Book of the week - In Flanders Fields

 Everyone knows the poem In Flanders Fields by John McCrae. This is the poem and everything you'd want to know about the poem and war.

 Every other page of the book is a detailed description or account of some of the events that happened around the time the poem was written. 

The poem is well illustrated and gives a gimps of life during the war.

Oil Discovery

 I took Austyn to another museum. It was not far from the other one. There was a tour guide for this one. I found that although it was really cool to see more things live and working, the information that the guide had to give us at this museum was vague. We were able to get much more detailed information at the other museum.

 This is a real gum bed. "Real" as in not put here by humans but naturally occurring and left alone to be viewed. 

A wagon with a tank on it was always nearby to ship the oil to the train.

This is the old way of drilling for oil.

 This is the storage tank. We could walk up and look in. They also separate the water from the crude oil here.

 This was a favourite place for Austyn. Again... we may need to try and make a model or the jerker line and how it works with our K'nex.

One nice thing about a small-town museum is that Austyn was able to get close up and personal with a very old typewriter and now knows why Shift is on our keyboard and why it's named what it is. I think mechanical things are his thing! He loves to figure out how things work.

Oil Museum of Canada

I took Austyn to visit The Oil Museum of Canada. Zoe didn't come. It was nice! It gave him peace and quiet to learn what he wanted to learn and take his time on things that interested him. This is a model of the jerker line. It was broken and he fixed it as well as he could, without being able to tighten the one belt.

 He played and observed this model for a long time. 

 Although the real deal is just outside the doors of this museum the models are still cool to see. Here is another one of the first oil well.

 This was a tent that a traveler from the area would have stayed in while traveling abroad. The pictures you see on the inside of the tent are of a movie that is projected onto the sides of the tent and it tells a story that is all around us while we sit down to learn what happened in the past. 

 Although unrelated to oil, there were many old items in the museum. One that Austyn found interesting was this camera. We may need to research old cameras now.

 He also enjoyed the metals and coins.

 Here is another model. We were thinking that this may be a model that we could try and duplicate at home with our Educational K'nex kits. 

 Here is a real jerker line. It is working and there is still oil being collected on this site and the surrounding area. 

 This is one of the outdoor displays. There are many more, including a blacksmith shop.

 We purchased a toy that kids would have played with long ago.

 After viewing all of the displays at the museum we took a drive around the area and listened to the details of many of the original sites. There were displays set up with metal men.

The well that you see in the background is the site of the first Oil Gusher in North America.

We had a great time and learned so much about oil here in Ontario. This is so much more interesting after living in Alberta.

Book Sharing Monday - Rocks in His Head

Rocks in His Head by Carol Otis Hurst is a true story about a Carol's father. He collected Rocks. Everyone thought that his obsession with rocks would never be worth anything. It would never help him amount to anything. They told him that he had rocks in his head.

No matter what anyone said and no matter what happened to his family due to the depression, he still collected, shared, and displayed rocks. He visited a museum often to see their rock collection and one day he ended up being hired because a man with rocks in his head was just what they needed!

What a great story!

Book Sharing Monday - Play, Mozart, Play!

 Play, Mozart, Play! by Peter Sis is a quick book that gives your child an inside look at what Mozart's life was like during his childhood.

It has few words which is great for holding the interest of smaller children, but is fascinating enough that older children would enjoy it.

A Day In The Life Of A Pioneer Child

We attended a really cool field trip that was set up as a part of the homeschool Co-Op. One of the classes that Austyn is taking is Pioneer Life. It's nearing the end of the Co-Op so the teacher set up this trip. What a great experience! The kids first listened to stories from the women. They learned what it was like back in England compared to life in Canada. They talked about the trip here and why they moved to Canada.

Work never stopped. While telling stories, things still needed to get done.

Apparently boys had to do the jobs that required more lifting or muscle. Here the boys are moving and stacking the firewood.

The girls started off the day with a good rug beating.

The girls washed the clothes. They were EXTREMELY dirty. 

They carried the clothes over to the wooden fence and hung them on the fence and then they folded the dry blankets.

The boys carried the buckets. There was no water this time, but they would have hauled the water in the early days.

When they were busy or away the girls did their jobs as well. Boys rarely ever did the jobs that were considered for the girls.

Candle-making took up some of their time. The wicks needed to be dunked in the bees wax between 50 and 80 times.

It was a good deal of work, but the kids really enjoyed themselves.

Near the end they got to visit the schoolhouse. This was a good day for us. I think we will need to return to the museum to visit the rest of the exhibits another day.

3-on-3 Hockey

After being on a home team for winter, Austyn decided that he wanted to try 3-on-3 hockey. He loves it and has been getting some great goals! It has been proving to be great experience for him. We may decide to continue on with it instead of signing him up for a hockey camp this summer. Grandpa has really enjoyed watching these games. They are very exciting. I think he hollers more than we do! LOL!!!

Medieval Things

 Austyn drew some interesting swords from a sword book we got at the library and made up one of his own. 

Here is a sock doll I made for him. In this picture it's not stuffed yet and he is picking out the buttons.

Here is the doll finished. It's actually a vampire doll but I had a bit of trouble doing the teeth. It may look a bit sad. LOL! I have to fix the eyes already because they are loose. I never said I was good at sewing. It turned out nice, considering.

I will need to get embroidery needles one of these days so that he can sew his own things more. My needles are too sharp.

 The doll was an activity we chose from this book. The mead recipe from a previous post is from this book as well.

Interests are Contagious... Hockey

It is so interesting that when one person in our house becomes passionate about something, it becomes contagious. This has happened a few times in our home. I think that with unschooling this could become more apparent because we are following interests. I don't mean just the interests of the kids but the interest of all of us. Parents could be the model of how people pursue their interests. I'm not as good at this as my husband is. I end up making the needs of everyone else a priority. The point being made here is that when one of us get involved in a particular interest we all end up eventually interested in someway. It could be an interest that moves from parent to child or child to parent.

Austyn has been interested in hockey lately and because of that interest Daddy decided to try out hockey for the first time. We do our best to support each other as much as possible. We all go to practices and games for Austyn even when it`s really early.

When Daddy went to his first practice, it was late at night, but since the kids don`t have to attend school the next day we all went. We likely won`t do it again that late because Zoe can`t handle it, but the point is we did it for support. I think it was important for the kids to see that it`s never too late to try something new.

I'm no hockey fan. I particularity don`t like the fights, but I do my best to support Austyn's interests and use those interests as a means to learn. After all he loves when I do this. I've been reading books to him on the subject and am finding hockey much more interesting than ever before.

Here is a book about the most famous goal, told by a young boy. It`s called The Greatest Goal by Mike Leonetti. It's just one of the hockey books we've read.


Here is a video on the greatest goal. The year is 1972. It`s The Soviet Union against Canada. It`s game eight. All of Canada has shut down to watch. Children watched in classrooms. It was tense and a tied game. With only 34 seconds left, after rebounding twice off of the goalie, Paul Henderson scored The Greatest Goal! People everywhere could recall where they were when they witnessed it! After the game people of all ages left their homes and went into the streets throughout Canada to celebrate together.

So, as you can see, being an interest-led type of homeschooling family can really lead to so much knowledge and life experiences. Now... let's see if my interest in learning Spanish catches on. :)

Book Sharing Monday - The Honey Jar

 Rigoberta Menchu is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and shares Mayan childhood tales passed down in this book.

The pictures are great! They feel authentically Mayan.

To join in on the fun of Book Sharing Monday or to read other entries visit http://canadianhomelearning.blogspot.com/

Learning about Vikings

Here are our Viking books. Some we own and some are from the library.

 We transformed our couch into a Viking Ship. We also made a Viking hat (made wrong because Vikings really didn't have horns on their hats). The shield and hammer are also a bit off but at least they had shields and Thor used a hammer (he even named it).

 

Here the kids have set up their Viking crew.

 We decided to make Viking bread. The recipe can be found in The Story of the World Activity Book Two. We have read about a recipe that we would fry bread. For anyone who knows anything about me, you know that I'm not the best person to supervise a baking activity and if there is one thing I shouldn't do... it's bake. LOL! But we did okay.

 

Here is our bread entering the oven.

Here is our bread ready to eat but a bit more crunchy then we'd like. It wasn't bad and reminded me of how fresh bread sticks might taste. We dipped pieces of it in butter. Not bad!!