22 September 2015

One Way My Blog Might Be Useful


I’ve always wanted my blog to be useful. Telling family stories is all very well, but I’d like to do more.

Sometimes I visit other blogs and see all kinds of fantastic things that will help homeschoolers do things better. Some bloggers design great looking printables to give away. Others share ideas for unit studies or offer lap book page templates. Some people draw beautiful pictures for children to colour in. Yes, there are lots of bloggers sharing their talents to enrich the homeschooling of others.

But I can’t do any of that. Worksheets, unit studies, templates and similar tools just don’t fit in with unschooling. Our way of living and educating isn’t reproducible. But that’s okay because I’ve thought of a different way of being helpful.

I can share all those wonderful resources I stumble across when looking for things to interest my children. Maybe other unschoolers (and anyone else) can use them for strewing. Maybe they’ll be tempted to use them themselves.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog or a past reader of my now deleted Facebook page, you’ll know I already share resources. But just recently, I thought of a couple of ways I can share all my discoveries in a more effective way.

Firstly, I now have a resources segment in each episode of my weekly podcast. I chat about different websites, software, books, videos and anything else that comes to mind. I also list all those resources with links in the notes which I publish in the accompanying blog posts.

The other day I had a second idea. After a bit of prompting from a friend, I remembered my Pinterest boards. I’d been deliberately ignoring them. One more place to visit. One more thing to do. Lots more time online. I didn’t want to know. But I’ve had a change of heart.

Over the weekend, I updated my existing boards and created some new ones. And I’m hoping they’ll be helpful to my fellow resource lovers.

Recently, a friend asked me to share my favourite Shakespeare resources. With that in mind, I started a new Shakespeare Pinterest board and had a lot of fun adding everything Shakespeare-related I could think of: our favourite DVD versions of the plays, books, ballets, art, music, a few Youtube links and some documentary series. As I travelled around the Internet pinning images, I discovered a few new Shakespeare resources.

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Although we are huge Shakespeare fans, passionate about his plays, we’ve never dived into his sonnets. We’ve read a couple here and there, but they haven’t really captured our imaginations. But that might be about to change. I discovered an app called Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

All 154 poems are performed by an all-star cast including Sir Patrick Stewart, Kim Cattrall, Stephen Fry and David Tennant. The text highlights line by line as each sonnet is performed.

Learn about the sonnets with the complete scholarly notes from the Arden Shakespeare or read Don Paterson’s fresh and irreverent analysis that brings the poems up to date.

Discover Shakespeare’s Sonnets as originally published with a complete facsimile of the 1609 Quarto edition, and then find out the backstory by watching previously unseen interviews with leading experts.

It’s an iPad app and I haven’t actually got an iPad. But we can still listen to some of the sonnets because I did find many of the videos from the app online. I pinned a few of these to my Shakespeare board. I put them there, not just for us, but for anyone who’s also interested in learning more about Shakespeare’s sonnets.

I’m hoping my podcasts and notes and Pinterest boards will be a good way of sharing resources. If you’re interested, please take a look (or listen!). And if you also enjoy posting or pinning resources, I hope you’ll let me know. It’s good to share ideas, isn’t it?

Before I finish this post, can I tempt you with a sonnet? What would you like to hear? Patrick Stewart reading sonnet 116? Or David Tennant reading sonnet 18? Perhaps you’d like both!



Enjoy!


Sue Elvis

I'm an Australian blogger, podcaster, and Youtuber. I write and speak about unschooling, parenting and family life. I'm also the author of the unschooling books 'Curious Unschoolers', 'Radical Unschool Love' and ‘The Unschool Challenge’. You'll find them on Amazon!

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