Children Around the World Geography

I've been purchasing used homeschool curriculum. This is Zoe's geography.  It's called Children Around the World: The Ultimate Class Field Trip by Marilee Woodfield.

We travel around the world with this. Austyn can join us whenever he wants. This time, she did it on her own. She did some colouring for Canada and U.S. while I read and we also did some preparation activities to make things that we'll be using throughout the book. One thing we made was a large world of water so that she can put the continents on it and then mark the places we visit with little markers that she colours.

World Math Day 2012

For the past couple of years we have participated in World Math Day. It is a worldwide, online contest that is hosted by a different city every year. You can register your children or class room and on World Math Day, which will be held on March 7th, 2012, they have 24 hours to answer as many questions at their current level as they can. They are competing for their country and the program keeps track of the amount of currect answers. Kids can start to practice on the online site well in advanced. There is also an app that can be downloaded so that they can practice and participate on an iPod or iPad. Funds can be raised to be donated to UNICEF if it is a classroom registering. Registration and practice starts today! Click HERE for more information or to register.

Seeing Family

 We went to see family with Dad. This is a great picture of a sleeping cousin.

 It was nice to see some family from Ontario. 

 We had fun in the pool at our hotel.

 The slide was great. 

 Austyn showed his cousin the ins and outs of the iPad.

 It has been a summer with too much rain so far. The ground was wet and there were many puddles, but the kids didn't seem to mind.

 The splash pad was useful to wash off the mud.

 It's nice to see the kids hanging out with family members. They seemed to get along well.

 Austyn likes to use the swing sets at parks now. That is thanks to a homeschool friend.

 The kids were distracted by a very friendly and playful stray dog.

 

 It was a beautiful day at the park.

 Each time these two meet they really seem to hit it off.

 It was a beautiful day at the park and a sad good bye. 

We saw another part of Alberta and had time with family. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that when I go through and read our posts on here I can see just how much we go out, how much social time the kids get with all kinds of people and how much physical activity they do.

The Calgary Zoo

 When we lived in Calgary, we had a year pass to the Zoo. It was the only thing that I missed when we went back to Ontario. It was nice to visit again. There were some changes that I wasn't prepared for. I had told Austyn some of the things he'd see and a few of those things were either closed or gone altogether. It was still a wonderful visit.

 We went to the Canadian section first since we missed out on some wildlife viewings the day before in Banff. 

 The kids wanted to see the bears.

 This bear looked way too cuddly napping there on the rock.

 We went to see the African animals and it wasn't surprising that Austyn loved this little guy the best. This is a hooded vulture.

 The hippo was hungry.

 I don't remember what kind of lizard this is but loved the pose.

 We listened in when the zoo keeper talked about the gorillas. This is an older female resting in the shade.

 In the Australian exhibit the kids jumped in this pouch for a picture.

 This Kangaroo was out and about.

 The bearded dragon was just about the largest one I've ever seen.

 This is a tree kangaroo.

 The bats were hanging there sleeping. They looked all snug, wrapped up in their wings.

 I recognized this bird. It's a kookaburra. 

This picture is of the dinosaur area of the zoo. Alberta is known for the dinosaur digs. Some of the dinosaur names reflect the location they were found. One is edmontosaurus and another is albertosaurus.

I didn't get any good pictures of the Asian area. This is probably due to a tired little girl who needed to be picked up a great deal. 

We lucked out with the weather since the whole weekend looked like rain before we arrived. We had a great time!

Finally Saw Mountains!

 We've been here in Alberta for months and the kids don't remember seeing mountains when we lived here before. Jasper is too long of a drive from Edmonton to just skip over and see on a regular weekend. As the long weekend approached we decided that we were overdue. For our Calgary trip we decided to drive to Banff.

 Austyn loved the drive and found everything so interesting but Zoe is still a bit young. She just wanted to stay in the hotel and swim. Each time we stopped to look at something she started to get more into the trip though.

 This is a little park that we have stopped at before. It's located just on the inside of the Banff entrance. These holes were all over the ground. Not sure if they are from gophers?

 When we were here before the little lake and stream in front of us was full of water and it looked like glass. This time it was almost empty, exposing the bottom. It's a huge difference from the beautiful picture hanging on my mother's bathroom wall from her trip here.

 Signs of the hard winter are everywhere. The snow fall was more than usual this year. The trails were snow covered and there were still avalanche warnings on the radio.

 It turned out to be a beautiful day. The sun was shining, it was warm, and there was hardly any wind.

 This is the bottom of the little lake, exposed. .It looks like some sort of plant life use to live on the bottom. It seems strange that it is dried up with so much snow this year.

 This is the Ice Explorer. We hope to visit when the kids are a bit older and go on this specially built bus. It takes passengers to the ice fields. Hopefully they are not all melted by the time we get to visit.

 We took a ride up Sulfur Mountain in a gondola. 

 The views were amazing!

 It took us up over 7000 feet!

 We had lunch with a view!

 There were many mountain illustrations to look at with names of the peaks and information.

 This is an optional hiking path that some people took. It's on this cliff and seemed too scary for us. 

 This is how high the snow still is up on the mountain. You would never know it by the nice weather that day. This picture was at the top of the hiking path, located at the top of the mountain. It leads to a special tower that was used in the past to monitor radiation that showers down on earth all the time from space. We learned that they believe that it changes our DNA and could be involved in the process of evolution.

 The view of the mountains from the tree line is different from the view from the valleys. 

 I was excited to see wildlife and had my head hung out the window most of the drive. After previous trips here from when we lived in Alberta before, I remember all of the beautiful animals we saw. This trip we didn't see much. Just a few interesting birds and chipmunks. I hope that this isn't a sign that the populations are dropping.

I found the moss hanging off of all of the trees so interesting.

 We showed the kids the hot spring and talked about what hot springs are.

This cool spider was ready to capture his victim.

We went to the main street to check out the shops before heading back to Calgary. Of course I had to take a picture of this hot rod that pulled up.