Oh Canada......

Yes I'm braggin' on our map. ;-)

I drew that for her to colour & label, from a picture in a book - and I Can. Not. Draw.

Seriously. My tigers get accused of being alligators. *grin*

But - this kinda looks like Canada, yes? I mean - sure, the proportions are quite off and there's a lot of little islands missing up north, but hey..it still looks more or less like Canada. I think. Mostly. Kinda? LOL

Here's the original picture in the book:



Cindy did all of the colours and labels and gluing on of teepees and igloos and longhouses and whatnot - and had a lot of fun doing it.

Why did we make this? Because the picture in the Canadian history book was about as exciting as belly button lint - and this is a kid who loves to create things...so off we went, creating a new map...a full size one that is now hanging on the living room wall (that's bristol board - poster board ) and is actually quite fun to look at, spurring various discussions about who those peoples are (or were, like the Beothuk - Cindy was shocked to learn that not only have species of animals become extinct, but races of *people* as well), where/how they live(d), languages, and all sorts of other stuff.

Speaking of history...

Do you know what I remember of Canadian History in school? Grade seven Social Studies stands out - because of the teacher who ate chips at his desk and threw chalk at kids who misbehaved. *poink!* right off the forehead - for a guy who didn't seem to pay much attention, his aim was quite good.

What am I trying to say? That history was B.O.R.I.N.G. .... I remember dull texts and lists of dates that I had to memorize for tests - dates which I held in my mind long enough to ace the test and promptly dumped them out.

I don't want Cindy's impression of history to be like mine was - so I'm on the prowl for some good Canadian history books aside from what we have (tell you in a minute) and ideas for projects....Right now, we have Story of Canada and The Kids Book of Canadian History
..these are both 'overview' types of books and I'm trying to build from there....adding in other books, websites, videos, etc.....

What I'm looking for is to give her a "big picture" - she's not done any Canadian History at all (they didn't touch it up to the 5th year she spent in public school and we didn't go there last year)...so I'd like to take the brush and paint the big picture for her.....we can dig into the finer details at a later point - of course, that also depends on her..if she gets intrigued by a certain explorer or such, I'm not going to insist we set him down and move on - if she wants to investigate *such and such* or *so and so* farther, we certainly will.... but the plan is to build that big picture, give her a good idea of how our country came about.

{I'd love to get my paws on these dvds - Canada: A People's History (scroll down a little, they're numbers 3,4,5,6 ) ...but ouch, pricey to buy them all! }

/ramble

Today is meant to be our rescheduled 'not back to school picnic' with the provincial group, out at a shore here - it was supposed to be last week, but we got rained out... I think it's going to be nice today, if a little chilly at first...

Ha - if I was the easily spooked sort, I'd have hair standing on end right now... a hard rubber ball with beads inside just came slowly rolling down the stairs. By itself. In the dark at a bit before 6am. It made a creepy sounding thunk-thunk-thunk as it came down....

But we have six cats. One of whom plays with everything *except* his own cat toys. I think I know who might be standing at the top of those stairs. *grin*