June Carnival Round Up

The County Fair won’t open ‘til August, but it still feels like carnival weather today. What could be more fun than eating popcorn, fudge, and candy apples before hopping on a stomach churning roller coaster? Reading lots of great blog posts on books, nature, and nature books, that’s what. So step right up and try your luck with some of the carnivals posted below.

The Summer Vacation edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors is up at Alone on a Limb. This Carnival’s midway offers links to a flashy array of environmental education posts, including several on homeschooling outdoors. By Sun and Candlelight, for example, urges parents to get kids excited about nature study by focusing on wildlife mysteries. Pack a detective kit, complete with field guides, and start looking for clues. Some of the guides you need are reviewed at 10,000 Birds, notably a summer necessity, the Audubon Field Guide to Butterflies. Alone on a Limb also links to photo journal entries of a trip to China by Miss Rumphius Effect, a teacher who writes about children’s literature. Her sidebar won me over to this blog, where you find a button for Library Thing, an online book cataloging service that lists 749 titles for Miss R. I'll be checking that list for good titles in the future.

More exhibits of green writing are on display at the Carnival of the Green, via Groxie. A weekly carnival meta-organized by Treehugger, this edition Carnival of the Green leans toward the practical. Any writers out there will find useful advice for hard core paper recycling over at Confessions of a Closet Environmentalist.
Lighter Footstep tells how to shrink your carbon footprint and expand your wallet with “10 Cheap Ways to Cool-Off Your Refrigerator Bills.” And Veggie Revolution expresses reservations about the marketability of biofuel cars in
Alternative Fuel Vehicles will be Tough Sell.

With all of the above excitement, I haven’t had a chance yet to make my way through three other favorite carnivals. As a faithful Maryland Blog Alliance member, I call your attention to the latest MD Carnivaled at Talk-Lab. 10,000 Birds is hosting the always-surprising Carnival of the Spineless. And I just learned about the Festival of Trees. Pinesabovesnow likes the idea of a tree carnival so much, I’ve added a lovely button on the sidebar so you can go straight to it any time. As my kids would argue, there’s always time for one more carnival ride before going home to bed.