Watercolour wild roses
Learn & explore drawing and painting in a “wet on wet” watercolour technique. Today’s art is inspired by wild roses.
Learning
Fall in love…
Love reading? Your local public library would like to make you a proposal – more free access to ebooks, audiobooks and online learning tools.
Throughout the month of February, the Yukon Public Library (YPL) system will be highlighting these new resources, along with ways for Yukoners to access them, with the New Reasons To Love You Library Campaign.
Back to (online) school
Little did we know that this Friday was our last day of pre-COVID normalcy for the rest of our university experience.
Old dog, new tricks
Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective of Agatha Christie’s novels, said “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I was a bit surprised recently, to find that I can indeed learn new things even when I feel like an old dog. When I retired, the little grey cells were feeling stagnant (I’d love to …
Artist in the School Adapts
Impressed by the creativity the artists in the program have brought to re-imagining their workshops for online delivery.
Cool schooling for homeschooling
Ever have dreams about homeschooling your kids, but never got the opportunity to? Now that you have no choice because of school closures, are you constantly fighting with your kids to get their work done?
Practising Aikido, the ‘Art of Peace’
The thing I remember most from my first Aikido class is falling; or, rather, how to fall properly.
There’s Always a Stack of Books Hidden Under Their Quilts
The Yukon Imagination Library — non-profit organization that gives free books to Yukon children from birth to age four — is turning 10 this year. To celebrate the milestone we have collected reading stories from families who have used the library and from a few well-known Yukoners. We will be sharing them over the next …
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Communication is the Key
I wanted to make people communicate better – with me and with each other. I didn’t see myself as the problem here.
Everyone Matters
One of the philosophical pillars of the Learning Tree Daycare is to teach the kids there about helping other people. “Teaching kindness and all of that stuff, it all feeds into what we want the kids to be learning,” says Christine Greff, who directs the daycare’s programming. Teaching kindness was the impetus behind the first …
The ABCs of Planning for Student Success
The school year is well and truly underway by now. There is a lot of enthusiastic, energetic and creative learning happening all over the territory. School learning can present large or small hurdles for some, though. When students are struggling in school, there are two types of plans that schools may create to help them …
Summer Vacation
A question that pops up every now and again is, Would students be better off without a summer vacation? This stance claims that the luxurious two-and-a-half month summer break should be replaced with shorter and more frequent breaks throughout the year, since the summer break’s original purpose – of collecting the harvest – is no …
Neuroscience and Everyday Living: Part 3
Gridlock. We hardly ever have it in Whitehorse and if we do we can likely, easily, take another route to get where we are going (okay, not over the Riverdale Bridge). It is much like the fiber optic cable that is carrying our email to Paris. One moment it might go by Rio de Janeiro …
Neuroscience and Everyday Living: Part 2
According to Israeli physicist Moshe Feldenkrais, “hurrying is bad for learning.” How many of us hurry through our day ensuring that the garbage has been put out, the car has gas, the kids arrive at school on time, that we are appropriately attired and prepared for work, that dinner arrives on the table and that …
Neuroscience and Everyday Living: Part 1
Can we change our brain just by thinking? Neuroscience would have us believe so. For example, a calm brain is more capable of learning, working and healing. It sounds simple. When the signal-to-noise ratio in the brain is low, learning and working and healing is easier. Signal to noise ratio means that the brain’s “noise” …
It’s About You’re Grammar: Messages from a Dessert Island
Grammar jokes are all over the internet: How do you console a grammarphile? Pat them gently on the back, saying “there, their, they’re” Let’s eat, Grandma! Let’s eat Grandma! Commas save lives. The Oxford comma debate: We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin. vs. We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin. It’s not just the …
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The Art of Judo – Yukon-Style
Walk into École Émilie Tremblay (EET) on a Monday or a Thursday evening and you may be surprised to see that the usual school gymnasium is transformed into a dojo, complete with a giant tatami (floor mat) and filled with students, donning their crisp white judogi, diligently training in the Japanese martial art of judo. …
A March Break Staycation to Remember
If you are looking for a memorable and activity-packed March Break, there is no reason to leave town. In addition to normal family-friendly programming, many organizations are offering special camps for kids. If you missed your chance to get your kids into one of the camps – don’t fret. There are still lots of daytime …
Taking the Stress out of Learning
My Learning Disabilities Association of Yukon colleague’s daughter will be heading to Greenland next month for the Arctic Winter Games. She is competing in snowshoe biathlon, an event that requires athletes to snowshoe as fast as they can, then stop and shoot at a small target far off in the distance. With increased heart and …
No Roof Too Small
I am tempted to call building your own house the ultimate DIY project. I don’t mean selecting from a range of floorplans and materials and managing your contractors. I mean learning the basics of design, framing, finishing carpentry, electrical wiring etc and then putting it all into practice to get a roof over your head. …
Hitting the Powder
I will try anything once; twice if the first time doesn’t kill me. Which is fortunate, because that’s how many times I had been skiing prior to my lesson at the Mount Sima Ski School: exactly twice. I was 17 and had gone on a “romantic ski date” with my then-boyfriend at the Batawa Ski …
Word Play for Early Readers
Experienced readers know that words make a world within a story come alive. However, for early readers, sometimes they need the world around them to help the words on the page come alive. The Family Literacy Centre at the Canada Games Centre has just the ticket: Reader’s Theatre, an interactive tool for learning to read. …
Hunting or not, wild animals are my teachers
Why have I never written about hunting before? Maybe it’s because writing about an experience makes it more real. In the face of hunting, that is hard for me to accept. I do love my hunting partner, my husband Don, for it. He, too, is quite undone after actually shooting an animal. He will only …
Death by Camas
Yes, a new form of torture has been developed, involving an unrelenting repetition of a single passage from the Myth of Sisyphus – what? C-A-M-A-S? So, not Albert? Oh…sorry about that. Let’s begin again. I love the flowers of death-camas. I love their Dr. Seussian protuberances, like false noses in bizarre and marvelous shapes. This …
The Cozy Feeling of Being Absorbed in a Book
As a kid and a teenager I read a lot. I remember taking home five to seven books every week from the library of the small town I was living in. I was scared that someday I would have finished all the books and there wouldn’t be anything left to read. Luckily that never happened. …
The Anhyzer
The discs one uses in disc golf have certain innate properties that allow them to act in a reasonably predictable manner. For example, all else being equal, if a right-handed player tosses a backhand shot, the disc will start by going in the direction it was thrown but as it loses momentum it will dive …
Zen and the Art of Parallel Parking
When I was learning to drive, one required skill haunted my dreams. Leading up to my driver’s test in the summer of 1998 I would go down to the Qwanlin “Mall” parking lot, after hours, and set up pylons. Then I’d practice parallel parking in my family’s 1987 Tercel 4wd wagon. It was boring and …
Learning As I Go
In an interview, Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead, admitted somewhat sheepishly, that yes, it was a bit embarrassing learning how to play the slide guitar on stage. All his mistakes were out there for the audience to see. Judging by the success of the Grateful Dead’s live shows from the mid ‘60s …
Open Mic Fright
Two weeks before my open mic appearance, I begin learning my first song on the banjo. Although it’s far from my first choice, I settle on a song that meets my basic skill level: “Old Joe Clark”, one of those traditional folk songs that repeats the same simple melody over and over. The lyrics are …
Fun with math
Emil Imrith laughs easily when he is asked about the stereotype we have for physicists: nerdy types in lab coats standing in front of a blackboard full of numbers and equations. “Nowadays, we have computers that help us to model and simulate,” he says. “But we do need a whiteboard 50 per cent of the …
Fixing to Play
Campbell Ryga has a thing about saxophones. When he’s not playing them, chances are you’ll find him at a workbench repairing one, or conducting clinics to teach others to do it. “Saxophones and clarinets always kind of interested me. I like to take them apart and I have an aptitude for the repairing of those …
Beginner’s Mind
My lack of birding skills used to be a secret shame. When it did come out, it was with an embarrassed acknowledgment that despite a background in biology and an intense love of nature, I was at best a “crap birder”. That, however, was inaccurate. I was no kind of birder, for I had given …
Astrophotography on a Budget
For many amateur astronomers, the passion for deep space observing ultimately leads them to photography and imaging of the night sky. It is a good thing to come home with pictures of your late night observing sessions, sharing with others what you are actually doing out there all night, as crazy as it might seem …
Lace up and Learn
“I started playing hockey when I was four years old, because I wanted to keep up with my older brother,” says Vanessa Bogaert. Twenty three years later, Bogaert is the president of the Whitehorse Women’s Hockey Association and a passionate advocate for getting more women involved in the sport. “This sport has so many opportunities,” …
Martial Art and More
In the padded and tranquil setting of the Aikido Yukon studio, students are warming up with their instructor William Jones by doing side push-ups. “Now everyone do a set of handstand push-ups,” says Jones with a twinkle in his eye. “Welcome to capoeira.” Capoeira (pronounced ka-poo-eyh-rah) is an Afro-Brazilian martial art and self-defence discipline that …
