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!

November 23-27

In preparation for Thanksgiving the next week, we spent a portion of Saturday cleaning. The twins have become rather pro at cleaning the bathroom!

We had homemade poutine for supper as well! One of the main foods I miss living down here. How can you go wrong with fries, gravy and cheese??

We had our usual Sunday School on Sunday… with the added excitement of have the twins take on SPEAKING parts in the Christmas pageant! So we have songs to learn AND some dialogue. Quite the ambitious addition to our homeschooling days.

The week of Thanksgiving started with the usual day of school. Heavy on the Thanksgiving theme. After all, Trinity REALLY loves a good themed worksheet!

Thanks to Activity Village

With a cornucopia craft as well. This is included in the reference blog post I will post with our completion. Just a two page print out where we coloured the horn and then the fruits and veg. The added suggestion was to have something we are thankful for on each piece of food but with how many activities we have done with the same idea we chose to just colour and glue.

We had time for tv together time…

AND making little decorative hats with Nana. yarn and rings of toilet paper rolls! Adorable!!

The first time…

And then another day… we actually made these over the span of a week!

We continued our Thanksgiving theme with storytime. A Louisa May Alcott story that has included an interesting apple based recipe we may need to try one day.

Trinity and Emanuel STARTED a craft with Daddy that uses coffee filters to make the tail of a turkey. You draw on it with markers and then wet them down to spread the ink.

Daddy also assisted in the assembly of our long awaited Grocery Unit. So much gluing and pasting and a little singing of the song we learned. You can see our resources and links on our companion blog entry HERE.

Of course we had to continue our Minnesota learning… the state bird is the common loon!!

There was another Thanksgiving book… though this one was more of a Halloween/Thanksgiving idea. It was in the Thanksgiving section at the library though and the kids really enjoyed it!

I think my days rather jumbled together here… but those were  the high points of our Thanksgiving week up to… well… the day! With a completed lapbook under our belt we ended our learning before Thanksgiving on a high note, that is for sure!

July 6-9

Friday marked the beginning of TWO adventures… We coordinated with Karyn AND Esther to work everything out relatively smoothly. We drove from the Bleau’s in the morning stopping off at Karyn’s work to collect her keys and say hello… oh and drop off two owls for Lauralee and Victoria! From there it was time to drop off the female portion of our little family at Karyn’s apartment in time to terrorize the cat and tidy the rooms. 

With Esther running behind schedule (as per usual) even with a quick stop off at Dollarama for a few necessities (ie. toothpaste for Trinity) we had enough time to get the dishes mostly done and carpet vacuumed before she appeared for a quick snuggle and visit. 

SNUGGLES

 That marked the beginning of the boys’ adventure – Aunty Esther collected them at Kristen and Fydo’s where Ken was finishing up with our sort  through and helping with some furniture movement into their now almost completely finished basement and they were off to the city for THEIR holiday from US!! 

In the meantime the girls and I sat back and enjoyed the quiet that is Karyn’s apartment and waited on Karyn finishing work. Now how to spend the evening? Well with girly things including doing HAIR…

Note the pro action with Echo

And blowing bubbles.

Bubbles

And apparently eating cereal with unicorns!!!!

Snack time with Unicorns

The next day it was time to enjoy our day to the fullest. I had received something rather special in the mail thanks to Karyn… a birthday card from my Dad and StepMom with spending cash. Karyn’s bank was open so we were able to change it over to Canadian and it was  time to head to the mall and get to the serious business of shopping!! But before that a special homemade breakfast by Karyn – raspberry pancakes, fresh bacon from the Farmer’s Market and Pepsi… cuz we rock that way!

Pre breakfast sunshine

Note the sheep inclusion

Breaky

Let’s see… we started at the MACS counter where I purchased a brand new foundation with some extra sponges. 

Dressed to impress

Then there was the Body Shop (of which there are TWO in Minnesota… I checked! One in Mall of America and the other at the airport??) with its clearance items and a lovely 3.00 lip colour. We wandered some more just to see what there was to see and then headed over to Winners where Trinity got a special shirt – Hello Kitty of course – for being such a well behaved girl. 

You can see the shirt here

I waffled over a maxi dress that after checking out Old Navy with no success I returned to purchase along with a new pair of sunglasses (finally, that morning my old ones just sort of popped apart after years of use and abuse!)… 

Shoe break

Don’t forget lunch! A mall lunch of anything we felt like… Trinity had frozen yogurt and I got myself some Umi Sushi Express. Don’t forget our traditional poutine which was Karyn’s meal of choice. 

Lunch at the food court

We were SUPPOSED to have dinner with the guys as Ted and Sean came up to help Ken search through his Magic cards for the ones he plans on selling (seriously we downsized EVERYTHING). BUT they got all jumbled in their meal choices so we gave up on waiting and ordered in another favourite! Indian Flame Indian Food!!!!! SOOOO good!

Supper

After some more time on the balcony enjoying the sunny day the girls went to bed and we settled down for another special treat – Blue Eyes tea and cherries. Remember Blue Eyes from the Library High tea? Well I was able to pick some up from the source for the event and bring it to share with Karyn. And it was worth it! Combine the lovely tea and fresh fruit with HEDGEHOG time and silly movies – Spice Girls AND the Beatles movie… and our day was… AWESOME! 

Tea

Kitty

And hedgehogs oh my

Sunday morning was a little more stressful with a tired and hot baby and a cranky little girl. The weather has held out at warm for so long everyone just feels sticky. So we sent the girls along to Ken that afternoon and took a couple hours of together time which included finishing laundry AND going to DQ for food and ice cream. 

Ted and Trinity’s new sweater

Sean and Kristen

We ended up at Kristen and Fydo’s for some more visiting… Sean and Ted had already left but got to play with the girls some… and then it was time to say good bye, head back to Karyn’s for the stuff we left there and head back to town. WITHOUT the boys! As, until Sunday evening they were at Esther’s and then that evening gone over to see their cousin Jimmie. So not only did we see MORE people, do MORE things but we did it with TWO kids!! CRAZY!!!!!

Just the girls, note Trinity is ASLEEP!

And that was my weekend… WOW! 

Oh and a special thanks to Kristen who snapped this one one night this weekend!!