Saturday, May 5th, was International Day of the Midwife. In my city, it was celebrated by a special screening of a documentary by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein called The Business of Being Born. This film is a few years old (2007), but I had not heard of it until Daily Buzz Moms did a…
Category: HotButtonitis
The Hunger Games and the Tough Questions
Okay, folks. If you haven’t read Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, stop reading this silly old blog RIGHT NOW and go read it. I’m not kidding. Go. If you HAVE read The Hunger Games, then you know. I’m sure there must be people out there who didn’t like the series (and guaranteed there are people…
Why I Vaccinate My Child
I first became truly aware of vaccination when I was about eleven. I’d had my standard (Ontario) childhood vaccinations, but didn’t remember them, and hadn’t actually thought about them. Then I read a story about Edward Jenner in Cricket magazine – and I never forgot it. As you may know, Jenner was the English scientist…
The Knife-Edge of the Family Bed
Parenting is tough. Not just because children are ever-changing, high-needs, ultra-raw humans – although that’s a definite factor. Part of what makes parenting such an intimidating venture is the judgment of other people, especially other parents. Or rather, it’s the disapproval. (My friend BangtheGeek recently wrote an interesting and forthright exploration of the difference between…
School Snippets: BIG questions from seven-year-olds
I had an interesting discussion with my French Immersion Grade 2s yesterday – an impromptu one that I was not prepared for. We were looking at the globe and doing a little summative review – remember what continents are? What’s this line around the middle called? Where do we live? Then, one student asked how…
An Open Letter to Stephen Harper
Prime Minister Stephen Harper Langevin Building 80 Wellington Street Ottawa ON K1A 0A6 Dear Prime Minister, Firstly, I would like to apologize. I know I have started off on the wrong foot: I am supposed to address you as the Prime Minister of Canada, but with “Harper Government” replacing “Government of Canada”, I got confused…
School Snippets: Foreign Unrest with 9- and 10-year-olds
Last week in my Grade 4/5 Core French class, we opted out of French for one period, because the students wanted to talk about Libya. It reminded me of music class in high school: once in a while, our music teacher would tell us to put away our instruments and we would sit and talk…