Lest We Forget

Sorry if this is truncated or staccato but I'm in the midst of NaNoWriMo & roof repairs & general life chaos & blogging time has fallen to <0.

But since Remembrance Day is almost here & we're almost wrapping up our studies of World War 1 this term, I wanted to jot down a few of the resources I've found helpful:

The Teaching Company World War 1 by Liulevicius
36 lectures, large focus on social & political history. You'll want to supplement with maps & good chronologies of the various battles & main theaters of the war (this supplemental stuff is readily available online in numerous places)

John McCrae's War - NFB documentary about the author of In Flanders Fields. Note, this does have a few photographs of the excruciatingly brutal wounds that McCrae, as a doctor, would have been treating. They're brief and black & white of course, but they are horrific. As far as I'm concerned, very important for kids to see the real effects of a war. Also briefly mentioned is the fact that venereal disease was a large problem for the military, and that Canadians beat everyone (even the Aussies!) for their rates of VD. Ahem.

A copy of In Flanders Fields. I like this book version by Linda Granfield which includes biographical and historical notes, photographs and evocative paintings to accompany the poem. Ds did feel that it was a mistake for the editors to decide to break the poem up with the notes, rather than having them in front or back. Covers similar ground to the NFB doc. Technically this is a children's book, well suited to elementary, but I would not hesitate to give it to a highschooler, esp one who is not familiar at all with the subject.

Online: World War 1 movie clips from Canada at War. All are worth watching.
Most are under 10 minutes and cover life in the trenches, the nurses roles, battle scenes from Arras, France (location of Vimy Ridge).
The single long film is an NFB docudrama about Billy Bishop, the flying ace; very well done.

For the teens:
Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth
and/or Robert Graves' Good-Bye to All That
and/or Erich Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front

For youngers & olders:
the last book of the Anne series, Rilla of Ingleside deals with life in Canada during WW1
Dear Canada: No Safe Harbour (Halifax explosion)
I Am Canada: Shot at Dawn


film:
Lawrence of Arabia
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Gallipoli (1981)

More problematic for younger or sensitive viewers: Passchendaele. I'm a sissy & haven't seen it but mention it because it keeps popping up on lists.

Poetry - Loving this anthology: Anthem for Doomed Youth - Twelve Soldier Poets of the First World War by Jon Stallworthy. Excellent biographical sketches of the poets, photographs, illustrations, copies of their handwritten poems and analysis of style and viewpoints.

Combine it with Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook for a poetry unit.

World War 1 is one whose scale is hard to comprehend. For instance, in the Battle of the Somme, British casualties were 60,000 in ONE DAY. I type this out to remind myself because the mindnumbingly huge numbers somehow just do not want to register.

We have studied history pretty much every day this term but I've been careful to always schedule something lighter & completely different immediately after. For many weeks it was Great Ideas of Classical Physics. It doesn't matter what it is, but I think you need something to move the mind away after a while....

If you have other resources to share, please add them to the comments. Thanks

& at 11 am on 11/11/11, there's only one thing to do: REMEMBER

the late birthday movie

For the last number of years we, en famille, have gone to a movie to celebrate Amelia's birthday. This year we're several weeks behind, but finally we went yesterday to see The King's Speech (no, I won't link to the official site because the previews are so extensive these days that they give away the entire film. So there. Consider this my little protest.)

I was going to tell you all about how great it is, & how much we enjoyed it & how it's not at all your typical historical costume drama (not at all), but I've now got distracted over its American rating.

R?

R??!!!


Oh fer crying out loud. So it's ok to blow off people's heads, to have violence and gore and jump scenes to terrify kids and those films get PG or maybe PG 13. But say "fuck, fuck, fuck, shit and tits" and it becomes R for language? (Oh dear, I hope I didn't wreck it for you by letting you know that people swear in it. They do.)

Sensibly & reasonably, in BC it's rated PG.

It is a slow moving film, not a lot of action and might not keep the interest of young ones who've been reared on ADD tv. On the other hand, it's about an interesting time in history. Plus any child who has learning challenges etc would definitely benefit from seeing it. My bottom line is: show it to your older (10+?) kids. They need to see that people in absolutely privileged circumstances can still have lives that suck big time (including a truly evil nanny story), and that people of all ages often have to struggle to achieve things. Add brilliant acting, nice pacing, Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter & a fab supporting cast, and it all makes a wonderful package.

Still works

All the Presidents Men




Kids hadn't seen it yet & with all the WikiLeaks and whistleblowing in the air, I thought it would be topical.

This movie still works, the story still captivates. Corruption, deceit, dirty tricks at the highest levels of American government. Still shocking if you just let yourself sit with the story and consider the types of people we elect to run our countries.

Depending on how much American history you've studied with the kids, you may need to do a quick review of the characters & timeline just to get folks up to speed. It's a pretty slow, in your head type of movie. Mostly it's just guys with big hair sitting around typewriters, dialing for 10 painstaking seconds on rotary phones, and scratching their heads about how all this adds up. Oh yeah, there's swearing - so if your kids fall over when someone says fuck, that might be amusing for them. There's not a lot of visual action and I suspect younger than 10-12 yo will tune right out, unless they've been raised on machiavellian radio plays, but older than that should be able to handle it. Sit on them if you have to & hiss "our leaders are sometimes conniving, immoral creatures. You need to know this!"

You know what else is shocking? The journalism. We rarely see real journalism any more. Most news stories are cut & pasted press releases from government and corporate PR drones. What seems to pass for analysis is a reporter questioning a few party hacks and corporate shills who proceed to regurgitate the same press releases in strident tones.

One recent exception is The Washington Post's (there they go again) Top Secret America. The latest installment, Monitoring America, was published yesterday.

Speaking of whistleblowing, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked The Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War, defends WikiLeaks & Assange.

In other journalism news, Reporters Sans Frontières has begun to mirror WikiLeaks .


Now for happier movies ~ Lee McKenzie (whom I've met! I get to hobnob with such wonderful authors in RWA!) asked her readers about favourite movies for the holidays.  It's a fun list & I added my own suggestion in the comments: Anne of Green Gables. Always puts me in a good mood & I try to watch &/or read it each year during the holidays.

Will you be watching anything special over the holidays?

p.s. I've had to go back & fix some of the links. Hope they work. It doesn't help that I have adblocker on my browser & it never shows my my amazon image links anyway.....

Teaching history the WTM way - with Calliope Magazine as a supplement

The Well Trained Mind way of studying history calls for a chronological approach:
Year One - Ancients
Year Two - Medieval
Year Three - Rennaissance
Year Four - Modern

Repeat three times for a 12 year course of study. Each time you revisit a period, you go more deeply, with more emphasis on original documents, and making more connections with events and themes in other areas and time periods.


Calliope, published by Carus Publishing (which, if you have young kids you might recognize as publishers of Cricket & Babybug magazines; & whose big claim to fame is a) great content & b) no advertising!) is a wonderful history magazine, officially aimed for kids 9-14, but in our house it appeals to a much larger age range. Each issue is usually dedicated to a time period, though occasionally they do an issue on a theme instead. Calliope is a great resource, but it can be hard to work it into your curriculum, since it jumps all over place on the timeline.

The trick to this is to subscribe to it early on in your homeschool career, so that you get an inventory of it. When it arrives in your mailbox, greet it cheerfully, drop it on the coffee table and let it be pleasure reading for anyone who wants to pick it up. Then put it safely away in a magazine folder on your book case.

In August, when you're planning your history year, dig out your spine text (such as Story of the World & Kingfisher Encyclopedia for the younger students, and Susan Wise Bauer's new history books for the older ones). Plan out your history spine (see the planning post earlier this week) and then pull out your stocked up Calliope magazines.

They conveniently list the time period on the cover.

First, pull out all the issues which are relevant to your time period & put the rest away.

Second, put your extracted issues in chronological order.

Third, put a sticky on each issue with the Schedule Week # & Spine Chapter Number which ties into the readings you'll be doing. Make a notation on your subject planner for the appropriate weeks indicating Calliope as supplementary reading.

Fourth, file all the extracted Calliope magazines in a separate magazine box, in the order which will match your spine reading. Anyone is allowed to read any issue at any time, but an issue taken from this box must be filed back in the correct place. (insert here whatever threats required to assure compliance from your kids!)

Here's our stack from last year (Medieval ages, from the fall of Rome right up to the Age of Exploration)

Take advantage of savings: use Code N565 order two magazine subscriptions and save $14. Go here to read more about Calliope and the other magazines avail, & to subscribe.

Reading and Watching

Amelia and I have been indulging our appreciation for period drama historically accurate film adaptations of important literary works.

Ahem. It's educational, people.

First, North & South. Amelia properly read the book first.

Elizabeth Gaskell's works are a part of any good survey of Victorian British literature.

I went straight to Richard Armitage.

Swooooooooon.

Then, Jane Eyre. Again, Amelia properly read the book first.

I've read it several times already & was happy to carry on straight to Toby Stephens.

Wonderful.

Both DVD's are 4 hour adaptations, with the North & South conveniently divided up into hour long episodes. Jane Eyre is on two discs & is not conveniently divided so you need to commit two hours at a time. NOT a hardship, I assure you.


For a fun diversion, if you've already seen North & South (because you don't want plot spoilers now, do you?) check out North & South summarized in motivational posters.

Feel free to chime in with recommendations. I'm thinking of Cranford and Wives & Daughters next .....

Bard on the Beach

We went yesterday to Bard on the Beach - a Vancouver tradition consisting of Shakespeare plays put on all summer in large, all weather tents, on a beach. Hence the name.

We decided on The Comedy of Errors and it was all that you would expect: farce, slapstick and bawdy rude humour. We all had a great time!

The festival has a little shop attached which is open during intermission & we picked up a few things, under the guise of 'homeschooling resources'. Hugo got a deck of playing cards with Shakespearean insults on each card (that page, by the way, loads up with an audio file of someone reading the insults. You've been warned!) . For Amelia I picked up a few Elizabethan fashion paper doll books from Dover. For serious history study, you understand.

I'm not scared of jiggly men thingies

Hugo got interested in Leonardo da Vinci's inventions recently (triggered I believe by a back issue of Calliope Magazine he was reading) so I dutifully put some books on hold at the library. (Note, this is one of the fundamental duties of a homeschooling parent: observe child intently for any sign of any interest in any subject, scour the library catalogues for that subject, and pick up at least 10, but preferably 20+ resources within a week of the first interest observation being made. If you wait longer than that, you run the real risk of the child having 'moved on'. If your child is less than 7 and/or ADD, you only have 48h to accomplish this task. You get bonus points if you manage to arrange a related craft/field trip/lego model within that same time period.)

I can heartily recommend this one:



We're still waiting for this one:


And when I was searching the catalogue, this popped up:

So I promptly requested it, it arrived next day, and Hugo barely made it through dinner that day in anticipation of the Leonardo video.

Mix one part history, with one brain from whoever came up with Junkyard Wars, and one part 'every reality tv type thing out there', and you get this.

All the melodrama.

Bob wants to use hickory. Steven wants to use oak. Will John be able to find a solution?

All the tension.

Jane isn't happy. The project is in jeopardy (cut to camera panning out of scene in a poignant moment, everyone looking sad and dejected).

The false sense of impending doom.

(narrator whispering) Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

The terrible dilemmas.

(hushed narrator, in concerned tone) Bob is in a lumber yard. Looking at logs. Will there be a suitable log here?


And what is it all about? What matter of life and death is being determined here?

Um. Well, we have a couple groups of nerdy people who are building full scale projects of a) a giant crossbow and b) a glider, from drawings made by Leonardo. (Yes, that's how you refer to him. Leonardo. Not Da Vinci. Not Leonardo Da Vinci. Well, maybe just the first time. After that, it's just Leonardo. With an Italian accent please.

So apparently these teams have to use materials which would have been available in Leonardo's time and I think they're supposed to stick to the methods which would have been in common use at that time as well. Right away the crossbow team makes a decision to use laminated strips & I'm guessing they're using some fancy schmancy high tech glue so you can see how it goes.

You know, the show wasn't as bad as I'm probably making it sound but at one point, some director clued in that you could only show these wonderfully, plain, normal, nerdy, and very sweet but nevertheless rather dull people only so much on the screen before the viewer would change the channel. I mean, they're mostly sitting around thinking. And hammering. And looking at logs. With concerned faces.

So, off the director goes on a quick side trip of educational wonder to teach us all about how wonderful Leonardo is. And ooooooh, Leonardo was interested in anatomy. That will keep the audience glued! In fact, Leonardo was so interested in anatomy that he dissected corpses and made very detailed anatomical drawings of people! That's the ticket! Let's show the audience Leonardo hacking away at a really good imitation of a cadaver! Let's show him cutting up what looks remarkably like a human heart (& is therefore probably a pig heart). Yeah!!! That's the ticket!

The kids and I mostly missed the squelchy, blood spattery bits by hiding our faces.

Then it was finally over. But the boring teams were still doing quietly dull building so the director remembered:

For part of his anatomical studies, Leonardo sketched nudes!

Look! A modern art class sketching the human body. An old man standing in front of the classroom. He's nude. He's just standing there.

And from waist to knees he's pixelated.

Because you know how the jiggly man thingies might offend the viewer!

A cadaver with a partially dissected arm being hacked at by a bloody saw - bring it on!

But no naked flaccid penis! No naked old man buttocks!

No naughty bits at all, please. That would be too sensationalist.

Thanks PBS!

So. Which do you prefer? Dangly old man bits or squelchy dissection of a cadaver? Which (if either) would upset your kids more?

History of aviation

Hugo all of a sudden developed an interest in ballooning and aviation history. And, in spite of the fact that we're on our Ancients rotation through history, I'm more than willing to take detours to anything which really captures a child's imagination. So I zipped through the online library catalogue and scrolled through, putting requests in for anything that looked interesting.

Which is how we got the Nova Documentary "Wings of Madness":

Have you heard of Alberto Santos-Dumont? Known in Brazil as the Father of Aviation? I hadn't.

Did you know he made the first European airplane flight on Oct 23, 1906?

I didn't.

A fabulous innovator, he used a variety of designs and methods for aviation (unlike the Wright brothers who pretty much stuck to the same design). An idealist, he believed flight would unite the brotherhood of man and bring peace to the world. The knowledge that airplanes were subsequently used in war brought him terrible despair.

A fascinating man and a compelling documentary, well worth checking out.

Recommended

Several things which we've enjoyed recently


This is a YA book which I picked up for myself and then convinced Amelia to read. She thought it was depressing but couldn't put it down. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Many of us prepare for localized emergencies - we live in an earthquake zone and have been making building emergency preparedness stashes in several areas of our property. Our preparations however are predicated on the emergency being limited to our area. This book considers the implications of a global catastrophe. It's in the format of a 16 yo girl's journal. Well paced and exciting. Warning - may cause strong desire to stock up on food, fuel and medicine.


This is a dramatic re-enactment of Einstein and puts his idea in context of the other scientists who came before and during his lifetime. Each of the elements of the e=mc² equation is considered separately, with a depiction of the scientists who were 'responsible' for developing that portion of our understanding of the world. History, drama and science, all wrapped up.


We listened to the audiobook last summer. Lots of adventure in this story about a boy who is left in the wilderness to keep his family's land claim in colonial US. It's a grand tale of self sufficiency, coming of age, and the tense relations but also some deep friendships between the native and white inhabitants. Hugo was enthralled.


The movie version of The Sign of the Beaver, in some places it was released as Keeping the Promise. Sensitively done, with a lot of the scarier elements of the original story omitted, it has a good mix of adventure and suspense. Hugo liked this a lot though he said he thought they made a mistake in focusing so much on what Matt's family was doing. He feels the story should have stayed with Matt and the tension in the book was derived from the fact that nobody knew whether the family would come or not. By showing the viewer the family, a lot of that suspense is gone. Worth watching. The DVD includes a brief history lesson.


Yup, the writing was on the wall.


And in my TBR pile:

more of what I did in August!

I was thinking that this isn't really a blog - as in 'web log' - it's becoming more of a boir: web memoir. The only problem with this phrase is that it's awfully close to bore. But perhaps that's appropriate too?

I'm always way behind on these sorts of things. (How far behind? It's our 16th wedding anniversary tomorrow and my wedding photos are still in a shoe box. I think. Since we moved, I'm actually not even sure where they are.)

So here I am, end of September in sight and I want to go back to August to tell you about some of the fun things we did in August. (Oh, and the kitchen. I still have to tell you about the rest of the kitchen. That happened waayyyy back....)

First off, Arthur Erickson.

Arthur Erickson is an incredible architect. I covet an Arthur Erickson house. Something like this:
Well actually, any of the houses would do. Really. I'm not picky.

Erickson is a Vancouver native & so it's no surprise you can see a number of his designs in the area.

Roo & I both spent several years studying here, at Simon Fraser University:
The only time it looks this psychadelic is when you've spent too much time in the pub. But it is beautiful. Until you fall into the pools of water strategically placed all over, presumably to sober the students up. It's about 5 minutes drive from us now, and is on the other side of the mountain from which we observed the sunset on Sophie's first evening here.

Erickson also designed the Museum of Anthropology building. (A little rant: we went there on a Tuesday evening which is billed as "pay as you can" night but what they really want to do is charge you $5 per person. I'm not saying that's a bad deal but I really wish they'd just call it a $5 per person admission. They say it's a suggested admission rate but really, there was very little room to disagree with that suggestion. When you go on a Tuesday, you still need to line up and pay and I think you'd need some heavy duty balls to blandly say you can't afford to pay or want to pay less because they're quite geared to just collect $5 per head. OK. I'm done now.)

The musuem is situated on a scraggy headland at the edge of the University of British Columbia campus, overlooking the waters of the Strait of Georgia (& if you look down, Wreck Beach, Vancouver's nudist haven.) Outside, including totems and West Coast native long houses:



The building design was inspired by the West Coast native cedar post and beam construction method, and translated into soaring concrete and glass. (in the center of the bottom picture is the Respect to Bill Reid pole. Check the link to see how to read the pole.)

Inside:

Above: this is a killer whale & seals. One of the few sculptures which you're allowed to touch.

Above: Hugo running from a bear sculpture.

The MOA is known for its collection of West Coast native art, including Bill Reid's The Raven and the First Men, pictured above, which tells the Haida creation tale.

The museum also has a fascinating 'open storage' concept for numerous other artifacts reflecting colonization and the successive waves of immigration on the West Coast. There are stacks and stacks of drawers which visitors can open; glass sheets cover the contents for protection. There are also large glassed-in storage cases of ceremonial masks.

As well, there are temporary exhibits featuring anthropological artifacts from other cultures - while we were there, one of the exhibits documented Malawi tribal masks and dances about AIDS.

During regular visiting hours, there is often a an artist in residence carving in the Great Hall.

One more shot of the Great Hall because I think it's so fabulous:

On Museums

If you're a life-long learner, if you revere history for its lessons and insight into the human condition, if you're just plain curious about most things - you may want to sit down and prepare yourself for a shock.

It has come to my attention that some people, well, they..... I don't know how to say it...... here goes -

Don't. Like. Museums.

Feel free to get a drink of your favourite bracing beverage.

Back again? Feel up to continuing?

I know I was shocked. I have heard of the existence of these people but I thought it was a rumour circulated by producers of cheap and tawdry cable television shows.

I live with two children who absolutely enjoy going to museums. Sure, they have different tastes and interests and sometimes are not entirely gripped by certain subjects, but generally speaking you can chuck them into any decent sized museum, or art gallery for that matter, and provided they've been fed/watered/& toiletted, you'll get several hours of cheerful interest from them. Even in places where they've been lots of times, there is always something left to learn, something to discover, or just something to enjoy again.

I could maybe understand some hesitation around certain old fashioned European museums which can tend to be the stuffy, smelly, don't touch, just read the small print label (squinting from afar because the red rope keeps you back from the artifact) and move on, variety. Don't ask questions from the staff in the room as they're guards, not interpreters. But even so, these museums are glimpses into the past, helping us understand the stuffy and snobby present & I wouldn't dream of going to a European country and NOT checking out a decent sample of museums.

And anyway, we're not talking about those types of museums. We're talking about OUR museums, the ones with cheerful interpreters who have been stuffed full of funny anecdotes to amuse the visitors, who encourage you to touch, to participate, to live the history. How can you not like that?

And yet, apparently some people don't. Now I consider myself a tolerant person. I'm Canadian, eh! We support gay marriage, we're about multi-culturalism, we're all about exploring and respecting differences. But I'm just a bit uncertain about people who don't like museums. It's a similar feeling I have towards people who take no interest in politics and can't be bothered to vote. Chacun a son gout and all that but where would we be if we ALL did that?

From my perspective, all students and tourists should embrace museums. If you're a travelling student, you have a double obligation.

How can one begin to understand a country without knowing its history? I can't imagine travelling to a country and not taking an interest in its history, its culture, its values. Am I a weird tourist? Because this is what I'd say are de rigueur for travellers to a new country:

-read up ahead of time. Learn some basics about the country's history, the geography, art and culture. Life is short - don't go in blind.
-take note of special things about the area. You don't want to find out when you get home that you were just at a location which is world famous for something or other and which you missed because you didn't even know about it. And now you need to start saving your money again to go back and check it out.
-once you arrive, get to know the area by visiting museums, art galleries, shows. Check out the architecture of the city, spend some time wandering the streets, watch the people. Try some of the local foods.
-suspend judgement. Let the ambience soak in. It's not like home. People are different. They behave differently, build their homes differently, admire different things. That's the point. Be open and respectful.

Here's an interesting tidbit on the Worst Tourists in the World with some good advice for how to avoid being a bad tourist.

And now, a propos of tourists and good for a giggle, here's a story from Roo, who heard it at the barbershop in Skagway, Alaska where he was taking a break from lugging rocks around as a young geologist in Canada's far North.

Setting: barbershop, just a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean, Skagway, Alaska

blue-haired lady from US mainland, just disembarked from cruise ship: "Beautiful! Beautiful! Can you tell me the elevation here?"

barber: "Elevation?"

lady: "Yes, the elevation."

barber - slightly incredulous : "M'am, we are at sea level. 0 feet."

lady - astonished: "Nonsense! We've been going UP for 5 days! That can't be the elevation!"

barber - evil: "Oh, of course. My mistake. 500 feet m'am."

lady - mollified: "Thank you."

~~~~~~~~~~~

So, chime in friends. Where do you stand on the museum issue? Enthusiastic? Faking enthusiasm for the kiddies? Avoid like the plague and MTV? Do you go to museums in your own city or just when you're travelling? Do you return from holidays with your suitcase littered with those little metal colored disks which pin on to your lapel or do you have no clue what I'm talking about? Do your kids like museums? Or do they like them only because the field trip releases them from the routine of studies and chores? I want to know. (for the purposes of this discussion, museum is defined broadly as any building housing a collection of artifacts relating to culture, history, anthropology, nature, science or art. Yes, the barber museum counts too.)

Fort Langley

Fort Langley is a Parks Canada National Historic Site. It is the location where, in 1827, the Hudson's Bay Company established a trading post in BC. The settlement prospered by trading furs, salmon and cranberries from the native population in exchange for the famous HBC blankets. Beavers and sea otters were particularly prized in Europe, but fox, raccoon and bear skins were also valuable commodities.


In 1858 Fort Langley was part of the Gold Rush. It was the starting point for the Fraser River gold fields. Fort Langley served as a supply shop for prospectors going north, hoping to strike it rich.



On November 19, 1858, Fort Langley was the site of the official ceremony proclaiming British Columbia as a colony.


Today, it is a great, hands-on museum where you can touch a variety of furs, pan for gold, watch the blacksmith, see the cooper (do you remember what a cooper does? Without googling?) and learn about the important - and generally peaceful - relationship between the settlers and the native peoples. The Sto:lo people called the settlers Xwelitem: "the hungry or starving ones".


Men living at the Fort often took native wives. The men were mostly Scottish, Quebecois, or Hawaiian. The Hawaiians came as crew on the trading ships which had to stop in Hawaii on the arduous journey from Europe to the West Coast; with no Panama Canal, the journey was a long one. The Hawaiians were encouraged by the HBC to sign on and stay at the fort.


The fort staff re-enact a wedding each day this summer - to highlight the critical importance of these relationships for the fort's prosperity.


Other summer activities include games for kids and an evening bonfire.
A small, reasonably priced restaurant, The Mighty Fraser Bistro is open on-site during the summer only. During the rest of the year, bring your own lunch & picnic on the grounds.

Burnaby Village Museum

We have a visitor from Poland staying with us this month & we've been enjoying doing some touristy things with her. It's been fun showing her around some of our favourite places, and discovering some new ones.

First, we went to the Burnaby Village Museum which is a little replica town, with numerous buildings which have been moved there or reproduced from original designs. (if you click on the link, you can see a video of the museum). The museum features costumed interpreters who churn butter in one of the family homes, manage the general store, and show how the printing press works. The highlight for my kids used to be the blacksmith but we've gone there lots of times and he always makes the same darned hook. Lovely place to visit and stroll through. Tuesdays are half price. We went on a drizzly day and I didn't take any pictures of the streets and buildings, though I did make my kids do this just as the sun started to peek out:

It reminds me of a Monty Python sketch of a Victorian painting of a mama and child posing for a picture and the mama is admonishing the child to 'smile for the camera. Smile. Smile.' and ripping of the child's arm and beating her with it.

While you're there, don't forget to ride the carousel! All the horses have been patiently restored and the carousel is a huge treat for all ages. The horses come in all different sizes and when it's not busy, one of the perks is being able to choose your horse. When it's busy, you kind of have to dash and grab a pony. The horses are all numbered and when you get off your thrilling ride - set to music from a Wurlitzer - you can check out your horse's name. If you go often enough, you start having favourites. They're beautifully decorated horses with various themes. The carousel is wheelchair accessible and there are little benches for wee ones who are too floppy to sit on a horse. Read all about the carousel here.

Amelia galloping away

Hugo and Sophie coming up behind me

A sense of how fast the carousel goes. I always imagine we'll do a Mary Poppins and just ride off into the park.

Dear Jim Weiss

Re. Story of the World volume 4

It's SOviet.

Not SoviETTE. It doesn't rhyme with serviette. Or majorette. Or baguette.

Oddly enough he can usually say Soviet Union just fine, but the moment he has to say that word on its own, it turns into a 'ette ending.

story of the world

Boohoo. So I finally unwrapped the Story of the World vol. 4 CD box & I'm pretty disappointed in the packaging. Our volume 3 set came in a nice plastic case with individual sleeves for the CD's. Volume 4 comes in a cardboard box, with a flimsy plastic tray inside. The actual CD's are in a cardboard accordion style sleeve. Phoooeey. That's no way to package a product which is meant to be used by families with young children. The packaging needs to be way more durable, able to go from car to home, and to sit neatly on a shelf in between. This cardboard thingy is just annoying and I think will just scratch the CD's if it's used for any length of time.

I see that these were put out by Peace Hill Press whereas my vol. 3 was from Open Texture.

And I see Open Texture actually sells these silly cases for $5.95 USD, but you also have to buy the sleeves for $1.95 USD for a five-pack & then there'd be shipping to Canada - $10 USD. Let's just say I'm not spending that.

I'll just use one of our own small CD cases but I really am disappointed that this product comes so poorly packaged. It's a hassle for me now to find a case that will work & it will never match the set on my bookcase - and yes, that does matter.

Message to Peace Hill Press: it was a poor decision to cut corners on the packaging of this product.

canada post

A neat thing about living in a house is that parcels actually get delivered here. This is quite a novelty as during the years we lived in our condo, our parcels only got delivered about 1/2 the time.

The rest of the time, there would be a card in the mailbox with a sloppy tick mark indicating that there was no answer at such and such a time.

BULL. Because almost always I had been upstairs and nobody had buzzed up, never mind actually coming to the door and knocking. After a while, I discovered that often they didn't even have the damned parcel with them. I'd corner them in the lobby demanding my amazon order and they'd make some stupid story up about how the card was from yesterday and they didn't have the parcel today.....even though I'd checked the mailbox the previous day and there was no card then.

I complained regularly but never heard anything back from Canada Post.

One of the reasons I was so ticked at having to get the damned parcel was that the depot I had to go to was staffed by two of the rudest women I've ever met. When you put the card down on the counter, they'd look at it like you just dropped a piece of shit on their fine dining room table. They'd kind of spin it around with a pen, peer at it suspiciously, grunt, disappear into the back for an interminable time and more often than not, reappear without the parcel.

Not here. Next.

All in a bored drawl. And barely comprehensible; only years of working for immigration enabled me to sort through their Cantonenglish.

But, but, I'd splutter. It says on the card it's here after 5 pm today.

They'd barely look at me, shove the card back at me and dissmissively announce try tomorrow.

I complained about them too.

So imagine my delight at the fact that a real guy actually knocks on my door and gives me my parcel. Last month, it was an order from PetMeds. We chatted about our dogs and why it was that dog meds were cheaper in the US but human meds were cheaper in Canada.

Yesterday it was an amazon order and the first words out of his mouth were "How's your dog doing?"

That is service.

Of course the only reason he remembers me at all is that I figure I must be one of the few people he actually finds at home. This is one of those eerie suburban neighbourhoods which are pretty empty during the day. Just a couple pensioners puttering in a garden and the weird homeschooling family.

And speaking of homeschooling - what came in my box is the SOTW vol 4 (CD's) and activity book. I have no clue anymore where we're supposed to be in history. I'm just plugging away at it. I also have Our Island Story and yippee! I just noticed there is an abridged version of it on CD! I would have preferred an unabridged reading but really, I'll take what I can get.

We now DO history by all sitting around on the couch listening to someone read us a story. I usually knit. BTW, I do have a small complaint: Jim Weiss reads SOTW too fast. I have some of his other recordings and the pacing is nicer on these so I know he can read at a decent rate. In fact, usually his delivery is wonderfully paced. I'm wondering if there was some cost considerations in packaging these and they wanted to make sure they'd fit into a certain number of CD's, because he seems to rush through some of the sections and I always feel like we've galloped through.

What worked pretty well was to listen to a CD twice during the week. This gives it time to kind of sink in and percolate. And yes, we would do an entire CD - a whole hour - not just a chapter. In a good week we would go through the review questions, do some of the activities, read some other books. Most of the time, we didn't though. At the end of the 4 months (don't ask me how come it took 4 months to listen to 11 CD's when I listened to 1 a week. It's a homeschooling time warp thing), I started at the beginning again and listened to them one more time before calling it done.

Ooops I just noticed that while I ordered the SOTW CD's and activity book, I completely forgot the actual book, which is ridiculous because I use that as well.

I guess the mailman will be coming by again soon.