#432 Carnival of Homeschooling: Homeschooling & Farms

With spring finally here--although I fully expect some more snow before the month is out because that's just how weather is in Colorado--for this Carnival of Homeschooling, I thought I'd look at intersections of homeschooling and farming.

Many parents, homeschooling or not, have a strong desire to teach their children about nature in-depth. My father liked to take us hiking, and my parents had us children grow a garden and raise chickens. One year we even raised a steer in our backyard for a while. He was rather bad-tempered (I wonder if he understood our nickname for him, "Dinner") and got out sometimes, wandering up and down our residential street, which taught us the importance of locking up gates securely.

While this is by no means solely a homeschooler phenomenon, I've seen many of my friends and relatives who lean towards homeschooling raise chickens and/or other livestock, grow big gardens, and dream of the little farm they're going to have someday out in a rural setting. Here are several blogs I found of homeschoolers living (or at least pursuing part of) that dream:

• "Our Little Farm" describes how The Family Homestead got into chicken and goat raising
• This Blessed Life at Rootsong Farm tells of two former city "party kids" who recently moved to rural northern Idaho to farm and homeschool their seven children
• In their 40s, with no idea of how to run a farm, the Harmons left city life in Wisconsin to farm in Arkansas, where they also homeschool their youngest child
• The Hmmmschooling Mom compares her journey from raising chickens to eventually buying a farm to her journey into homeschooling
• The Nerdy Farm Wife homeschools two children on a farm and shares lots of information about her experiments with DIY herb and flower recipes and uses
• The Countrified Hicks--a homeschooling, homesteading prepper family in Oklahoma--shared some pictures of cute baby animals last month
• The Pioneer Woman posted a letter last year asking how families balance homeschooling and farming and got a slew of informative responses
• Tangleweed Farm in California is an organic farm business that got its start as a homeschool project
• Renee at NextGenHomeschool recently branched out from gardening into chicken raising and has experienced both failure and success in that endeavor
• The Stamps Family Farm is run by an unschooling family that took up farming in Iowa in 2009; I'd love to visit their farmhouse kitchen at mealtime!

For those like the Bruggietales in Australia, who have achieved the dream of country life, it's a field trip for the children to go to the city where the buildings and planes are so close together.

I love to encourage my children in their desire to grow a garden. Last week, we focused our Friday schoolwork on learning about seeds and Colorado agriculture.

Of course, there are several carnival submissions that don't really have to do with farm life:

O'DonnellWeb gives us an  informative post on college admissions and interviews. (I can't help but point out, though, that he gives partial credit for his daughter's scholarship-winning interview skills to the nine years experience she has in competitive horse judging, which is loosely connected to farming.)

Henry Cate of Why Homeschool posts about how in both software development and life, it is often not the first solution but the second, third, or even fourth that turns out to be the best one. It's a valuable lesson to teach one's children.

Down a Rabbit Trail: Interest-Led Learning with a Charlotte Mason Flair submits this insightful post on narration a la Charlotte Mason.

Tea Time with Annie Kate shares a summary of the books in the Camp X historical fiction series about WWII. It looks like a really fun series; we're not Canadian, but I might be handing it to my children to read in a few years, especially since it shows that not all the German officers were Nazis (I'm part German :) ).

Nerd Family announces the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, which looks like an awesome contest. I wish my children were old enough to participate. The deadline to enter is April 22.

In closing, here are some free homeschooling resources I found on farming.

• Homeschool Giveaways recently posted "Farm Animals Freebies, Crafts, and Activities"
• Kidzone provides an "On the Farm" five-day thematic unit
• Robin @ Heart of Wisdom, a homeschooler and mini-farmer, glowingly recommends the book Farm Anatomy: The Curious Parts and Pieces of Country Life to those who can't move to a farm (not technically free unless you check it out from a library)
• Free Homeschool Deals offers some free farm-related learning resources here

Thanks to all those who submitted blog posts!