Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Homemade Valentines & a Special Event!

This week was a lot of fun! We had a great productive week with our school work. We finished watching the Europe travel DVDs that I mentioned last week. Next week we will be learning about Africa!

In Canadian History, we read more about the Canadian Pacific Railway and how it was built using this great book. We learned about the Klondike Gold Rush and also covered a bit of world history for that time period. 

We started again French this week on Monday and did a little relaxed test on Friday.

On Thursday we decided to start on our Valentine Cards for the exchange we are participating in. We made sixteen cards, following Adrienne's idea of cutting an old local map for one side and pink or red construction paper for the opposite side. I think they turned out great. We also added some information about where we live. We are using a blank USA states map to keep track of where we send the cards and where the ones we will receive are coming from.  While I was cutting the map and hearts (Adrienne did the pasting and writing), Adrienne read aloud The Story of Valentine's Day by Clyde Bulla. It's a great non-fiction book on the origins of Valentine's Day, and I will be sharing more about it tomorrow.

On Tuesday evening, we attended a library event for the Family Literacy Day and had a great time. We also were given free new books! We didn't expect that so it was a wonderful surprise. We love books! Sadly, only 1 other family showed up for the event. It was still fun, but it always makes me sad to see that the library is being under-used so much in this area.

That evening, one of the boys in the other family mentioned that an author was coming to his school on that Friday for a special presentation. When he mentioned the author's name, I knew I had to ask him which school he went to. The author is Canadian, his name is Shane Peacock and he writes a great series of books called The Boy Sherlock Holmes. Adrienne read last year this series and loved them. She counts this author as one of her top five favourites. The school that the author was visiting was the school my children attended a couple of years ago for only one year. I decided I had nothing to loose by contacting the principal and asking if we could attend. The worse that could happen was a "no".

The principal emailed back and said that, although it was an unusual request, she would allow us to attend the presentation!

So, on Friday afternoon, Adrienne and I went to the local public school and listened to an awesome presentation by Shane Peacock. He chatted with Adrienne before the start of the event and seemed pleased to find out that she had read all the books in the series. He asked her which was her favourite and explained what message he was trying to pass on through the story. Unfortunately, it seemed that most of the other kids hadn't read all the books. She knew a particular answer to a question that he asked the audience but told her she wasn't allowed to participate, since she was the only one that had read the book! He referred back to her a few times. The presentation was really well done, he talked about how he became an author, stressing on how you need to start at the bottom and work hard to get to where he is now. He promoted the love for books and reading. It was an awesome event!


This week is the start of Journey North Mystery Class. If you haven't heard about it, make sure to visit their site. It might be an activity you would enjoy (and it's free!). I can't say enough how much we love this activity.

Finally, if you would like to read other homeschool families wrap-up posts, be sure to visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.