Canadian Politics - A Lesson

As an American currently living outside of the U.S. in Canada, I find myself involved not only in what is happening in my own country, but the political goings on of Canada as well. For those of you in the U.S. who haven't been following Canada's politics lately, it has gotten pretty wild around here too. In fact, I guess you could say that Canada has it's own government crisis going on right now. In fact, the government is 'shut down' until the end of January. Yep, shut down; in the middle of an economic crisis; just a day or so before the unemployment figures came out that show Canada lost 71,000 jobs last month, mostly in Ontario.

Now, believe it or not, many people (including many Canadians) don't seem to have any idea of exactly how the Canadian government runs, or the rules that the government follows. We Americans may have a bit of an excuse (Not really. We should know how our neighbors govern.), but in the past week or so, I've learned that many Canadians don't know the rules and procedures of their own government, so I'm about to send you to a blog that explains it very well and very simply in plain English. The really funny thing is, I'm sending you not to a political or government site. I'm not even sending you to an educational site. I'm sending you to a knitting blog. Yes, a knitting blog!

The Yarn Harlot (AKA Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) is a Canadian blogger out of Ontario who is an accomplished knitter and blogger. She has also written several books on knitting. Believe it or not, this (in my view) has made her a good source for learning. Think of it this way. She has had to learn to write books teaching people to knit and showing them how to follow knitting patterns. That's not always easy to do. Knitting can be very complicated (frustrated knitter/crocheter here) so as an author she has learned to take a subject and explain it in easy terms that the average person can understand. She would make a great teacher, whatever the subject. So, head on over to the Yarn Harlot's blog using the two links below and enjoy your civics lesson on Canadian politics. I'll go ahead and mention that I think she is right on in her thoughts of what is happening in Canada right now.

What is Happening in Canada

And Update the Next Day

And for those of you who are interested in knitting and would like the main page of her blog, here is the link for that too. Enjoy!

The Yarn Harlot

Spring Fever

Spring Fever has hit us all hard this week. It's finally warm and beautiful outside so we have started doing some morning nature/dog walks to see what is up, flying around and back from the south. We've seen many song birds back. I think the ospreys are back, but we haven't been to the nesting sight yet. We've just seen what I think are them flying in the distance. We've also seen yellow finch, red-winged blackbirds, robins, sparrows (of course), starlings, a tit mouse, and many more.

The grass is turning green, the river has flooded (big time) and is starting to subside, and the tulips, crocuses and daffodils are flowering now. This is the best time of the year to be homeschooling because, unlike the classroom teacher, we can take out studies outdoors which I plan to do some next week. I think we need to see what the flooding did to the park It really flooded this year, right up to the baseball grandstand on the other side of the park. It should make a good nature assignment. We can discuss the good and bad effects of spring flooding on the land, etc. It should be a fun week.

Family Day

We have a new holiday here in Ontario...Family Day which we will celebrate tomorrow. All schools in the Province will be closed and many businesses will be also.

My family will be home tomorrow. We plan to take a quiet day and just enjoy the day. The weather probably won't be good enough to get out. We are having freezing rain right now, and it is supposed to change over to heavy rain later today and then snow flurries tonight and tomorrow, so inside we will probably be.

I like the idea of Family Day. Many business owners are fussing about it because it takes away a day of work and/or sales, but I think it is important to have some time together as a family, which can be hard in today's work and play society. I plan to enjoy the day. I hope you have a good day too.

Beware

A very disturbing though not completely unexpected thing happened this morning with our seven year old. He was sitting beside me on our other computer watching what I thought were videos from a family friendly site about his favorite video game, "Sonic." The house was really quiet for once and even though he had earphones on, I could hear a bit of the video. Suddenly, I caught the sound of a nasty four letter word come from the earphones. I stopped what I was doing and looked over. The video seemed OK, but I sat and listened a bit longer and heard more words. I asked the youngest if he was listening to something bad and, bright kid that he is, he answered, "No Bubba." (His name for me.) I unplugged the earphones from the jack and the very nasty dialogue filled the room. It seemed he had somehow surfed over to You Tube and was watching videos of Sonic with the poster's own filth laden dialogue voiced over the film.

Needless to say, I was shocked, outraged and angry. Unfortunately for the kids, we had to stop our computer time and have a talk about lying to Bubba and the dangers of just surfing anywhere on the net. Thank goodness we have both our computers in the main room of our house where they can be monitored and steered away from such filth and the dangers that can so easily be found on the net. I'm still angry though. The video was made to entice kids like ours to watch and with earphones on (which our kids often have since the computers are in a high traffic area of our home) the video looked to be just fine for the kids to watch. It was only when my ears (a mother's hearing has to be very sensitive sometimes) heard the language that I was alerted.

Needless to say, the boys are banned from You Tube completely, and if I find them watching or listening to to anything like that again, they may lose the computer entirely. I also plan to complain to You Tube, though I doubt that will do much good. Thank goodness our computers are so close and we monitor where the kids go.

Parents beware, especially on You Tube. The dangers are everywhere.

Some Musings

Life has really been hectic the last few months. Christmas was a busy time both for the family and in homeschooling. Our youngest had to perform with his class in the school's Christmas show. This was rather traumatizing for him because he has a big case of stage fright. He managed to get up on stage, but all he did was stand there. He didn't sing any of the songs or take part in the show. At least he made it up there.

We have made the decision to homeschool our middle child again next year. He is doing so well in homeschool that we feel we really made the right choice. However, next year he would be going to the middle school which is not close to our house, so I doubt that we will be able to get the school to let him come for just the French classes that he currently takes at the elementary school. It means that I will be trying to find something to replace those classes, either through some type of program that he and I can do together or through tutors somehow. I've found a program that would be good and easy for our son to use somewhat independently, but the price of the program is pretty high. The price of tutors would be high too, but at least they would be spaced out over time. The tutors would end up costing more in the long run, though. "Sigh."

We will be starting The Outsiders soon. I've never taught the entire book before, just parts of the book, so I'm looking forward to readin it through myself. We are working on the human body, the skeleton, organs etc. right now in Science. Math is going well too. He is finally starting to 'get' the multiplication tables. It's too bad he didn't get them in school, because he is really good in math generally, but got bogged down because he didn't learn the tables. He is doing great in Spelling and handwriting. I can finally read his writing now.

I will be posting more about my research for next year soon. Keep checking back.