Thinking about Blogging

Mother Auma nominated me for a Thinking Blogger Award . The award, which is a sort of meme, honors me. I am so grateful to her.

However, I have been puzzled about how to continue the meme. Hamlet-like tendencies crop up when I have to make decisions, and this is a vexing one. What is a Thinking Blog? The definition given is "a blog that makes you think (that hasn't been nominated yet)". I do not know who has been nominated and who hasn't, because I can never keep up with my Google Reader. Did Hamlet make lists? I have made several lists of thinking bloggers in my head, usually while I'm taking my bath or vacuuming in the corners. The lists hardly even overlap sometimes. That could go on forever!

So just to have some closure on this, I will proceed to define Thinking Bloggers (what the title means to me) as ones who like to deal with issues that aren't primarily practical, but speculative. Bloggers who like to raise big questions on their blog and consider tentative answers, further questions about which might be taken up again in future posts. That narrows it down a bit. Bloggers who like to read heavy-duty books and write out quotations.

I have so many favorite blogs and many of them are written by thinkers, all of them make me think. Some are blogs with a focus on beauty, some on organization, some on the liturgical year, some on science projects, some on the nitty gritty details of the homeschool, and some on the glimmering insights concerned with daily life. Those would have to be in a different meme (says Hamlet, trying to narrow the possibilities between "to be " or "not to be").

This being said:

Dominion Family was one of the first blogs I ever read regularly, and it is way high on my Thinker's list. I have been cyber-acquainted with her for many years in classical circles and find everything she writes thought-provoking. (Common Room was my other first regular blog read, but I know the family has already been nominated at least five times, and I don't KNOW that Cindy has been nominated -- and I'm not going to check until I post this!)

Studeo is definitely on my list. It is one of my daughter's favorite blogs too. Love2Learn Mom likes to read and write about the same types of thing I like to read and write about. She is raising a crew of thinkers too, one of whom contributes to a Chesterton blog for teens.

Dumb Ox Academy is another one of the blogs that make me think. Faith observes her children and respects them and also has high standards for their learning. She has the same dialectic process going on as I do as she tries to make classical education work in an unschooling, flexible format. Plus, we seem to read a lot of the same books, and use many of the same kinds of resources.

The final two are homeschooljournal blogs that deal with the right-brained learner. Apple Stars is packed with thought-provoking information and the blog is only the tip of the iceberg.... Cindy also runs an excellent Yahoo list, gives conference talks and contributes to the Life without School blog. Steph at A Room of My Own hasn't posted as much recently, but she is a thinking blogger. Her book notes and her thoughtful, collaborative unit studies about genetics and the like are particularly interesting to me.