Have you heard of NaNoWriMo?  NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and is celebrated in November.  The What is NaNoWriMo page on the adult NaNoWriMo site says, "National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."  It started in 1999 and you can read it's history here.

There is also a NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program.   According to the history page "Ellen Martin launched the YWP website with Chris and the rest of the gang in 2005."  The What is NaNoWriMo page on the YWP site says "The Young Writers Program of National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a novel by midnight, November 30. The word-count goal for our adult program is 50,000 words, but our Young Writers Program allows participants who are 17 years old and younger to set reasonable, yet challenging, word-count goals." 

There is a Word Count Calculator PDF which gives suggested minimum and maximum word count goals for grades 1-12, but these are just suggestions and you and your child can set whatever goal you think is reasonable for your child.

A great resource available through the site is the Young Novelist Workbooks, downloadable printable work books for Elementary, Middle, and High School students.  Contents include a Novel Writing How-Tos section covering characcter development, creating conflict, plot, setting, writing dialogue; a Getting Ready For NaNoWriMo section with tips, goal setting helps and commitment calenday; Ready, Set Write...And Keep Writing section wtih a progress charts and additional tips on beginnings, plots, etc.

The How NaNoWriMo Works for Educators page, encourages teachers to sign up and write novels alongside their students.  When you sign up as a teacher you get accees to a Teachers Lounge where you find elementary, middle and high school curriculum units, divided into 13 lessons, specifically for the NaNoWriMo program and go along with the workbooks mentioned above .  You can also order a free YWP Noveling Kit and receive a poster, a Triumphant Chart of Noveling Progress and up to 35 "Novelist" buttons and NANoWriMo progress stickers.

The workbook and curriculum lessons could be started now to help prepare for the actual writing that starts on November 1st.  Families could do the program on their own or get together with other homeschooling families and do it together.

Be sure to take the time to check out it.  I am sure you will be inspired.  If you decide to join, let me know so that I can add you to my buddy list.  ;)

Journey North is a great resource for Science, and also for Social Studies.  Here are a couple of quotes from the main page of the site:

Journey North engages students in a global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change. K-12 students share their own field observations with classmates across North America.

Widely considered a best-practices model for education, Journey North is the nation's premiere "citizen science" project for children. The general public is welcome to participate.

The site runs a number of different programs at different time of the year that you can get involved in - for free!  All you have to do is register at their site.  Here's what the registration page says:

Once you have registered, you are in the Journey North database and do not have to register for each project separately... If you request an e-mail subscription when you register, you will be notified when each study begins and receive news reports each week. If not, you can find the information on the Journey North Web site.

Here's a short run down of some of the current programs:

The Monarch Butterfly Migration Program has a fall and spring component to it.   News about the 2008 fall program started August 28 and runs until sometime in October or November, but it's not too late to join in.  Weekly news reports for this program are sent to each Thursday.  Even though we are not actually in an area where we will be able to join in reporting Monarch sighting, we can still follow the sightings as they are reported across North America.  One idea is to make your own paper monarch butterflies to place on a map in the area of reported sightings each week.  There are also printable booklets and online slideshows teaching about the life of a butterfly, how to distinquish between monarch butterflies and some look alikes, etc.

The Whooping Crane Program also has a fall and spring component.  News about the 2008 fall program starts tomorrow and runs until sometime in October.  Weekly reports for this program are sent out each Friday.  This is a very interesting program because you "Follow the story of 16 endangered Whooping Crane chicks making their first journey south as ultralight airplane "parents" teach them the way." 

There's also a Tulip Program.  There are monthly, rather than weekly, reports for this program.  Here's what the website says about it:

students plant and observe tulip gardens to track the arrival of spring. They observe and record when their own plants – and those in other school gardens in North America – emerge from the ground and bloom. As students track this one plant type, along with temperatures, day length, and other seasonal signs, they discover how different factors influence the wave of spring. This sets the stage for better understanding our changing climate.

These are just some of the programs that are active right now from the site.  There are other interesting porgrams that start up later in the year.  You can see a list of all the different programs and when they start on the Year-at-a-Glance page.

Let me know if you decide to participate.

Maps of War is a great resource!  The really neat think about the site, as you can read in their Sharing Policy, is that they want you to copy, use, and share their maps, as long as you link back to them. 

I have embedded the maps that interested me the most into my personal blog.  I'd do it here but I don't know how to do it on this blog, so instead I'll provide you with links to them, along with the description on the website.

http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/march-of-democracy.html - "This map gives us a visual ballet of democracy's march across history as the most popular form of government. From the first ancient republics to the rise of self-governing nations, see the history of democracy: 4,000 years in 90 seconds...!"

http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/history-of-religion.html  "Our map gives us a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go!"

http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/imperial-history.html   "Who has conquered the Middle East over the course of world events?  See 5,000 years of history in 90-seconds."

I could see using each of these maps as a base to for study units.

Thanks to Thea at the Quebec Homeschool Nations site for pointing out this great site. 

The Poetry Archive claims to be "the world's premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work."  Andrew Motion and Richard Carrington, an audio engineer, came up with the idea for the site because they thought there was "something special about listening to a poet reading his or her own work ".   Most of the poets on the website are alive today but there are also some historic recordings by poets who are no longer alive.   It is a growing collection as they make new recordings or discover more old recordings.

On the right hand side of the main section of the site you can browse the collection by poets last names, by poem titles, by poetic terms, by theme, by form.  This makes it a great resource to use in literature lessons.  If you are studying a poem by a particular poet you can check the site to see if that poem, or some other by the poet, may be available to listen to.  If your are studying a particular form or theme of poetry you can check the site for avialable poems in that form or theme to listen to.  If you are learning about a poetic term you can check the site for a definition of the term and also to listen to poems that illustrate the term.

Aside from listening to the poems, you can also read the poems as there is a print version available along with the audio.  The site also provides background information about each poet featured, including any prizes they may have won. 

The Children's Archive has great kid appeal in it's graphics and in the poems included.  Under the poems section there is a Poem of the Week feature which would make a great addition to weekly lesson plans.

This site is a great resource for teaching,  or simply encouraging enjoyment of, literature.  It has something to offer for all ages.  Be sure to take the time to check it out.

Thanks to this post at the Quebec Blog in Homeschool Nations I learned about a great site that will help you and your children get excited about science.

Exploratorium: the museum of science, art and human perception is an amazing site!  The Exploratorium is an actual museum in San Francisco, California, but, thanks to technology and the foresight of the people involved in the museum, even though we in Newfoundland are far, far away from them on the other side of the continent we can sit in our homes and enjoy many of their learning experiences.   They claim to be one of the first science museum sites to have built a World Wide Website, starting in 1993.

Here are some quotes from their About Our Website page   - "Our focus is on investigating the science behind the ordinary subjects and experiences of people's lives. The topics themselves provide "hooks" that get people excited about science. "   "Included in our award-winning site are more than 18 thousand Web pages and many sound and video files, exploring hundreds of different topics."  "the site contains instructions for over 500 simple experiments"  "we have created a variety of online exhibits using Shockwave, Flash, QuickTime VR, and other technologies. Many of these online exhibits are patterned after real exhibits on the museum floor, providing equally rich experiences."

This site is well worth visiting.  Every time you click onto the main page you are presented with different interesting things to check out.  This link will get you right to a page full of online activites and also provide links to online exhibitions, webcasts, hands on activities, and more.  This link provides you with links to something called science snacks - miniature versions of some of the most popular exhibits at the Exploratorium.   This link provides links to tools for teaching.  Be prepared to spend a lot of time here, and only just scratch the surfaces of what is available.  You will want to come back to it again and again.

I'd love for you to drop back and share your thoughts about the site once you've taken the time to explore it.