Rewriting history? Or at least museum exhibits

at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa (via The Globe & Mail; emphasis in bold mine):
The battle’s not over yet. But under pressure from Bomber Command veterans’ groups and sympathetic politicians, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa will adjust the wording on a panel dealing with the 1945 firebombing of Dresden.
“The final wording has not [...]

Further thoughts on self-esteem and self-confidence

In one of my own comments to my post the other week on children, responsibility, and hard work, I mentioned “the whole self-esteem vs. self-confidence business (I consider the former nonsense, the latter vital)”, and my good friend hornblower at HMS Indefatigable replied,
One other thing though — in your comments Becky, where you talk about [...]

Why safer isn’t always better

Listening to CBC Radio’s “Sounds Like Canada” show last week (podcast here; let me know if the link doesn’t work), I heard summer host Kevin Sylvester interview Matt Hern about the new U.S. edition of his book, Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better, out last month in paperback; it was published in Canada last [...]

Our late summer visitor

I noticed this morning while feeding the chickens that all eight roosters were outside in the pen. This is unusual because the four at the top of the pecking order generally stroll around the pen, lording and swanning around, while the four at the bottom of the pecking order quake and cower on the roosts [...]

Poetry Friday: "that time when you played outside all day"

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I Meant to Do My Work Today…

I missed Poetry Friday last week because the kids had their last day of performing arts camp with a show for the parents followed by lunch. Great fun for all, especially watching my two youngest dance (not together…) the samba and the tango.
The round-up for last week is at Kelly Fineman’s Writing and Ruminating. (By [...]

All roads lead to home and hard work

“Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.”
German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), quoted in “The Case Against Adolescence” by Robert Epstein
I started Farm School two years ago in part because I blathered on for much too long on the subject of children [...]

Thinking, thanking, rocking, and procrastinating

Now that we’re into the second half of the year and school is looming (I’m fairly certain the next month will zip by, especially with the kids at performing arts day camp and Laura’s birthday celebrations this week, not to mention the ongoing garden harvest, and farm harvest in the forseeable future), I think I [...]

Poetry Friday: Not for vegetarians

A little oddity I ran across in the library’s copy of A New Treasury of Children’s Poetry: Old Favorites and New Discoveries, selected and introduced by Joanna Cole. It rather reminds of Alfred Noyes’s poem, Daddy Fell into the Pond,
When Father Carves the Duckby E.V. Wright (1872-1939)
We all look on with anxious eyesWhen Father carves [...]

Teacher meme

Another day, another meme, but this time I was tagged and some time ago, too. Literacy Teacher at Mentor Texts & More tagged me for a teacher’s meme, and I very much appreciate the fact that a NYC public school teacher thought of me for this one, which I find both nifty and generous. (Do [...]

Rescued from the sump pit

One of the kids’ jobs in the spring and summer is to keep an eye on the sump pit in the garage, to fish out anything or anyone that’s not supposed to be in there. This morning Laura discovered a tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum var. melanostictum), which is quite common in these parts of the [...]

Homemade gift exchange

Via JoVE at Tricotomania, via Kim at Relaxed Homeskool, a homemade gift exchange meme, because I can’t possibly resist the promise of a homemade gift from the self-styled Tricotomaniac.
Here are the slightly abbreviated rules from Kim’s blog:
If you are one of the first three commenters on this post, then you are in. I send you [...]

Artists in residence

I had to take some of the kids’ artwork out of frames to exhibit at the fair, so thought I’d take the opportunity to photograph a few of the paintings to send to my parents and post here.
The two watercolors — Daniel’s rabbit and Laura’s hummingbird — were in the same category, and were the [...]

Big sky country

On of the only benefits of the sun setting earlier is that I’m still up and about with the camera. I took this the other night, while Tom and the boys were hauling bales, and Laura outside in the garden with me.

The tree tops at the bottom are our “Hundred Acre Wood”, really more like [...]

Erm, no thank you

Dangerous Book for Boys to Hit Screen: “Disney has snapped up the rights to the bestseller after a fierce bidding war.” It will be more than interesting to see how the folks at Disney plan to make a movie of a politically incorrect how-to-book that includes instructions on skinning a rabbit.
We’ll stick to the print [...]

Poetry Friday: Go and play till the light fades away

We are all of us, especially the kids, aware of the shortening days (dark comes around nine now, instead of eleven), and that the first day of school is just about one month away. I’m trying to make the most of what’s left of the summer, which is why I haven’t been online much, except [...]