Books for little geeks

Or rather, books from geeks, GeekDads to be specific.
Today Michael Harrison at GeekDad has a post about Laura’s new b00kn3rd.com blog [it took me a while to figure out that "book nerd" is in there, but then I'm still woozy from my breakfast of waffles, whipped cream, and strawberries] and her post on rare children’s [...]

Do it Yourself Science

Via Boing Boing and Pharyngula, word of a new, subversive (that’s PZ’s term) chemistry book, just out this week from the Make Magazine folks:

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture by Robert Bruce Thompson, part of O’Reilly Media’s DIY Science series.
Thompson is also the author, along with his wife Barbara Fritchman [...]

Nine is fine

Today is Daniel’s birthday and it’s a fine sunny Spring day.  The frogs are singing, the birds are twittering and making nests, and the gophers are poking out of their holes.
One of Daniel’s presents this morning was the Marty Robbins CD Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (1959) which we listened to with breakfast (pancakes, bacon, [...]

Curtain Up

Tonight’s the big night and the kids are very, very excited. A bit pooped from yesterday’s full dress rehearsal, but very, very excited nonetheless. It’s going to be a busy weekend, with Friday and Saturday evening performances, and one Sunday afternoon too.  Tom got a sneak peak at the orchestra last night, and [...]

Speaking of hands

Laura at Seabird Chronicles has a post about “Crafts for young children” — activities and projects toddlers can do by themselves — inspired by a toddler/preschool summer camp she’s planning. The camp planning in turn has inspired the idea for a Craft Swap:
You prepare and mail a box of fun craft ideas/supplies to your [...]

Call of the wild

One of my Google Alerts picked up this article, “German Tots Learn to Answer Call of Nature” from The Wall Street Journal earlier in the week. From the article,
Each weekday, come rain or shine, a group of children, ages 3 to 6, walk into a forest outside Frankfurt to sing songs, build fires and roll [...]

Spreading the news

Bella Dia has an announcement:
I have a new blog called The Crafty Crow! I have seen so many great kids crafts in blogland that I wanted a blog to keep them all in one place with a bit of organization thrown in. I would love it if you would check it out and [...]

Awarding creativity

Via GeekDad, news of Lego’s second annual Creation Nation Creativity Awards: “Designed to encourage lifelong curiosity and creativity, the LEGO Creativity Awards are an opportunity an opportunity for budding inventors, explorers, creators and dreamers of all kinds to gain recognition for the imaginations that will make them the ‘builders of tomorrow’.”
The contest is open to [...]

Just because

Two of my favorite things — out-of-print, vintage children’s books* and presents — combined as free printable gift tags, from the generous and talented doe-c-doe. Download them here as a PDF file. Can’t you see the one above tied to an Easter basket?
* In this case, English Is Our Language 3, published by the [...]

Backlog: Winter fun 3: Toboggan party

The kids had a toboggan party after Christmas with some friends at the nearby provincial park, which has great big hills. Davy made it just to the edge of the (frozen) river at the end of the toboggan run, considerably past the end the of the hill.
Davy (red hat) and Daniel (dark jacket with [...]

Backlog: Winter fun 2: Christmas Eve

The kids went skiing and tobogganing at my inlaws on Christmas Eve afternoon. Tom and the kids groomed the ski hill and cleaned out the chalet at the top of the hill. I arrived around four, just as the sun was setting; I believe that’s one of my children on the way to [...]

Beowulf and Grendel

rendered in Lego
by MicahBerger at Brickshelf. Click each thumbnail for a larger view.
This turned up in my “Beowulf” GoogleAlert…

Dangerous things

The last TedTalk to make a big impression on the home education blogs and groups was Ken Robinson’s, on how schools educate children to become good workers rather than creative thinkers.
The next TedTalk to start making the rounds and already making a splash is Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do by Gever [...]

How can you resist "the Anarchist Cookbook of the nursery"?

It turns out, according to The Telegraph, that the Forbidden LEGO book I looked at the other month is a “surprise Christmas bestseller”* (no, I decided against it for Daniel this year — in my head I sounded like Ralphie’s mother: “You’ll put your eye out” — instead biting the bullet and trying [...]

Keeping warm when it’s 24 below…

Playing with matches

Playing with fire

Dangerous and daring

The kids asked all summer if we could make a fire pit; it’s been too dry in previous years. Just when things were looking likely, it didn’t rain for the entire month of July and temperatures were close to 30C. The grass turned brown and crunchy and [...]

Snow fun

The kids rolled the torso and head up the plank.Note the saw on the snowman-to-be’s hip…

Inserting one of the arms

Adding the nose

Now the celery mouth

Last minute snowman surgery (sawing off someextra snow on the back of the head)
A new friend…

Still searching for danger

From the editorial pages of today’s New York Times:
Childhood for Dummies
Nostalgic parents who made a best seller of a faux-1920s rough-and-tumble manual, “The Dangerous Book for Boys,” may soon do the same with its just-published companion, “The Daring Book for Girls.” …
Having read both books, we can assure you that very, very little in them [...]

The perils of the rural auction sale

Yesterday morning around 10, Tom and the kids left me at home washing windows to attend a farm sale an hour or so away. Tom had his eye on a smaller tractor, one we could use for rototilling around the shelterbelt trees, that was listed in the auction flyer last week.
Well, when they [...]

Paddle your own canoe

Shooting the Rapids, oil on canvas, 1879, by
Frances Anne Hopkins
We were doing farm chores and driving around in truck the other week with the radio set to CBC, as usual, when I caught a bit of music and Shelagh Roger’s comment that it was based on the Caldecott Honor book by Holling Clancy Holling — [...]

What October on the prairies looks like

if you’re eight-and-a-half or almost seven and your mother won’t sign you up for hockey in town (because it’s thoroughly family unfriendly, with two practices and one game — far away and with lots of driving — each and every week) and it’s not yet cold enough (thank goodness) for the pond behind the house [...]