Exploring PEI :: Province House, the Birthplace of Canada

This weekend, Charlottetown celebrated its 157th birthday. We attended the celebrations at Victoria Park. We had a lot of fun there. We visited the library and then sat in front of Province House to have a quick snack and noticed it was open, so we went in!

We love exploring new places and playing tourist when we move to a new area.

Province House is a national historic site of Canada and is known as the birthplace of Canada. The building is beautiful and spacious. There are two main rooms you can visit, and a library.

The photo below shows part of the library:

 

The Province House is still used today for the Legislative Assembly:





Province House is known as the birthplace of Confederation. In September 1864, 23 political leaders from the British Colonies of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada (Ontario and Quebec) began the discussions that led in 1867 to the creation of the Dominion of Canada. (text from the Parks Canada).

The Parks Canada staff told us that the table and chairs (in the photo below) are the original ones from 1864. Andre noticed the spittoons right away! The staff member also explained that no one sat in the preferred seat (with the red curtain around it) during the historical meeting. That chair was used before during the Prince Edward Island Legislative Council. I thought it was very interesting to visit this room, especially since we learned about Confederation in our Canadian History last year. We will come back again this summer and see the sound & light show and historical vignettes.

If you would like to learn more about Confederation, you can visit the following site:

Confederation for Kids 



Our next home...on Prince Edward Island!

We haven't found a home yet, but our current house in Ontario is sold. We will be moving out at the end of May. My husband is already living and working on PEI. We are all looking forward to this move and can't wait to be together again under the same roof.

Sandstone Arch - Prince Edward Island - photo from Wikipedia

We are also looking forward to exploring the East Coast of Canada and the Island especially. PEI has so much to offer, history, culture, nature, and so much more. I will try to share our discoveries as much as possible with you on this blog, until then I will be busy packing (but still sharing our favourite books every Monday and whatever else of interest along the way).

2012 Update!

Happy New Year!

Blogging always takes a back seat when life gets really busy, doesn't it? It certainly has for our family, but it is time for an update! I was going to wait until the end of the week but the regular wrap-up post would have been so long, that I decided to do an update post first.

Christmas was wonderful, shared with Nana and Papa at home. We enjoyed a relaxed Christmas day, filled with yummy food, laughter and time together. I managed to make a few Christmas presents and received a beautiful homemade apron from my oldest daughter! She sewed it all in secret and did amazing!

We took time off before Christmas and only a few days after. Right before Christmas, my husband was given an offer of transfer with his work. We had only a couple of days to decide (we said yes), then Christmas came, then we had to get the house ready for sale. It was a very busy time after Christmas for us! We will be relocating from South Western Ontario to Prince Edward Island and we are all looking forward to this new adventure! We will be moving to PEI as soon as we can (my husband will be there at the end of February).

Reading some travel books at the local bookstore!

We started back to our school routine again last week, with only a couple of days of work, but this week is full schedule. Extra curricular activities have resumed and we are focused again, with some interruptions for house showings of course...

Our current read aloud!

The Great Canadian Beaverfest ~ Their First Concert!

The girls and I went to Beaverfest yesterday. Beaverfest was an outdoor three-day concert featuring Canadian talent. You can read more about it here. Sunday was for all ages and we decided to give it a try. There were three artists performing over the course of the afternoon. We saw Keshia Shante, Shawn Desman, and Fefe Dobson.

This was Celeste's and Adrienne's first experience at a modern music concert (we have been to the orchestra before) and they both really enjoyed it. Even though the artists weren't top hits, I think it was perfect for introducing them to live concerts of this kind. The crowd wasn't crazy, there was a lot of space to move around and we were outside. Celeste was able to dance around and even play with the free beach balls they were handing out. We all enjoyed watching the mascot (a beaver of course!) interact with everyone too!

The next concert on our wish list... WE Day!

Back to Posting...

I am back to posting a little. I find it funny that whenever I decide to take a break, I find ideas for posting and sharing!!

I have made a difficult decision but one that I hope you will understand. I decided to close the Book Sharing Monday posts. You can access all the archives of these book loving posts in the tabs, right below the main blog title. There is over 125 book sharing posts I wrote! I will continue to share with you our favourite books, but it won't be a regular Monday feature. I hope you will continue to talk about your favourite children books on your own blogs, I have discovered many interesting books from you! Thank you to all that participated over the last two years (actually more, since December 2008!).

Finally, I wanted to share a little bit about our day today. We took some time today to learn about the Elections in Canada. Adrienne and I researched information about each political party and each leader and local representative for each party. I have voted in the past, and my husband and I voted again today. I do feel that I learned more about Canadian politics today and I know that Adrienne learned a lot too. She had strong opinions about how she would vote if she could! We will be studying the results together as well and what they mean for our country.

Year 5 :: Week 12 :: Home Learning Report



This week was more productive than the last couple of weeks!

We continued working on all our Math and Language Arts.

In World Geography, we are now in Europe. We completed maps on Scandinavia and the trivia questions.

In Canadian History, we learned more about the settlers of Canada, and read several stories in The Spirit of Canada. We really enjoyed the excerpts from Canadian Crusoes and from Roughing it in the Bush. We learned and talked about the Rebellions of 1837.

We talked very briefly about Napoleon and looked at this painting from Jacques-Louis David, a painter that we will study in a few weeks as part of our Art Appreciation course.

In Music Appreciation, we continued and completed our study of Frederic Chopin. We listened to Classics for Kids to learn about his life and listen to some of his music. We completed a notebook page.

In Art, we worked on some splatter painting using this workbook. This Klutz book has been a lot of fun so far. We will be using these paintings to create something else next week. We splattered the paint on the paper and also used straws to push the paint around.

I love this little guy. Adrienne drew this one using the previous lessons of free brush strokes!

This week, we also attended a fun birthday party, took a family portrait, and survived the "Great Lakes Cyclone", which really didn't turn out to be much of a storm. It did give us an opportunity to practice our storm/tornado/cyclone safety plan...

My kids love storms and were very fast at packing up their stuff, bringing food, radio, and flashlights to the basement! 

Up in the Sky!

Adrienne spend last Sunday at a local airport and went gliding for the first time with her Air Cadets squadron. This was also her very first time in any kind of plane.  She said she loved it and is looking forward to flying again!

The Royal Canadian Air Cadets Glider:

The plane that pulled the glider up in the air:

Same plane, different view:

Up in the sky:



All photos taken by Adrienne.

Year 5 :: Week 11 Home Learning Report

This week was a lot of fun! We had my mother-in-law "Nana" stay with us for a couple of days.

Nana did a Christmas theme craft with the kids (see further down this post) and we also went bowling on another day.

We did manage to do our main subjects of Math and Language every day this past week, but not much else, so this post will be a bit short!

We finished reading aloud Chasing Vermeer this week. It was a great story and we all enjoyed it, even my youngest (6). Next week, we will finish our notebook pages on Vermeer and Chopin. I have been playing a few CDs over the last couple of weeks.

In Canadian History, we read about the War of 1812. I asked Andre and Adrienne to write a summary of the Battle of Detroit, since Detroit is not very far from where we live.





As I mentioned above, Nana did a craft with the kids. I think these turned out beautiful. They are string ball ornmanents. The instructions were in a book that she brought along, but you can find similar instructions here. 



Next week, I am hoping to get back to our regular routine and cover all our subjects!

Year 5 :: Week 9 Home Learning Report

In world geography, we are now learning about South America. We read books on Columbia, Brazil, and Argentina. While searching for interesting books for our geography at the library, I cam across this series by Bobbie Kalman. I have used her history books before, but these were new to us. There are full of photos from the countries and are perfect for our studies. I don't always read the entire book, but we always look at all the photos and talk about those.

In Canadian History, we read about Montcalm and Wolfe in the Plains of Abraham battle. We  watched the related episode from Canada: A People's History. We learned more about the colonists, the people who came from Europe to this new world. Andre and Adrienne researched what kind of food the Habitants ate and what the Voyageurs would have eaten as well.








In Science, we covered motion this week. Every week, while I am reading the Usborne Science Encyclopedia, I have encouraged Andre and Adrienne to take notes. We have done narration for years but note taking was new to them. They are both getting better every week.

In Art/Music Appreciation, we started a new artist, Vermeer. I thought it would be fun to read aloud Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett.
We have really enjoyed this book so far, with the puzzles to solve. There are some free resources at Scholastic for this book, including printable pentominoes. While completing our biography notebook page and looking at various paintings by Vermeer, we found out that The Concert (see below) was stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. You can watch the account from the Director of Security on Youtube here.

We had another nice week of homeschooling, getting our main subjects (LA and Math) done and having fun as well. We even did some French!

With Halloween coming soon, Celeste and I have been decorating a bit and doing some simple crafts. We like the dancing skeleton and paper banners in particular, from the Toy Maker site. They remind us of our Mexico study! 

Doors Open Ontario :: Windsor

Adrienne and I spent Sunday visiting several locations in the city of Windsor that were participating in the Doors Open Ontario event. Throughout Ontario, some private homes, businesses, schools, churches and others open their doors so that the community can learn about its history, culture and architecture.

We had a wonderful time and visited nine different places. I am sharing with you a few of our favourites.

Our first stop was at the Windsor Airport. There is one remaining World War II hangar there. It was the home of the #7 Elementary Flying Training School from 1941-1945. This hangar is now the location of the Canadian Historical Aircraft Association.

Our next stop is a very square two storey building built in 1914. It served as Walkerville no. 1 Hydro Sub Station until 2003 and now is home to an architectural firm. The highlight of that building was the iron staircase!

I couldn't manage a full photo of the front of the building, but it looks very similar to the back shown in the photo above.

We went to Willistead Manor next. Adrienne and I were really looking forward to seeing the inside of this Edwardian mansion (you can see the outside here). We were not disappointed! There were guides in most rooms sharing interesting details about the history of the manor. We were told about Yuletide Festivities at Willistead and we'll make sure to come back for them!

We thought maybe this opening was a secret passage to another room, it was actually a safe!

 There were many wood carving details all throughout the house.

All the furnishings from Willistead were moved out when Edward Walker's widow moved to the USA,

but the restoration of the manor included acquiring pieces that would reflect that time period, along with the choices of wallpaper.

Below is the master bedroom:

More wood carving details can be found outside too:

On our way to the next site, we noticed the house in the photo below. Adrienne took the photo. We were both amazed at the roof and how it curves on the ends, where the eaves normally are.

We went to a few other places after that, but we didn't take many photos. We visited a school built in 1927 that is still open. They kept a few areas with original flooring and chalkboars. We also visited a Tudor style home that, after being a private residence, was once a convent and is now a private school and retreat centre.  

We also went to a private home (that happened to be for sale). It was built in 1915 and has an Arts and Crafts design. We both really liked the entrance.

Our next stop was the Francois Baby House which is now the Windsor Community Museum. This Georgian-style home was built in 1812. The house is surrounded by tall modern buildings, it looks out of place, but I am glad it has been preserved.  There was a small exhibition inside called Windsor Weddings.

We also visited a church. This church started as a mission to the Hurons in 1728, the current building in the Gothic Revival style was built in 1842-45, the tower and sanctuary in 1870-74. We couldn't take photos inside, but it was gorgeous. The stained glass was amazing. It is nice to see these style of churches, they reminded me of the churches in France. I took a photo from the front entrance.

Adrienne and I really enjoyed our day learning about the local history

and looking at the architectural details of some of the buildings.

If you live in Ontario and are interested in this event, you can read more on the main site Doors Open Ontario for locations and dates. This yearly event starts in April and continues until October.