Just in time for us to restart this program. The kids are bugging me constantly to pull out the nursery rhyme book. We really enjoyed our look into history last year and with the twins one year older I am hoping their enthusiasm to find out the weird but true will help keep me on my toes!!!  

So, as I promised HERE… the further adventures (and really mostly resources) of our foray into Nursery Rhymes. I try to pick rhymes that I remember and that may be at least a fun challenge to learn for half of the kids. As I am sure those who are on my Facebook or Instagram have noticed, not all of our rhymes have gone over well with the minions.

Hush a Bye Baby/Rock a Bye Baby is another of those. While looking into cradleboards was fun and interesting and the multiple origin theories fun to explore some of the kids were put out by the “meanness” of the original rhyme. Echo espeically disliked the idea that ANY babies were harmed in the making of the story. After all for the rhyme to have been written she believed at least one baby had to fall. So of course we included the “not scary” version in our copy work. You can read about that version HERE. I didn’t make them memorize this vsersion as it is not common, but it was fun to read through the sweetened up version and wonder if it was necessary to do so.

We made sure to do some research about Cradleboards as soon as it was made clear that that is what the poem is referring to. And am I ever glad we did, they are BEAUTIFUL! And then, at the science museum, we found an actual example of one. You can read all about them HERE.

There is always Wiki for a brief write up HERE, try Song Facts for more information about various uses of this rhyme HERE, and Mom.me for a dark origin HERE.

MotherGoose.com has a cute colouring page HERE. We did a craft for this rhyme with Education.com called Baby Footprints. As you can see from the additional picture… we really didn’t stop there!

3 Blind Mice was our next nursery rhyme. It was sadly much delayed with noise from siding construction. We could not get our video recorded and everyone was out of sorts so rather large amounts of work did NOT get done. BUT I do have links to share…

KidZone had an Itsy Bisty Book to share HERE. DLTK has a fun number sheet related to our rhyme HERE. A cute shaped colouring picture HERE was used by the kids. Check out Reading With Kids for another colouring page HERE

For research purposes check out rhymes.org.uk HERE or All Nursery Rhymes HERE. For a good joke page with animal related jokes, and most of the way down one specifically about the 3 blind mice head to THIS Activity Village link. Education.com has a list of brief information for various rhymes including this one HERE.

Hot Cross Buns came next with a lovely printable of pennies and buns that I printed in colour and laminated from Play at Home Teacher HERE. DLTK has a printable recipe HERE. Sadly we did not have time to bake buns but we saved the recipe for the holiday season to add to our cooking experience.

There is definitely religious significance to the rhyme in the subject matter, so if you are researching be aware. But the actual origins of the rhyme are as a selling tool. End of story. So not the most exciting. Though the kids loved singing it with the extended verse about having a daughter or son. You can read about it all on Powerfulwords.info HERE, Rhymes.org.uk HERE, Smithsonianmag.com HERE.

Kiddyhouse.com has both verses HERE.

Now as an additional bit of info Zander took some time and researched Mother Goose herself. Not an easy woman to pin down. But you can do your own reading with our resources. Bluebonkers.com HERE.

Back to the rhymes and Ring Around The Rosies (which does not have the origin story most people think it does). Echo really enjoyed learning the dance.

I will say straight off, I too thought it was about the plague. Wiki has a good run down HERE. Library of Congress has a helpful site HERE, Dictionary.com has information HERE. Dover Publications has a great colouring page with the lines of the rhyme in a traditional style HERE. And that is where we ended our series. Check back in the next months to see how we get on with our reboot!!

How we miss you! And how the boys asked so politely to do a FULL unit on you. And with that… time to share our resources!!! It is mostly a book like, but I figured… time to get this puppy posted. Remember to research interesting topics… I would suggest the following:

• Inukshuks
• First Nations
• Beavers
• Dinosaurs
• RCMP
• Kermode Bear
• The “new” Territories
• Canada Geese
• Poutine
• Maple Syrup

The list goes on! Good luck and enjoy.. eh.

BOOKS (and there are a few!)

• Canada by Julie Murray (Explore the Countries)
• Only in Canada by Vivien Bowers
• Honk, Honk, Goose! (Canada Geese Start a Family) by April Pulley Sayre
• Lucy Maud Montgomery by Alexandra Wallner
• Grasslands Inside Out by James Bow (this has a  couple pages on the Canadian Prairies and discusses what an ecosystem is)
• Cultures of the World: Canada
• Getting to Know… Nature’s Children Beavers by Merebeth Switzer
• Canada by Liz Sonneborn
• On the Tundra by Jen Green (Small Worlds)
• The Canadian Forces Snowbirds by Lora Polack Oberle (this is one we didn’t get to, I ended up having to cut some of our topics to deal with the fact it IS summer… but interesting all the same!)
• Coming to Canada by Susan Hughes (We did not read this book through either, I really would like to re-request this one and read it myself!)
• Countries of the World: Canada by Brian Williams (an older book but very good resource)
• A Visit to Canada by Mary Quigley
• Canada by Karen Latchana Kenney
• Igloos by Jack Manning (and the kids are back to planning on building their next igloo this winter… boy do they hope there is more snow than last winter!)
• History of the Great Lakes by Emily Jankowski
• The Inuit by Kevin Cunningham and Peter Benoit
• Across Canada by Jeff Sinclair
• Canada’s Arctic Animals by Chelsea Donaldson
• A is for Algonquin by Lovenia Gorman
• M is for Maple by Mike Ulmer
• Polar Animal’s Dictionary by Scholastic
• Goose’s Story by Cari Best
• Ituko An Inuit Child – Children of the World
• Winnie – The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie the Pooh by Sally M. Walker

DVD

• Families of Canada from the Families of the World series. The link is to the 2015 version. We had the 2005 one from the library.

USEFUL SITES (quick links to their Canada resources… good luck!)

• Kidzone HERE
• SuperTeacher Worksheets HERE
• Today I Found Out (on the flag) HERE
• FactSlides.com HERE
• Teachers Pay Teachers Freebie HERE
• EasyScienceForKids worksheet HERE
• ISLCollective has some worksheets HERE

Of course we used Activity Village for resources and did lots of colouring. Education.com has a bit, HERE is my collection. It is well worth it to do a search on dinosaurs found in Canada. We used to live near the Royal Tyrrell Museum which is an amazing dinosaur museum with some very new finds. Do check out their site HERE. Macleans also has a 10 coolest dinosaurs article to get you started HERE. Check out Global’s piece on a new dinosaur find HERE.

It is really past time for me to post this! So I am glad to get it up. I am sure we will cover our homeland once again in 2017. With it being a landmark year (150) I will try to find some interesting ways to learn even more about Canada in all her glory. Wish me luck!

July 2-3

With only 2 days between Canada Day and Independence Day it was go go go to get our lapbook work done. But first… we had a CANADIAN lapbook to complete. We found our printable for the national anthem HERE thanks to Kidzone. Most of our printables came from Actvity Village HERE.

Very basic but we all had a hand in it

We also built our large Canadian puzzle. Sadly we are missing some pieces but nothing massive.

With the knowledge of papermaking firmly under our belts we took ANOTHER go at it. I am not sure how consistent we are getting but I do know that we are having HUGE amounts of fun doing it!

We have a rather amazing neighbourhood here. On Father’s Day we had a large ball pop after rolling into the road, well on the 2nd the man who was driving the truck came over, apologized and brought the kids ANOTHER ball!!! All I could say was, this was NOT necessary and THANK YOU for confirming that our babies did the RIGHT thing. There was NO running into the road, NO chasing the ball and LOTS of paying attention. I am one proud Momma!! And my babies are happy with TWO large balls (we had gone out and bought another the next day ourselves.).

Sean and Ken also moved the playset as it is to the backyard. There has been some great progress on it!

Echo has been working on what she calls “e”s.

The day before Independence Day was a great day for random crafts with the kids doing their paper craft creating while I was in the tub. I got out to some lovely themed items!

And then…. SURPRISE a visitor… well TWO! Bree and Lily! They had an errand near us and the yen for fancy coffee. So we ran the errand, got the coffee and then visited at the house while Bree made some necessary calls.

PHOTO OP!!!

No, seriously, LOTS so enjoy!

I love how they were yelling at each other

Yup, with Sean already here we had ourselves some new visitors… I got a relatively kid free outing and some awesome coffee… and the kids got their American info rolling. Not bad not bad.