Daisy Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Daisy Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a short book written by Janis F. Kearney, about Daisy Bates. Daisy Bates was an activist who helped mentor the Little…
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WWII and the idea that stories have a story behind them.
I found the book The Journey that Saved Curious George by Louise Borden at the library, and borrowed it thinking it would be a good way of encouraging the children…
poverty as a product of social relations
“In the humanitarian view, poverty is a quantitative problem, not the product of social relations. Although development work seeks to attack the enduring, “root causes” of poverty, these causes are…
What I want my children to practice through computer programming
My seven year old is back to computer programming, this time using Scratch, an easy programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is…
Christmas Time Fun
So what did we do this Christmas time? We tobogganed, experimented with computer programming again, played board games and much more. Here are a few of our holiday projects. We…
responsibility, the ability to accept criticism and pit bulls.
I’ve written about some of the questions around bullying, and whether individuals need to grow thicker skins or be treated gentler, and about boundaries and people’s different abilities to accept…
Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I Want to Read in 2013
Today I thought I’d participate in the Top Ten Tuesday meme, hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Today’s topic is the top ten books I’d like to read in…
Book Review: The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption
The Goodbye Baby: A Diary About Adoption by Elaine Pinkerton, was sent to me by a publicist. My review of the book The Aventures of Baylard Bear by Lucinda Sue…
Making the most of the holiday time
Holidays can be days with more, less or different work or they can be days to be refreshed. I’m trying to figure out what exactly refreshes me. What makes life…
More Christmas books
For three years now, we’ve made it a tradition to sing Christmas carols every evening of advent. Some nights we read Christmas stories, and sometimes we watch Christmas movies as…
Why those who liked The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard should be supporting First Nations rights, right now.
If you were one of the millions of people who watched The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard and you thought, “yes, we need to take action to reduce the…
Climate Change, Northern Ontario & Chief Theresa Spence
My last post was about a children’s book on climate change and polar bears. This post is going to be about climate change and Northern Ontarians. There are communities in…
Tears for Nanertak – a children’s book about climate change
I received in the mail an absolutely stunning hard covered picture book to review. It is called Tears for Nanertak and it is written and illustrated by Skip Hofstrand. As…
Bullying is still a challenging topic.
Way, way back when I was in university I tried to write an paper about bullying for an ethics class. We were supposed to be writing about something controversial and…
Thoughts on a City Council Meeting
I went yesterday to a city council meeting. I was there with just over 30 people to watch the passing of a motion to have our city council request that…
5 Reasons to Make a Set of Napier’s Bones
Napier’s bones are easier than slide rules,” my seven year old announced the other day. I had found extra-wide wooden craft sticks (popsicle sticks), shown him how to write the…
Homeschooling
Savannah of the website Hammock Tracks has included an email interview with me on her website as part of her “Who Homeschools” feature. Check it out right here and then…
Romance and Rape in Historical Fiction
How would you write a romantic novel about a historical time-period where the most likely relationship would be at best bordering on rape? Could you write a romantic novel about…
Review: Cooking without Measuring by Rachel Wizenfeld
Several years ago I went through a phase where I obsessively borrowed cookbooks from the library. I poured over them never to ever attempt to follow them. I couldn’t follow…
Personal Responsibility in the Age of Unlimited Choices
Have you ever heard of “cafeteria religion”? The term refers to the idea of people treating religion like a buffet table where they can pick and choose what parts they…