An advent calendar contains reminders each day that Christmas is coming. Advent is a term from the Latin word adventur which means "arrival". Here is an Advent Calendar filled with activities for you to countdown to Christmas while you're waiting for the big day.

Begin your homeschool day with the activities from the Advent Calendar - recipes, crafts, games and lots more fun things to do! Enjoy!

Related Resources:

• Top Advent Calendars for Kids
• Educational Toy and Gift Guide
• December Fundays Calendar
• Printable December Coloring Calendar

"...you have more bookcases than children and your formal dining room has been renamed The Classroom." ~MomofSix2229

We've had a lot of fun with this over the past 5-1/2 years. The original forum thread began in March of 2002 and is up to 199 posts. After reading the latest additions, you can scroll down and add your own in the green box. Have fun!

Wow! 150 Editions of the carnival. Jacque of Walking Therein encourages everyone to go vote for the Homeschool Blog Awards. The nominations are all in and it's time to vote for your favorite blogs. Jacque lists the 24 categories and fits this weeks blog submissions throughout.

The next carnival will be hosted at Tami's Blog. To be included in the carnival, send your submissions in by Monday at 6 p.m. I look forward to reading your submissions.

Carnival of Homeschooling Schedule

Every week in the forum we get several pleas for help. Sometimes I have answers but not always. If you've ever been helped by someone else, why not take a few minutes to pop in the discussion forum and "pay it forward."

Thursday is National Candy Corn Day! Candy corn has always been a favorite of mine. As I was munching on some today, I decided to find out the history of candy corn. The history is more interesting than you might imagine. Now that I know what I know, I won't be complete until I eat some made by the originators, the Goelitz family. Print this history and worksheet for a sweet study. Try some of the recipes by About.com guides, even try making your own candy corn.

Melissa of Melissa's Idea Garden shares her love and knowledge of dogs with us in Who Let the Dogs Out? She recently adopted a sweet little Irish Setter and we will be adopting a companion for her in just a few weeks...a cute Goldendoodle. I've never heard of a Goldendoodle. Join with me to learn about this breed and others as well as enjoying the many posts about homeschooling.

The next carnival will be hosted at Roots, Shoots and Fruits. Submissions are due by Monday at 6 p.m. I look forward to reading your submissions.

Carnival of Homeschooling Schedule

We've lost a dear homeschooling friend this week. Donna Thompson, mother of 3, passed away today after a battle with cancer. She will be greatly missed. Please keep her family in your prayers.

When my children were young, I worried about what would happen to them if I died. I was concerned about them losing their mother and then also being thrown into an unknown school situation. I spoke to a close friend about it and made arrangements for her to take over homeschooling my children if anything happened to me.

What are your thoughts? Have you considered making arrangements for homeschooling to continue if something happened to you?

Reptiles Awareness Day is October 21st. Learn about reptiles with these fun printable worksheets and make a Reptiles Coloring Book.

More reptile fun:

• Sea Turtles Unit
• Lizard Coloring Page
• Find the Lizard
• Dinosaur Printables

Gary of HomeschoolBuzz.com enlightens us as to why October 14th is The Missing Day in this week's edition of the Homeschooling Carnival. I love the idea of celebrating The Missing Day and returning things to their rightful owners.

The next carnival will be hosted at Melissa's Idea Garden. Submissions are due by Monday at 6 p.m. I look forward to reading your submissions.

Carnival of Homeschooling Schedule

That's not how it's supposed to work. It's supposed to be from my house to yours! Today, I came home to find 4 big post office bins stuffed with of all the reading club packages. Apparently, due to the variance of thickness, the postage wasn't enough, so they're back here. I've applied the additional postage and will take them back to the post office in the morning. Hopefully that will be that and they'll be on their way to you.

The shipping cost has gone up so much, I hope we can continue with the Reading Club next summer. I felt bad enough asking for a $1 stamp this year, I can't imagine asking for more than that. I'll have to be very careful to watch the thicknesses of the prizes I order.