The Summer of Hamlet

I have been working hard on my life story. I'm up to 2003, the year our oldest son went off to college.  The summer before he left, my friends and I sewed Scottish outfits for ourselves and our kids, and we went to the Scottish Highland concert. We had our annual Mad Hatter’s Un-Birthday Party,…

Book Review: Artistic Pedagogical Technologies

Artistic Pedagogical Technologies: A Primer for Educators – by Katherine J. Janzen, Beth Perry, and Margaret J. A. Edwards. Have you ever sat through a boring lecture and wished there was a better way for teachers to present material? Have you watched your child plod through numerous worksheets and wished the teacher would employ a…

The Language of Sparrows

Book Review:  The Language of Sparrows, by Rachel Pfifer - When artist April Wright and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Sierra, move to Houston, Texas, they are trying to escape a past neither of them can get over. But their pain follows them, and April has no idea how to help her brilliant daughter, who learns languages…

Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father's Day to my foster father, Gardiner Smith. Gardiner and Fay were a young couple with two small children when they felt inspired to move to a village in central Alberta, where he began to teach science at the local school.  One day the teachers had a staff meeting, and a social worker told…

Choices of the Heart

Book Review: Choices of the Heart - by Laurie Alice Eakes I loved this book! I couldn’t put it down. Esther Cherrett was trained as a midwife by her mother, and she is proud to follow in the family tradition. But then the worst happens, accusations fly, and scandal threatens to shame her family. Esther…

Stories from a Father

When my sister and I moved to our new foster home, we had no idea how much our lives would change. We came with a lot of problems that stemmed from the destructive home life we had survived. Now we were finally in a stable environment with a family that loved each other and extended…

Storytelling

This morning I was on a panel of judges at the Storytelling Festival at the local elementary school.  We sat at the back and listened as the top storytellers from the school presented their memorized story or poem to the rest of the students.  I was so impressed by these children.  They spoke clearly, with…

Simple Gifts

Today a friend reminded me that amid the storms of life you have to stop and be grateful for the little things.  So I sat down and started to think back.  Immediately, vignettes burst into brilliant color in my memory.  On Sunday, I sat down with my class of Four-year-olds, and one little girl smiled…

Chore Time

Getting your children to do their chores is exhausting and time consuming. It would be so much easier to just do it yourself. But the idea is to teach them to work, so you persevere and ask them for the tenth time, “Are you done cleaning your room yet?” You create chore charts and stick…

Experiments in Life

I just started reading The Guinea Pig Diaries, by journalist A.J. Jacobs. He thinks up an experiment (as in experiments of living life), carries it out, and then writes about the results. He outsources his life to a team in India, with hilarious results. (His wife must really love him.) He disguises himself as a…