how we are doing with homeschooling this year. It does look like we need to make a change on how we're doing social studies; the one subject we have been doing as a family seems to need a change, which I suppose is not terribly surprising given that we have a 3 year age gap and two kids who take dramatically different approaches to learning.There are many things I'd like to have done this last month, but I think I've done the things that are most important to me and to my family and that feels good :-)

* I Admire You Because...

This article can be found at Loving Nature's Garden.

Are Homeschoolers Environmentally Responsible?

Why are we spoiling this lovely planet? What are you doing to improve your environmental footprint? If we're not doing enough yet, why not?

It's been a LONG time since I attended elementary school, yet I remember clearly the first time I was told that we are spoiling our planet, that their was worry over the legacy being given to my generation, and that oil would not last forever. At age 12 it was really inconceivable to me that we would act this way. What are we going to do when everything we had that was lovely is spoiled? What is your small part in improving the way we live? Are homeschoolers as a group more environmentally responsible and aware? Are we doing enough yet, and if not why not?

Often-times it seems like I have more questions than answers. I know that I'd like to have zero environmental impact, yet that's not the reality. I don't like using gasoline, yet I drive a vehicle. I don't like the environmental cost of electricity, yet I live in a air-conditioned home. I believe in Organic farming, yet lots of non-Organic food passes my lips. I like to live simply, yet I live surrounded by things I could do without. I've often felt like a hypocrite. Why don't I do more?

I recently read a book that talked about change. If I could remember the title, I'd give it here. Do let me know if you recognize it! It said something like this - when the cost of not making a change exceeds the cost of making a change we will act. Maybe it's a no-brainer, but that explains a lot! This book was not just talking about the $$ cost either. Change is hard, most of us don't do it willingly.

OK, back to the question. Are homeschoolers environmentally responsible? Are they generally more environmentally responsible? Do we save gas by not driving the kids to school, but use it up visiting our friends instead? Do we grow our own vegetables instead of doing recess, or just shop at the store like everyone else? Do we spend time doing lessons that require learning about the environment and get busy doing science fair projects that develop environmentally conscious ideas? Do we wear Organic clothing, build our own homes, hang our laundry to dry, and purchase locally? Or are we as a group pretty much like everyone else?

What do you think?