The Homeschooling Carnival is up over at PalmTree Pundit. Go check it out. I like Karin Kydland’s post on School Hours and the Upside Down world’s Itch to Scratch. Go check them out for yourself!

One of the great arguements for homeschooling is that learning is always happening. We put done shopping time where we have kids help with prices as math and other similar things. But why should we try so hard to make life experience fit into conventional subjects? Because traditional school doesn’t value life skills. Now I am not just talking about keeping a home and cleaning up after yourself, but broader. I was reading Why Homeschool and how college grads can’t even write a decent resume. We need to equip our children/students with the tools that will make them successful adults but the traditional school system isn’t built that way. Life is our lab class for most real subjects. Let me illustrate…

I had nutrition class in elementary school were they said how many servings of fruits and veggies we need but, I was never taught how to make that kind of food. I was told to dream of the job I wanted but wasn’t taught how to interview for it or write a resume. I was told to plan on going to college but not how to budget my money to live at college.

Why don’t we make life skills a graded section of our curriculum? In high school it is acceptable to have a class on food but other than that we don’t do it as a practice. We launch these kids into life to move out (hopefully;), get married and have kids. NerdDad says it is because we let traditional school tell us what we should be teaching our kids as part of school. We step out to homeschool but still conceed what “valid” subjects are. Let’s rebel! Not just for “keeping the home” for girls (as some do) but life skills that are as we see needed for every student to live a successful life. Join me? Have I lost it? Let me know what you all think!

The kids and I watch Iron Chef America and last week the Secret Ingredient was tofu. The NerdPie very loudly announces that she doesn’t like tofu. When asked why she replied, “I don’t eat toes!”.

If you have many tech books, you probably have at least one O’Reilly Book. Now they have a searchable database of code examples. To quote them:

Enter search terms to find relevant sample code from nearly 700 O’Reilly books.
The database currently contains over 123,000 individual examples, composed of 2.6 million lines of code — all edited and ready to use.

I think this is very cool and very nerdy. In addition to all of us adults trying to learn, it has other applications. I think this is a great tool for homeschooling parents who want their kids to learn programming.

(HT: Boing Boing)

Welcome to the Pregnancy Carnival! First up is this cute film I found on YouTube. It is only 20 seconds so check it out.

Now on to the submissions!

First up Dana at Principled Discovery has a Joyous Announcement. Let me just say congrats and prayers for you new little one on the way. Rdoctor asks High Blood pressure in pregnancy, what’s to worry about? Looking further into science, BioTech talks about Genetic Markers For Predicting Premature Childbirth. Then for those of us who have ever needed to be on bedrest, Let’s Talk Babies has the answers for When You are Stuck on Bed Rest. Then a little wisdom for when that blessing gets here. Frugal Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Warehouse takes on De-Bunking of Baby Food as Necessity.

That wraps up this Carnival! Please go to BlogCarnival to submit an article for our next Carnival on October 5th. Then come back here and read it!

Related Tags: Carnival, Pregnancy, Motherhood, Babies, Expecting Mothers

Weird Al has done it again! Another hilarious video. I love the cameos from Seth Green and Donny Osmond.

Oh, by there really was a Start Wars Holiday Special (according to NerdDad;) and there is nothing wrong with Earl Grey Tea.

According to Double 3 and GOP Vixen (ok, they didn’t just make it up;) it is Talk Like a Pirate Day. In that spirit:

I heard that Tucker Carlson was going to be on Dancing with the Stars a while ago and being a political junkie, I was looking forward to it. It was bad, very bad. It doesn’t shock me that he was the first off this year. But a question. Do you think he was set up? While his dancing wouldn’t win any awards, the worst part was him just sitting there. In one of my moments of naivete (I still have them on occasion;), it took NerdDad pointing out that the “story line” was a man watching a stripper. So was he set up to suck? If he would have shuffled (somewhat awkwardly) through the whole number, would he still be on the show?

April over at 10:15 on a Saturday Night tagged me with a word association meme. So here it goes (and yes, I know I am a little touched;).

Guitar – String
Paper – Cut
Laundry – Shute
Shoe – String
Slap – Stick

Here are my words:

Math
School
Parent
Chocolate
Steak

Oh, who to tag….. Tangee at Expressions of Me and Pat at Two Blonde Boys. Anyone else want to play? Just let us know in the comments.