Learning Stuff From My Firefox Tabs

There is so much stuff to learn out there in the Webiverse; it's hard to see how a person could get any sleep! Somehow as I wander around researching this and that I end up with a strange mixture of open Firefox tabs. Here are a few bits and bobs from my current collection of open links. I hope you, my fellow learner, learn something from them.

• Are you celebrating the 10 days of Newton?
• Jodi made a wonderful new friend when she was out visiting the veterans on Christmas day. I wonder, who was it that received the gift?
• Susan has some words of wisdom for those of us mixing home business and home schooling. I will be back to read her blog again.
• Heidi has written very detailed reviews of products of interest to homeschoolers and those who want an afterschool supplement to their child's education.
• I gather that graphic novels are continuing to increase in popularity. Would you, or your kids, like to join the graphic novels challenge?

Enjoy the links, there's lots more where they came from...

We Wish You a Merry Christmas...

May the spirit of love be with you today whether you are with family, friends, home, away, or by yourself. I hope for you today the warmth of good food and a kind word, in this sometimes harsh world. May you take a step toward understanding yourself and your place in the galaxy.

The Christmas Season

Whether you celebrate Christmas as a secular or religious festival, or focus on some other holiday at this time of year, there is much to be said for the joy of sharing a winter festival with family and friends. Today is the Winter Solstice, which was always a very welcome day to me when I lived in Scotland.

If you've never been to Scotland, or looked at it on the globe, it's actually pretty far north. The winter dark can be depressing. Just the intellectual understanding that days lengthen after the solstice can be a boost to getting through the cold, dreary days of winter. For a Scottish solstice sunrise take a look at LindaB's Occasional Scotland.

Yesterday I was awarded a Christmas Spirit Award by Kailana at The Written World. I'd like to thank Kailana and participate by listing 5 things I love about the Christmas season.

1. Christmas carols - the tradition associated with them brings me joy. Music moves me.
   
2. Decorations - the brightness of them has always brought cheer to the cold, darker days of winter for me.
3. Family and the pleasure of sharing. My favorite part of that is the joy on children's faces as they experience the season.
4. Food - I am thankful for the plenty I have in my life. There is nothing more loving to me than preparing a meal to share with others.
5. Receiving cards and letters from those I can't visit with because of geographical distance. It is lovely to catch up with what has been happening in their lives.

My hope for you this Christmas season is that you have loving people to share the joy with. Of course I can't leave the topic without passing you a few learning links.

• An explanation of the solstice with details of how ancient architecture marked it. A purely astronomical explanation.
• I am in awe of Wendy who celebrates the solstice by staying in the dark for a day. I think that is beautiful - so in tune with nature. If you've thought of celebrating the winter solstice and need more ideas, you can find more ideas on celebrating the solstice.
• A winter solstice poem by a blogging author who loves the Middle Ages.
• Medieval Christmas portrayed by another blogging author.
  
• The history of Christmas carols.
  

Holiday mp3 in association with Amazon.com, home of the Kindle.
Sign up for Kindle alerts at the WiiAlerts site. This site has been used by people I know and I recommend it because it works!

Learning Links

I'm not sure what you'll learn, but it's gotta be something! For your enjoyment and perusal today:

• Cool for cats, Cat Trail Tunnels. I'm sure Big Cat and Princess Kitty would love these instead of the emu feather toy I've bought them for Christmas. Whatever will they think of next? Ummm, apparently a pink, kitty purse! Princess Kitty might be a princess but she'd rather have 10 minutes of attention!
  
• Are you a Christmas movie buff. Apparently I'm not. Try the Can You Name That Christmas Movie challenge at Hooked on Houses. Boy, that little stone-built house is so appealing to me. That's what comes of growing up in a country littered with old, crumbling, stone houses.
  
• Got kids? They might want to write a letter to our new President and have it delivered on National Handwriting Day. Details at Handwriting Without Tears (thank you to Sara of RainSolace for bringing this to my attention).
• Need some reading about living wisely? Check out Mother Earth News. One of their articles is on planting edible ground cover. Need some irreverent commentary and inspiration on being kind to the Earth? Try Crunchy Chicken. Is bamboo really Earth friendly -the New York Times on bamboo.
• Bloggers are giving back instead of giving away at Bloggers Give Back.
• What do new moms do all day? The RookieMoms blog brings stuff for new moms to do each day. Cool, it's like homeschooling from Day 1!
• Looking for a new blog design? Smitten Blog Designs has a variety of nice looking, free blog templates and some nifty limited edition designs for a surprisingly great price. Are you putting a new blog design on your holiday wishlist?
• What Christmas ornament are you? Go on, nip over there and find out!
  

There are lots more learning links where these came from, but they'll have to wait for now :-)

Brought to you by GreatFunbooks.com - with Christmas titles from Usborne and Christmas sets from Usborne

Santa = Books

When I was a itty, bitty Scottish lass one thing I looked forward to all year was meeting Santa Claus and Santa = Books or, more correctly, Santa = Book. I'm not talking here about meeting Santa at a department store, though I did do that at least one time which I can remember.

Funnily enough I remember nothing about meeting Santa that department store time; what I do clearly remember was the bizarre elements of this experience. The Santa display was located on the 5th floor of the department store, at least that is my version and I'm sticking to it. The only way to reach it was to climb the concrete back stairs and to wait in a big long line which snaked it's way up said stairs. I'd been in that store many times before with my mom, but we'd never climbed up that dismal stairway. It made no sense to me that we couldn't just climb the perfectly nice, carpeted stair like usual. I'm also sure I remember money changing hands party-way through the waiting process. "Why do we have to pay to see Santa Claus?", I'm sure I asked. After all, doesn't Santa give away toys for free? Anyway, I digress, because that is not the Santa who gave me books, that is not the real Santa Claus.

In case you wondered, Stories of Santa is an Usborne book, which does NOT contain my story dictated here... back to the story.

The real Santa Claus arrived on his sleigh, complete with jingling reindeer, only at the West Parish Church Primary Sunday School Christmas Party and only if we sang Jingle Bells lustily enough. Well, hopefully the real Santa Claus also brought my presents on Christmas night, but that time I did not get to see or hear him. Again I digress. The excitement of hearing Santa's sleigh arrive was almost too much. Understandably there were always a host of volunteers stationed at the hall doors to make sure no determined children escaped to the outside to see Santa's sleigh, otherwise the magic would surely disappear.

A few minutes after the adrenaline hyped children heard Santa's reindeer bells, he would appear with his very large sack over his shoulder, a sack which contained one present for each child in sunday school. It was really, really hard to sit still until your name was called. Somehow I could believe in Santa, but I could not believe that my name wouldn't be the one name which Santa failed to read aloud. It was a long, tiring process, made magical by the knowledge that Santa really had come and really had brought a gift for everyone. I only remember one gift that Santa ever gave me, or anyone, at the Sunday school Christmas party. It was a book. It was Leander the Gander. It was a book I hated and loved at the same time. It's the book of which the inside cover is shown here over on the left. It's a book about a gander who swaps necks with a cat and then with a pig. It makes absolutely no sense to me now, and it made no sense to me then. While I hated the story, it was one of a very small number of books I had as a child and maybe even the first one that was mine alone. That's why Santa = Books and why I brought this book across the Atlantic with me and still have it on my shelf. Or is that because I'm a bibliophile?

Actually I remember being pretty disappointed that Santa had brought me a book and not a toy. Now if only he'd brought me a big stack of great children's books, like the complete collection of Dr Seuss or something, I'd have been a happy little bibliophile. Was that too much to ask? You decide.

What did Santa give you? Did he give you a book? Do you still have it? This post is part of the 2008 Blog Advent Tour. Today's other participant is Lisa at Books, Lists, Life.

Surprisingly you can see Leander the Gander in all his clean-jacket fineness for sale over at Crickhollow Books. Imagine that - maybe Santa shopped there!
The Amazon.com 4-for-3 book sale is still going on - children's books in the Amazon.com 4-for-3 sale.

Antsy Holiday Kids

Spot the Dog by Eric Hill at Amazon.com
As the holidays approach kids are apt to get antsy. All that excitement and busy parents can be a recipe for a melt-down. Whenever I think of putting up a Christmas tree with young kids around, I am reminded of Spot the dog. When Artist Girl was just a wee, little thing we had a VHS video tape story of Spot the dog at Christmas. Eric Hill's stories of Spot are simple, charming, and about things kids can relate to in their own lives. For instance when Spot is helping his mom with baking cookies and putting up the tree, he gets overexcited. What is so charming about the story (I'm not 100% sure I'm picturing the right story here), is that there is no blame put on Spot. The story simply says something about the decorations creating too much excitement and Spot goes outside to burn off his energy and get out from under his mom's feet. Which brings me to talking about antsy kids...

A wise friend of mine, a mom of three, did something wonderful for me when my kids were little. Every year she would send us a package of carefully selected items, which arrived before the holidays and was always the one package we'd open right away. For several years in a row we received Christmas items in our package. One year it was Rudolph mugs, another year a very large Santa puzzle, and a third year A Charlie Brown Christmas book. Now, at first I was a little puzzled with these gifts, and maybe not terribly thankful. Nonetheless, we used each item then packed it carefully away with our holiday decorations at the end of the season. As the years have gone by, my friend's wisdom has become more and more apparent. It's tradition stupid - I was a little slow on the uptake! What fun it is each year to unpack these special items and to take a few minutes out of the holiday craziness to sit down and enjoy them. What more could you want for occupying antsy kids than a book, a puzzle and a Christmas mug full of hot chocolate?

Now my kids are pretty grown up and they are the ones putting up the tree. They aren't so antsy any more and don't need a lot of calming from holiday excitement. I am the one who gets out the puzzle, sits down to read the Christmas books, and indulges in a little nostalgia. What multipurpose gifts our kind friend provided :-)

Brought to you by GreatFunbooks.com - with Christmas titles from Usborne and Christmas sets from Usborne

Children's Party Cooking

Children's Party Cooking and other related books at Amazon.com
On my kitchen bookshelf are several cookbooks that have stood the test of time. In the days before video games (for my kids, but not necessarily for the rest of the world) a favorite activity in our house was to peruse the beautiful, colored, photos in cookery books. Pictured on the left is Children's Party Cooking, one of our favorites, which I was rather astounded to find at Amazon.com. I mean, this book was published in the UK in 1993, yet there a good number of copies listed for sale used on Amazon.com here in the good ol' USA.

I'm not necessarily recommending that you rush off and get yourself a copy of this book. For sure, it is a fun book. What I want to alert you to is the power of the imagination that comes with a book like this. We have several other cookery books that have been favorites for just as long. What's different about this book, it's secret if you like, is that kids tend to be fascinated by both attractive food and birthday parties. Combining them in a book allows a child to create dreams. With most of the other cookery books I can think of, a child just dreams of a meal. A party daydream is MUCH more fun! I'm pretty sure that women's magazine editors tap into the same thing when they publish meal ideas for Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. They're not just selling you a vision of food, but allowing you to create in your imagination a wonderful family occasion. Whether or not the real occasion will resemble the fantasy one is beside the point from the publisher's point of view. After all, if they hooked you, you bought!

Well, while I'm at it, I may as well give you the two for one deal here. Delia Smith's Christmas is quite possibly the adult equivalent. It's a little pricey, but both of the above books contain tried and true British recipes, with mouthwatering colored photos - at least all the recipes I've tried worked just fine - if that is any comfort. Of course you could save yourself a few bucks by reading cookery blogs and recipe websites and get almost the same experience. Maybe I'm a traditionalist, but to me sitting back with a book, my imagination, and a cup of tea is somehow rather different than browsing the web. It's also much nicer to get excited and take a book to mom, hubby, daughter, friend etc than to yell out, "Hey, I found this great recipe, come on over to the computer and see it!"

May all of your party planning be a fun escape for you!

In association with Amazon.com - home of the Kindle.