Commission Scolaire de Montréal
There was an emergency evacuation due to snow accumulation on the roof of one CSDM school on Friday and as a consequence all schools and daycares were closed 17 March 2008
Best I can tell, administrative offices remain open
The CSDM has a PDF document listing all its schools with the dates when they will re-open - please consult often, as it will be regularly updated
There is also a hotline you can call for updates at (514)-897-4444

Other Montreal area schools and colleges have already resumed classes, or will be as of the evening of 17 March 2008. If there is no news about your child’s school or your own school/college outside of the CSDM, assume there is a green light.

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

A few little bits of homeschool news from the web:

1. Miss Maggie has closed down the Old Fashioned Education user’s group, effective 13 March 2008. The OFE web site is still available to you, though, with a whole ton of great resources for homeschoolers interested in Charlotte Mason or classical methodology. If you need the password for the MEP free math curriculum, please go to the MEP user’s group.
2. Did you know America’s most famous female aviator was once a social worker? Learn about this and much more in the new quarterly freebie from Hands of a Child - an Amelia Earhart project pack. This download will be available without charge until 16 June 2008. You’ll need to sign up for an account, but they don’t spam or sell addresses. Don’t forget to check out their 2008 catalogue while you are there. If you see something you could use, there is a buy 2 get 1 free coupon on the home page which is good until 31 March 2008. Take advantage!
3. The Easter Egg Hunt is on at CurrClick. Remember that there are a whole bunch of free downloads, and up to 75% savings on other offerings. The weekly freebie is up, as well. It is The History of Sports, another wonderful project pack from Hands of a Child. Remember to get your copy while you’re hunting for eggs!
4. This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling will be hosted by Janet Campbell at Taking Time for Things that Matter; look for us after Tuesday. Voting for the image that best suits the blog carnival continues here (medium image) and here (any size.)

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

Just a quick reminder that 17 March 2008 is the last day to benefit from the free download of this valuable reading guide for the book Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. The guide contains professional looking reproducibles that will be useful to both the homeschooler and the classroom teacher.

Pre-reading sections of the manual introduce new vocabulary and give the student background information that will increase comprehension. The follow-up sections include both multiple choice and short answer questions. These can easily be used for homework assignments or self-paced study.

If your teaching approach is based on living books and you prefer narration to asking specific questions of the student, you may prefer to use only the pre-reading sections during the exploration of the book. Reserve the follow-up questions for end of term testing, whether it be to reassure yourself or provide proof of learning in fulfilment of local requirements. Such tests also allow your student the opportunity to become familiar with the question formats that will often be found in standardized tests, which may be required for college entrance among other things.

Go over to CurrClick today, to get your copy of the Anne Frank Focus on Reading Study Guide and do check out other downloads from the publisher Saddleback Educational Publishing. I have my eye on some of the graphic biographies, myself…..

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

If you are a homeschooler looking for a way to teach your children the actual art of drawing, Visual Manna is one of the popular choices that will come up. An excellent supplement to a Charlotte Mason styled artist study such as you will find at Ambleside Online, drawing lessons cover a good number of the techniques and concepts mentioned in the Quebec Education Program.

Quebec public school students are required to study two of four arts each year, and to continue as much as possible in the same two arts year after year, so their skills and appreciation of the art will grow over a number of years. While not a requirement for homeshcoolers, offering arts education and other subjects that are not part of the usual academic core can be a personal goal for homeschooling parents. It certainly doesn’t hurt to add such subjects, and it can provide the opportunity to demonstrate that your educational program is well rounded. Your children are, indeed, receiving an equivalent to school learning experience that would allow them to (re)integrate into public school if they needed to.

Those of us - hands up! - who are not terribly well trained in the visual arts may need a little extra support in this area. While there are a number of resources for art appreciation, it can be quite daunting to try to teach your children drawing techniques if you can just barely draw a straight line with a ruler! (That would be me….)

The Visual Manna books are produced by a homeschooling family in the United States. Master Drawing, in particular, is very popular among homeschoolers. It was based on actual drawing lessons that Sharon Jeffus was giving to homeschool groups. She couldn’t travel wide enough or offer enough workshops to meet the demand, so she created an instructional manual that allows a high school student to learn to draw everything from landscapes to portraits. Techniques and concepts such a shading and shadowing, atmospheric and technical perspective and using a grid and window to draw are all covered in the manual. This is a very complete course in the art of drawing.

Another popular manual is Art Basic for Children, which is a 26-lesson course in drawing that uses the letters of the alphabet to introduce drawing. Children learn to draw simple shapes and then combine them together to draw simple things like an apple, a soccer ball, a cat or a dog. This is suitable for younger children or even for an older student who lacks confidence in their drawing skills. A number of other books are available, including books that aim at teaching English language arts or history through art.

Visual Manna books are available through homeschool supply companies in the United States, and I was able to find the books at one Canadian homeschool supplier. However, you can enjoy a significant savings and have your books within minutes if you purchase them in e-book format. With manuals such as these, you are paying for the expertise and effort that went into creating the manuals. If you order them straight from Visual Manna or any other supplier what you receive is a comb-bound 8-1/2″ x 11″ book printed on standard paper. There is no great glitz to the books.

You will, however, have to pay shipping and perhaps even taxes. And you will have to wait for the books to ship.

The other option is to download the e-books, and have them on your computer in minutes. You can choose to print the entire document and bind it yourself, or perhaps to print only a few pages at a time and place these in a scrapbook alongside your child’s drawing assignments. Finally, you may choose not to print the document at all, but simply to open lessons on the computer as needed and work from the screen. I know I would have been quite happy to do our art lessons this way, as our poor manuals have taken quite a beating!

The price at CurrClick for the PDF version is well under $10 USD at the moment for both the manuals we bought for the girls, whereas print copies cost $15 or more plus shipping and applicable taxes. There is also a great variety of other Visual Manna books available, many of which were not stocked by our Canadian supplier. I was absolutely thrilled today when I discovered that CurrClick carries these products! I hope you will take advantage of the fabulous savings, and that you will enjoy the books as much as we have in our family.

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!