I’ve been trying to figure out how to incorporate more history and geography into our homeschooling, and have decided to try borrowing various DVDs from the library and see if anything catches the boys’ interest. We watched two DVDs today, including one called Families of Australia (US), part of the Families of the World series. Both [...]
Shortly after returning from our roughly 1400km (900 miles) dinosaur tour of SE Alberta and SW Saskatchewan—a tour I am glad we made when we did, as the region has received torrential rains and has flooded badly, washing out sections of the Trans-Canada highway: The town of Maple Creek, SK, which we went through, had [...]
I’m going to break my post about Dinosaur Provincial Park into two parts: the first on the park and badlands (“the outside”) and the tomorrow’s post on the excellent Interpretative centre (“the inside”). We were absolutely blown away by the park, and how many things there are to do. Next trip we will take the [...]
This morning the boys and I headed to Calgary’s Firefighter Museum, for their grand-re-opening. Despite the pouring rain and gloomy skies, we had a wonderful time. We listened to speeches, heard some live music, learned local history, talked one-on-one with a friendly “old timer” fire fighter, checked out displays, and so on. The boys got [...]
A couple weeks ago the boys and I did some learning about Ancient Egypt, which I blogged about here. One of the activities we did was try to mummify apple slices in different mediums: table salt, epsom salt, baking soda, and a ‘control variable’ apple that was simply left exposed to the air. A week [...]
For a couple weeks now the boys have been expressing an interest in Ancient Egypt, our first foray into people history, rather than that of dinosaurs and animals. Yay! Admittedly, it was Daegan who first brought up the topic, after Jim mentioned a show about dinosaur finds in Egypt, and got the companion book for [...]
A friend of mine posted this brief documentary clip on facebook, and it is a wonderful snapshot of the breadth and history of Canada-US relations. I hope it gives more depth and insight to my American friends about my country, and why Canadians get so bothered by the fact that (in general) we know far [...]
Monday January 18th was A.A. Milne’s birthday, so I did a few Winnie the Pooh activities with the boys. We watched the classic The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, read bits from various books, and learned a bit about Winnie’s history. Did you know that Winnie is named after the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, [...]
Have you heard the news? The BBC and the British Museum have teamed up to bring us an amazing interactive site (and homeschool resource!): A History of the World—telling a history of our world with objects. There’s a ton of material here to explore. What a wonderful way to make history come alive! Its a [...]
Over the past few weeks, the boys and I have been popping into Michael’s with our 40% off coupon whenever we’ve been running errands nearby, to pick up some good, non-drying, modelling clay. Daegan has been busy creating dinosaurs (no surprise there!). Here’s a few of his creations. I am finding it interesting that his [...]