2014 CM Blog Carnival Announcement and Invitation!

For the first edition of this year, the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival will be posted on January 14, 2014! 
How cool is that? 1/14/14! That's only a week away.

Please join us by submitting a post, or just reading along. Posts are due by 1/13 before 5pm EST. Send the link to your post in an e-mail to: charlottemasonblogs (at) gmail (dot) com.

As always, we welcome all of your Charlotte Mason inspired blog posts! Bloggers vary widely in their gifts and experiences, which means, we can all learn from each other. We hope you'll share with us!

Below, you will find an optional topic, a thought provoking quote and several ideas for those who need a little writing prompt or who would like some direction for further study. :)

I look forward to reading and sharing!  

::

The optional topic for discussion during the month of January is:

Some Unconsidered Aspects of Physical Training - Chapter 10 

Here are a couple of interesting things that I came across in my pre-reading of the chapter (read the entire chapter online here). A thought provoking quote, considering the day and age we live in:

"'Ye are your own,' is perhaps the unspoken thought of most young persons––your own, and free to do what you like with your own. Therefore, excess in sports, excess in easy-going pleasure, excess in study, excess in desultory reading, excess of carelessness in regard to health, any excess that we have a mind to, is lawful to us if only it is expedient. This loose morality with regard to our physical debts, without touching actual vice, which is probably on the decline, is the reason why the world does not get all that it should out of such splendid material."     Charlotte Mason, v3 p103

A list of pertinent ideas to think over (read the entire chapter online here):

• Greek games and Greek heroes.
• How a child may be trained to his physical responsibilities.
• The vocation of the body.
• 'Innocent' excesses.
• Unlawful and lawful home discipline.
• The heroic impulse.
• The training afforded by games.
• Athletics, their use and abuse.
• Parental authority in physical matters.
• The right uses of self-denial.
• The government, management, and training of the body.
• The duty of health.

(List quoted from v3 p105)

*Please see the CM Blog Carnival Schedule page for a list of dates and topics for the whole year (in progress). 

**By subscribing to the Carnival Announcement/Reminder list you can stay up-to-date and never miss another carnival. Plus, you'll receive handy-dandy monthly ideas & links pertaining to the topic... for free! ;) oh wait, it's all free! heheh.

***Also, please encourage your bloggy AND non-bloggy friends, who love Charlotte Mason and/or those just getting interested, to visit the CMBCarnival, the more the merrier!! :)

Are you missing something?!

Here's the official site for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.  I'm sure we'll find some helpful information there!  Speaking of information... can somebody tell me what curling is?!  Is this a NEW event?  I'm pretty sure I've never ever heard of it!

I feel totally deprived not having watched a SINGLE event in this year's winter Olympics in Vancouver... I mean it's practically in my old backyard (I'm from Oregon!).

I bought a unit study on the Olympics thinking that my kids cannot possibly go their whole childhood never having watched an Olympics... but unless we have cable, we couldn't hope to see any action.  We definitely don't want cable... I won't go into details, but believe it or not the smut on the screen, in terms of smut-i-ness, beats what you'd see stateside one hundred to one.

Now that the games are all but over, I'm feeling withdrawals as I hear how all the teams have done.  Memory is bringing to mind how totally into the whole thing I was when I was younger and how much of an influence the Olympics had on my interest in sports and physical activity!  Oh me. Oh my.

Never fear, all is not lost!  I just found out that NBC.com has event replays online!!!  woohoo!  I am SO excited!  You can probably guess what we'll be doing this evening, and tomorrow, and every free minute until they take them down!!

Oh yeah.

Oh no.

I just clicked on the link above and you'll NEVER guess what I found...

Due to Olympic broadcasting regulations, NBC is only allowed to show Olympic competition video on the internet to users in the United States and U.S. Territories (including Puerto Rico). Users outside of those locations will still have access to an extensive set of non-event video content on NBCOlympics.com including the video listed below. 

Oh my.  NON-EVENT VIDEO CONTENT... Did you catch that part?!  NBC's the best!!  Not.
So, did anyone record them?!  Does anyone want to make us a 200 DVD collection from their recordings??  Sad.  I found the official broadcast for Peru here.  It's pretty much a disaster... can't understand it at all as it seems to have several video streams going simultaneously.  Junk.

Oh well.  Life goes on.  Someday, I'm going to get the whole experience with my kids.  As of today it's going on my bucket list!  So did you make a big deal of the Olympics in your family?  Did you even watch them? 

PS.  Okay, I know it's a little late for most of you, as the Olympics are officially over in TWO days :(  [sniff. sniff.]  ...but I just found a fellow CMer's blog with a post with lots of helpful links and Olympiad activity ideas.   Have a look here.  I know that I'm going to be doing a little theme on it in a couple weeks on our vacation week... so I'll be able to have the benefit of everyone's accumulative efforts!!  oh yeah.

PPS. I've been made aware of several sites that have post-olympic information, including videos of actual events!!  I am saved!  ;)  Thanks Erin!!

http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-videos/ 

and

http://www.olympic.org/en/Multimedia-Player/

New FREE CM resources from SCM

Oh my wow. I'm extremely excited about FREE and I am really enjoying learning more and more about Charlotte Mason. SimplyCharlotteMason.com has recently offered 2 free e-books, today, The Swedish Drill Teacher and a week or two ago, Masterly Inactivity (it's still free).

As I write I'm printing off the Swedish Drill one. Over the past week with my older 2 boys gone on a trip with my Beloved, I was able to listen/watch the All-day Charlotte Mason Seminar on DVD. It was not free, but it was really great. I highly recommend this for someone who loves what they've heard about CM methods but maybe is struggling to put them into action in their homeschool. It's pretty practical and the accompanying workbook has some great lists and ideas as well. And if you don't have it already, you can order it with the Laying Down the Rails (an indispensable book on habit training) as a package deal! It goes through all the subjects and Sonya gives ideas of how to teach each subject CM style, plus answers questions. I learned.

You'd think I was getting a commission or something, but nope. I just am really enjoying SCM's resources as I am really digging in to learning more about CM and applying her methods in our homeschool. :)

Have a great day and go download some freebies!
Amy