• Mythbusting Canadian Health Care — Part I
  HT: Daryl Cobranchi & Chris O’Donnell
  (tags: politics healthcare)

Alice Gunther’s book about socialization is on its way.

To quote the publisher:

Most of us at one time or another have had to wrestle with the issue of
socialization, either in dealing with friends and family members who
question our decision to home educate, or from our own hearts as we
worry about our children’s hopes for friendship. In this book Alice
shows that "Socialization is not the weakness of home education—it is
its strength and joy."

Coming this spring from Hillside Education…I for one am counting the days!

Passing this on FYI, and no I don’t get a commission from these folks:

All
Signing Time VHS Tapes are $5 for educators and professionals now
through February 15th!

We are closing out our VHS products and want to give all educators and professionals the first opportunity to order them online at the closeout price of $5! We
will not reorder VHS tapes in the future and quantities are limited to
stock on hand. Order soon because at these prices, your favorite videos
won’t last long!

Order Now

I assume "educators" means homeschoolers too. If you don’t have any Signing Time, I most heartily encourage you to remedy that!

Previous posts about Signing Time:
It Must Be a Sign

Something Else to Buy Instead of Curriculum

Poetry Friday is hosted by Farm School this week. I found myself in (as often happens) an Elizabeth Bishop mood. Here is her villanelle, "One Art."

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

Read the rest here.

Looking for helpful, intelligent reviews of children’s books and home education materials? Visit Love2Learn, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a website overhaul and a series of book giveaways. Very exciting!

I’ll be drawing the winners of the Motivated Moms Chore Planner and the Bizzi2Go Planner in a few hours, so if you want to enter, be sure to leave a comment on those posts.

All righty, it’s time to give away those planners. Remember, I have two more planners (the Bizzi2Go and the Tan Books 2008 Saints Planner) to give away later this week, as soon as I have a second to write up the reviews.

I used a random number generator to determine the winner of the two FamilyTimeMine planners. The first winner is…Andrea!

Winner #2 is (drumroll) MamaLion. Congratulations, ladies!

Andrea, since your number came up first, you get first choice of size. Let me know if you’d like the 8 1/2 x 11" version or the 5 1/2 x 8".

Email me your addresses and I’ll try to get them in the mail during Wednesday’s piano lessons. And thank you to all who participated.

Oh, and happy birthday to commenter and friend Elizabeth M, who has very good taste in birthdays. 😉 Sorry you didn’t win, Elizabeth, but I hope you got lots of other good presents today!

All righty, I’m off to eat some of my mother’s famous cake.

Want to spread some Christmas cheer to a family in need? Click over to Suzanne’s before noon tomorrow (Eastern time).

There are Homeschool Blog Awards going on here and here. Lots of spirited conversation about them in the home-edusphere. Thank you very much for the nominations. The fun thing about awards like these is the chance to discover some new-to-you blogs. There may be some gems you don’t know about. For example, I hadn’t come across News from Hawkhill Acres before, and Lynn has me sitting here in a fit of giggles. Thanks, Alasandra, for pointing me in her direction!