Worldwide Montessori Giveaway: Celebrating Inspiration, Community and Resources

one of many cards from the course

Today, we have been taking off with lots of space-related learning as well as a sense of appreciation and celebration for things that we find vital in our homeschooling journey.  In honor of this, we are very excited to offer a giveaway for:

a seat in Karen Tyler's 

next awesome online Worldwide Montessori Course

 

This giveaway -- with great thanks to Karen Tyler's generosity and incredible talent and expertise -- is our way to celebrate three things we find so vital to our homeschooling endeavors:

1. Inspiration:  Sometimes folks ask us, "What led you to homeschooling?"  The answer is a meandering one, partly explained in our initial post Why This Journey?  It also includes a desire to offer our children the educational models that what we feel are best suited to their individual personality types.  One of these models is Montessori.  In fact, it is the model that acted as a compass point when we first stepped on the homeschooling path.   We still feel inspired to move in that direction and are thrilled that we have the resource of Karen Tyler's Montessori albums to help us to do so.
2. Community:  Another question we sometimes get asked is,  "What keeps you driving on with the whole 'homeschooling idea', despite its inherent challenges?"  Again, the answer is long, but part of it involves the wonderful support we have found in local homeschooling groups and among folks we have met in cyberspace.  Some of those friends we met through the Worldwide Montessori Online course we took and still others we have met through blogging and yahoogroups. We treasure the community we have found - both real and virtual and encourage anyone interested in homeschooling to do similarly.  (And we thank all 100 followers we have just recently recognized we have.  We never dreamed we'd have 100 folks following us here and are thrilled to know we have all those "friends" to count on for sharing and support.)
3. Resources:  Yet another thing folks ask is, "How do you manage to lesson planning at home?"  The answer to this one changes constantly, but one thing remains the same:  resources!  We have found having a stock of physical and virtual resources invaluable.  Between freecycle, loans, the library, online freebies, etc. we have built a "library" of resources that we draw from as our children show interest in particular topics or as we feel it is a prime time to introduce one they might not be familiar with.  Case in point, just yesterday, our son began to ask about planets.  Having a solar system book, a solar system puzzle and Karen Tyler's awesome Astronomy album on hand allowed us to tap into that interest immediately and, today, Luke and Nina have been learning and playing with these three things and constructing knowledge - sometimes literally by building their own imaginary space ship!

Truly, knowing our inspiration, finding community and collecting resources are invaluable "must haves" for us as we continue our homeschooling journey.  And since all these tie-in to the Worldwide Montessori class we took, we can think of no better way to celebrate these things than to offer a seat in Karen's next class to one lucky reader.

Here's how you can win:

• Option One for New Followers/Subscribers Only: Check out the Worldwide Montessori Online and tell us in a comment below what about Karen's course most excites you, then subscribe to us via email or google follower.  be sure to leave a way for us to contact you if you win.
• Option Two for Old Followers/Subscribers Only:  Tell us in a comment below what album or lecture in the Worldwide Montessori course you would be most excited to receive or how you already are applying Montessori principles in your home.
• Option Three for All:  Earn an additional entry by recommending a friend as a new Training Happy Hearts follower.  If that friend mentions you (with a way to contact you) in their comment, you will both earn an extra entry.

This giveaway will end at midnight (EST) Sunday.  a winner will be drawn at random and notified via email or blog comment and will have 48 hours to get back to us to claim the prize.

Bonus:  Karen Tyler has been truly generous this month in offering a number of giveaway seats for her March course.  If you'd like a copy of Karen's awesome Geography album or more chances to win a seat in her next class head on over to Our Journey THRU Autism, where you will find both.  

Since this post discusses three things we think can help any homeschooler, as well as offers a chance to win something valuable for all eductors of young people -- hoemschoolers or not -- and a link to where you can find a great, downloadable resource (i.e. the Geography album), we are sharing it at Many Little Blessings' Helpful Homeschool Hints.  Many Little Blessings is one of those wonderful resources we are grateful to have found as it helps us build a stronger - and oh so valuable - online community can be found.  Be sure to check out the links there to garner hints from new and veteran homeschoolers alike.