principles, negativity, cartoons

Something new from Joyce, on principles
http://sandradodd.com/nest
at the bottom

New from Deb on negativity
http://sandradodd.com/negativity
at the top (and it's new to the page, but not newly written)

Cartoons! Defense of kids watching cartoons, a page I don't guess I had ever announced. It wasn't linked anywhere, and was sitting there with a big formatting error. So I added to it, spruced it up, and here it is, with illustrations and its own links
http://sandradodd.com/t/cartoons
That "t" in the middle is for tv. When I first started my site I didn't know at all what I was doing. Now I kinda know what I'm doing, but the old urls are still sometimes mysterious. If you forget how to get there in the future, go to sandradodd.com/tv and you should be able to find it again.

Creating webpages this way is like making quilts from materials other people have donated, but each scrap has life-changing power and sparkle. THANK YOU to those who write these wonderful bits, and to those who send them to me and say "Use this one!"

Real children's lives are made better all over the world when their parents can relax and smile and say "okay, let's do that!"

New favicon

To those using Internet Explorer, this will mean little to nothing, but I have a note at the end...

I've changed favicons for the unschooling pages. There used to be a little duck. Now there's a tree—the smallest of the four trees Bo made for me. That's what should show to the left of the URL in the address box on a browser. Eventually the SCA pages will all have the duck.

At the moment, it's on some. These two should have a tree and a duck, respectively:
http://sandradodd.com/unschooling
http://sandradodd.com/sca

I lost the background on the unschooling page while dinking around with this change. I deleted my backgrounds folder. That's probably a good thing. That background was left over from when my unschooling page was on expage.com and they counted the characters and the fanciest art I could have was this:

I have read (yesterday) that if one on Internet Explorer saves a link to a site, the favicon will show. I read it on the internet, so it must be true. (eeep)

I like those trees Bo made me. They're to represent me and my three children, and I like the symbolism of big strong trees that grow from such small seeds.

pages I've tweaked lately

Things have been added or repaired on these pages. Maybe some of them are new to some of you, and new is new, right?

Negativity
http://sandradodd.com/negativity

Breathing
http://sandradodd.com/breathing (this is a page I've never announced before because it was too small; it's still too small...)

Children and Parents as Adversaries
http://sandradodd.com/adversaries

Being your child's PARTNER, not his adversary
http://sandradodd.com/partners
There's nothing new there but a link, but I hate to put the adversary page up without the partner page.

Late-Night Learning
http://sandradodd.com/latenightlearning
Cleanup, replaced a background that had gone missing, added a photo

And I fixed it so that the new tree art replaces the old tree art on the error and search pages
http://sandradodd.com/search
If you use my search boxes you should get the four trees Bo King made me, instead of the one tree on a book I used to use, which only appears now (I hope) at
http://sandradodd.com/bookmotif

teens, chores, video game music, Minnesota

New link on the teens page, to something Kelli Traaseth wrote:
https://sandradodd.com/teen/

Something new by Pam Sorooshian on chores, bottom of the page:
http://sandradodd.com/chores

/shift

Video game music (NOT midi-file stuff anymore!)
https://sandradodd.com/game/music

A not-quite-finished follow-up page for the keynote I gave for the Minnesota Homeschoolers Alliance conference two weeks ago.
http://sandradodd.com/mha

I'm still tired from that and a week of fun in Minnesota. Some photos here:
https://sandradodd.blogspot.com

(There are photos in the fourth link there too, of me and Holly in Minnesota, and Holly's best photoshop art.)

Halloween candy worries? (and Holly in MN)

Halloween isn't spread equally over the English-speaking world, but if Halloween worries are applicable to your family, here are collected comments concerning Halloween candy and how a family might handle it:

http://sandradodd.com/eating/halloween

There's nothing new there right now, but I'm willing to add accounts of successes with loosening up, and if anyone has photos of Halloween costumes or candy or parties that don't have a home on the web, I'm willing to host those too. We can have a happy Halloween page for others to see in years to come.


There are some photos of Holly in Minneapolis (and Kelly Traaseth's daughters Abbi and Kyra) here, and more will be up to see within a few days:
http://sandradodd.blogspot.com (posts in early October, 2007--for those who see this later)

There's Holly with Paul Bunyon, and not the real Paul Bunyon, we understand. This is some kind of department-store Paul Bunyon for the kids, but the real Paul Bunyon is in Bemidji and we'll see him later.

new art

Bo King, a young adult friend of our family, has done new art work for the unschooling section of the website. We need to tweak it a bit to put it on the main unschooling page, and Holly and I are in Minnesota for a week, but it's in a couple of places now, in two forms:
http://sandradodd.com
http://sandradodd.com/whateveryouenter (404 error page)

I requested a tree with three baby dancing trees, artistically kinda like The Flame in the Animaniacs cartoon about the Declaration of Indepence and Sideshow Bob's hair, and look how well he did it.

I love those trees. Thanks, Bo!

strewing, guarantees, Gilligan...

Something new from Pam Sorooshian, on strewing (second item):
http://sandradodd.com/strew/sandra

Me, on risks and guarantees...
People on the AlwaysLearning list have seen it:
http://sandradodd.com/guarantee

Phrases to Hear and Avoid
http://sandradodd.com/phrases
Something new in the box to the right.

I've added a link to this page to my unschooling page (under other voices) and my blog (other unschooling sites):
http://www.freewebs.com/ohthethinksyoucanthink/radicalunschooling.htm
It belongs to a mom in New Zealand, and I really like it.

There's a new story on the Gilligan's Island page:
http://sandradodd.com/t/gilligan

In a week and a half I'm speaking in Minnesota. Holly's going with me.
Information is here:
http://www.homeschoolers.org/annual_conference

American postage rates and policies changed recently, and it's made it harder and more expensive for me to mail books, so I raised the shipping rates closer to the new rates. Canada's is worst. Sorry. I'm hoping it won't need to be changed for a long time now, though.
http://sandradodd.com/bookorder

a few odd changes

For those who would prefer a checklist-style directory, here it is:
http://sandradodd.com/contents
Maybe you can read my whole website after all! (Nah, not really—but you might feel a greater sense of a accomplishment if you print it out and check things off, if you like that sort of thing...)

If you think you've missed some new pages, check back in this blog!

The ordering page for Moving a Puddle has been amended. The price is up a bit on every category of shipping. I was collecting $4 and spending $4.60 for the stamp.
http://sandradodd.com/bookorder


There are a few new things on the anti-TV page (yeah, I have an anti-TV page—a gallery of illogic and booga-booga, including now a new one that says TV triggers autism). The additions are the box on the right halfway down, and the three images, lower left (which lead to outside sites).
http://sandradodd.com/t/anti

I spent most of the afternoon sifting through my site changing all the "Peaceful Parenting" to the phrase "Parenting Peacefully." Unfortunately and inexplicably, someone has trademarked the term "Peaceful Parenting," and has threatened to make me pay legal fees because I didn't roll and say "sorry" the first time she told me I couldn't use those two words together anymore. Interesting, huh? I guess if I'm giving it away she can't make as much money trying to sell it.

Recent photos of my wonderful children are here:
http://sandradodd.blogspot.com/2007/09/internet-warning.html

Thanks for your interest, and I hope September is full of fun for your family.

Sandra

alphabet, unschooling panel, Kirby

https://sandradodd.com/alphabet.html
More content to come, but it's pretty.

https://sandradodd.com/panel
A follow-up of the Unschooling panel from the HSC conference in Sacramento, California a week and a half ago. If anyone has photos I'd love to use a couple from that day. I saw some cameras being used!

http://sandradodd.blogspot.com/2007/08/kirbys-gone-to-austin-now.html

http://sandradodd.blogspot.com/2007/08/kirby-internet-phones.html
Recent updates on Kirby's now-completed move to Austin. He's 21 and he's gone into the world.


You'll probably hear from me again soon. I have some pages roughed in, and Marty and Holly are leaving tomorrow for twelve days. Working on webpages seems a good plan.

cake, paradigm shifts and Joyce-logic

Ratings of Things you Put on a Birthday Cake (fun site; once you're there, poke around a bit).

I added that to my cake site:
https://sandradodd.com/cake

More on "Getting It" and making the shift to unschooling is here:
https://sandradodd.com/unschool/gettingit

and more of Joyce's refreshingly stunning logic, in response to some more-clever-than-usual anti-TV arguments:
https://sandradodd.com/joyce/logic

Thanks, Kelly Lovejoy, for sending those last two exchanges. They're great.

The word on the lyrics game at the moment is drum (drum/drums/drumming).
https://lyricsgame.blogspot.com

rules, nations, lyrics

Some thoughts about rules:
http://sandradodd.com/rules
New piece at the bottom of that, about 14 year old girls and rules in different families

Nations of the World
http://sandradodd.com/geography/nations
just the beginnings of something, but kinda fun

The Lyrics Game continues; current word is "Party."

Perhaps I have mentioned how much I love the internet. I just adore the opportunity to share photos and music and ideas with people around the world, so quickly, without having to dress up or leave home. Thanks for being part of my fun internet experience.

Playing Encore online

I've set up a lyrics game.

Some of you have played Encore before (some of you have played it with me!)

I'm making an attempt to play a version of it online, just for fun.

http://lyricsgame.blogspot.com/

If you want to come and play, the current word is "farm."

If that sounds fun and if you can think (THINK, not google) of eight words of a song that contain "farm" (or farming or farmer), go and put it in as a comment.

Sandra