Homeschool contest: Tell your favorite American history story

and you just might win a prize!
If this sounds like a fun way to kick off your family’s new school year, not to mention a nifty writing assignment for the kiddies, Jennifer Armstrong, author of the new history title, The American Story, wants you. Details of Ms. Armstrong’s new contest just for homeschoolers are [...]

Run to the Edge of the Forest

Not the real forest. The online kidlit journal, The Edge of the Forest, issue #6, brought to you by editor Kelly Herold. I haven’t made it yet to even the edge of the Edge of the Forest, but I’ve heard there are interviews with kidlit author Melissa Wiley and kidlit librarian Fuse #8, [...]

Autumn is a-cumin’ in

Saturday evening we headed for town to help celebrate our little town on the prairie’s 100th birthday. Not a great age compared to many, even in eastern Canada, but quite an achievement and a thrill for the kids especially to be a part of the occasion. There was a big dance followed by fireworks, then [...]

Poetry Friday: The golden August edition

Augustby Celia Thaxter (1835-1894)
Buttercup nodded and said good-by,Clover and daisy went off together,But the fragrant water lilies lieYet moored in the golden August weather.
The swallows chatter about their flight,The cricket chirps like a rare good fellow,The asters twinkle in clusters bright,While the corn grows ripe and the apples mellow.
Read more about and see Celia Thaxter’s [...]

Books indeed

One of my favorite quotations has always been this from the Dutch scholar and teacher Erasmus: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” Not all that practical for too many folks, though.
Melissa at The Lilting House wrote the other day about [...]

"Do you home school?"…

asks Jennifer Armstrong, author of the new children’s history book, The American Story, I mentioned on Tuesday, the date of publication:
I’m going to make sure that when my new site is up and has the classroom history contests it makes provision for a home school family or group to participate. Maybe a homeschooling family [...]

The Country Fair is back

The sixth Country Fair is up.
My favorite post so far is from Karen, in part because I’m delighted to discover her blog, lightingthefires, by another Canadian homeschooler. Which I know because she has posted recently about a free online Canadian history program and the Sir John A. action figure that I wrote about the [...]

Late summer catching up

It’s been another busy week, and besides the usual weeding of the thousand trees it’s been dry enough to start watering the garden, because the beans and cucumbers keep coming, the tomatoes have started, and the corn is on its way. On Saturday we enjoyed a wonderful party celebrating the 50th anniversary of a dear [...]

I am trying very hard not to drool on the keyboard

because I discovered tonight that The Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich which I find so wonderfully delightful and delightfully wonderful was released in June as an unabridged audio CD; while my ideal audio version would include narration by a grandfatherly Viennese gentleman, the prospect of Ralph Cosham seems promising.
This it strikes [...]

Homeschooling meme

I’ve been tagged for a homeschooling meme by Lissa in her Lilting House, and though we’re still enjoying summer — it’s still warm, hurray, and I’m still battling weeds in the shelterbelt trees and now a sneaky mole in my raised bed vegetable garden — the project seems like a good way to start making [...]

Poetry Friday

Inspired by the recent birthday candles, new (well, new to us) tea sets, and a summer full of vases of garden flowers on the kitchen table, I offer
Setting the Tableby Dorothy Aldis (1896-1966)
EveningsWhen the house is quietI delightTo spread the whiteSmooth cloth and put the flowers on the table.
I place the knives and forks aroundWithout [...]

Happy birthday, Laura dear

who is a very nifty nine today. May all your dreams, with and without horses, come true.
He stopped again.“Would you tell me what you want most in the world?…Would you tell me that?”He was looking at her.“Horses,” she said, “sir.”“To ride on? To own for yourself?”He was still looking at her, as though he [...]

Book meme

I saw this first at Rebecca’s Gypsy Caravan, and then Kelly’s Big A little a and decided to play since it’s cool and cloudy today and I need a break in between washing the kitchen floor and cleaning the fridge. And this reminds me that I owe LaMai a book meme, too, which I’ll have [...]

Poetry Friday: Look up

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomerby Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,How soon unaccountable I became tired [...]

Carry on…

We’re making the most of the last of the season, enjoying summer (and summer must be enjoying us, too, because we’re having another heat wave). My sister-in-law and her two little boys are here for a visit, the garden is exploding, the chicks and ducklings and other farm babies are getting bigger and eating more [...]

Zero tolerance, indeed

Thanks to JoVE at Tricotomania for the head’s up on this article from yesterday’s Globe & Mail:
It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada.
A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract [...]

Filched shamelessly…

from Rebecca’s Gypsy Caravan, where she writes about her family’s recent afternoon at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, including the special Children’s Garden, outside of which is a stone with the following from the great American horticulturist Luther Burbank engraved upon it:
Every child should have mudpies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, [...]

Poetry Friday: The rain in Spain edition

Very thoughtful Grandpapa (aka Old Curmudgeon) sent us a parcel the other day. It’s always a wonderful surprise albeit a bit confusing to get a box from Amazon I haven’t ordered. But before we even left the post office Laura suggested, “I think it’s probably from Grandpapa.” And it was, too: two rhyming dictionaries — [...]

Domesday for the new millenium

The Domesday Book is now available online, and is searchable and downloadable as well, thanks to the National Archives of England, Wales, and the United Kingdom. Many, many thanks indeed.
Worthwhile too, though not as new, is the National Archives’ Learning Curves website, a free online teaching and learning resource that follows the History National [...]

Road SCHOLA

L. and her family are back (still Down Under) and better than ever at Road SCHOLA. And I can now see every last word of the posts, hurray! Am now off to read them, double hurray!!