Blossom On The Road! By Eleanor, Miranda and Sophia

Part 1: Sophia

On Wednesdays, our families do home school swaps, where either Sophia and Eleanor go over to Miranda's house, or Miranda goes over to Sophia and Eleanor's house, and we do home school! We call ourselves BLOSSOM.

Last weekend, we went on a road trip to Victoria as a field trip all together in Miranda's family's Westfalia van. It was a fantastic trip accompanied by awesome playlists and car breakdowns!

Us in the broken-down van, fretting our future.

But then, we drove into the parking lot of a local Dairy Queen and one of the employees fixed our van for us!

Luckily Miranda is an artist and brings supplies with her everywhere she goes - so here we are making emergency Thank You cards for the man who fixed our van!

After our van was fixed, our Granny and Papa arrived and treated us to lunch at the Dairy Queen.

First Stop: Royal BC Museum - Actually learning something! 

(Just kidding, I learned that Miranda is awesome and brings art supplies with her everywhere, and that it is a true fact that strangers are friends you haven't met yet.)

After the DQ adventure we went to the Royal BC Museum, where we first went into the Human History Exhibit.

First we saw a bunch of exhibits about lost languages of the First Nations people from BC. British Columbia has 64 First Nations first languages and BC has 80% of all the first nations languages in Canada. Unfortunately, at residential schools, children were made to learn English and stop speaking or forget their mother tongues.

(Eleanor's note: "I have been studying communities and I think losing your language would be like losing your life. If the grandparents and parents who always taught the kids lost the kids and when the kids came back they couldn't understand them any more it would be heart breaking. if was a mama and my kid got sent away and my kids came back and I started speaking my language to my kids and they didn't know my language, it would break my heart. And that happened! That really happened! people! Have a heart!")

Listening to the language of the Tahltan, the people our church is connected with.

Language board of BC

My favourite bit of this exhibit was a giant woven basket called the Cradle of Language. You could sit in it and listen to old recordings of lost First Nations languages. You can see a video of us in the Cradle of Language by clicking HERE.

A beautiful baby carrier.

One of the TRC calls to action

Then we went into a First Nations gallery and posted all over the gallery were the 94 Calls to Action issued by the Truth and Reconciliation commission. It was entrancing and inspiring to see the roots of our country's history.

This was us panning for gold, super cool for Miranda who is studying BC Gold Rush history in Grade 5 Social Studies!

We went to the western bit of the Human History gallery. We saw a Gold Rush exhibit, a pretend marine ship and a pretend town with a movie theatre with old Charlie Chaplin movies I got sucked into and loved watching.

We met Shrimpy the shrimp.

We named this wooly mammoth George. Talk about extreme environments!

Then we went into the Natural History exhibit where we looked at lots of nature - such as wooly mammoths with real ice walls, tidal pools by sea lion exhibits, and a pretend submarine filled with aquatic artifacts including a ninja crab - which was helpful as I'm learning about exploring extreme environments - like in the deep ocean!

Ninja Crab!

I loved coming here, it was fun and memorable experience, but I wish I had gotten the moccasins I saw in the gift shop! Sophia, signing off.

Pretend submarine!

 Part 2: Goldstream Provincial Park by Miranda

On Monday morning Granny and Papa took us on a hike at Goldstream Park. It was called Goldstream Park because that was where explorers found gold a long time ago during the Gold Rush. Granny and Papa told us that some people still come and pan for gold in the river.

Granny is teaching us about the salmon life cycle. The Goldstream river is where you can come and see the salmon somehow returning from the ocean to their birthplace! Scientists still don't really know how the salmon do it!

Learning about the Goldstream river.

Here we were looking at different flowers to see if we could match them up to the flower book back at their house.

Here we are at Goldstream Falls. Sophia was making her own waterfall by moving rocks and putting rocks in different places.

There were 195 steps! (I think!)

I really liked how Granny and Papa took us to an awesome playground at the park, and I really liked seeing the waterfall too. We pretended we were forest adventurers and we went down the stream and found different things. I really liked looking at the Goldstream river and I saw tiny little glints of gold-looking stuff. I loved it!

I learned a lot about the forest this time. This time I stopped and looked around and saw different things I had never seen before. I loved learning all the things about the river too, that I never knew before. Granny is a really good teacher! I loved it!

I'm going to hand things over to Eleanor now and she is going to tell you all about our visit to the Provincial legislature buildings, but I just wanted to say that the people who worked there were really nice to Todelo and Ittle, my and Eleanor's favourite stuffies. Here they are below, tucked in our shirts ready to go in! When we went into the legislature buildings we all had to go through a security check point and we all had to put our loose items into a bucket to be x-rayed. We had to put Ittle and Todelo in too! The security guards were really nice about it. We had to give our stuffies to security when we went in to the legislative assembly viewing gallery.

Part 3: The BC Provincial Legislature Buildings (aka BC Parliament)

 Just before we went in to the BC Leg for a tour, we met Queen Victoria! (I loved her crown.) I think they had an actress playing Queen Victoria because it was almost Victoria Day and also we were in Victoria!

Queen Victoria told us where she comes from they don't smile in pictures, but we were so excited it was hard not to smile!

On our tour we saw this quilt which was a quilt made by the families of First Nations women who were missing or were murdered. Some of the squares were made out of their clothes and possessions.  I thought it was just terrible that they were missing or murdered. The world should not be like that.

This is Mary Ellen Smith. (An actress playing her.)

 We learned about Mary Ellen Smith. She was the first women in all of the BC Legislature. When she was elected women used to not be considered PERSONS under the law. They gave birth to persons, they raised persons, but they were not persons! She got elected before women were considered persons under the law! When I heard this speech, it made me feel like women can really do anything!

This is beauty. Admire it. They made this building so beautiful to show our amazing country and where we live. It shows how beautiful it ca be.

When my Mum asked Sophia why they made the buildings so beautiful, she said: "Because this is where they decide our future." I think the government wants our future to be bright and beautiful.

We went on a tour of the buildings and we sat in the viewing gallery and watched a bit of the debate. A lot of the members weren't there so it was not that exciting. They were talking about families, though.

And then..... Miranda's MLA in her riding, Mabel Elmore, called us AND ASKED US IF WE WERE STILL THERE. She came out and asked us if we would like to come back into the parliament buildings and have a private tour! She took us all around the places we didn't go on the regular tour. 

This was a viewing room where people were typing out the words from the debate in the assembly to silent TVs and sending all the TV signals to TV stations. They were also typing down everything that got said for records.

We loved going into the MLA's bathroom, it wasn't exactly fancy but it was really old and kind of nice, but the Queen might have sat on the toilet I sat on. Sometimes people call toilets "thrones", so I could say I sat on the Queen's royal throne!

We went to the library. The public could actually take out books there!

There were no children's books, but there was one comic book, an Archie comic book.

Betty and Veronica visited Victoria!

Ms. Elmore gave us awesome badges. We got them for our Girl Guide blankets! One says "Government Girls" and one has the BC crest. (Just like the one we're standing in front of in this picture.

One of the interesting things we learned on this tour was what the BC Coat of Arms is supposed to look like and how there are so many wrong coat of arms around the legislature buildings, ones where the big horn sheep's tongue is sticking out, or ones where the sun is setting on the British Empire and don't even tell me about the Lion without the dogwood necklace!

We were so excited! We just completed half of the best day of our lives!

Here I am standing in front of Queen Victoria. it is actually supposed to be facing towards the leg, but they faced it the other way, so then Her Majesty could look out to the harbour.

Here we are sitting with George, a statue at the Navy memorial where my grandparents have a stone.

Here is a beautiful scene taken from beside the Milestones looking out onto the harbour and you can see in the middle of the night a big glowing building, it looks os beautiful doesn't it?

This is Sophia looking at yet another coat of arms!

This is Ruby! Finally it was after 10 o'clock at night and we said goodnight to all the carriage horses one their way to the stables for bed.

Our trip to Victoria was amazing, it couldn't have been better! We all want to go back as soon as possible. Thanks for listening!

Here we are today, writing our thank you letters to Mabel Elmore!

Making Beautiful Things Out Of Dust

Two weeks ago when we met, we learned about Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day where we remember what Adoph Hitler did and all of the jews and all of the people who were in concentration camps, and many people died. 6 million Jewish people died, and over 5 million other people who were gay and lesbian, gypsies, people who had dark skin and people who opposed Hitler were all taken from their homes and put into concentration camps and many of them died.

It was bad. It was sorrowful time when many lives came to an end. Thankfully we can learn about this so that we can learn about this so we can recognize not to do things like this again.

One of the things we learned was that at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC there are thousands of ceramic tiles made by children who wanted to remember the Holocaust. We made our own memorial tiles out of salt dough.

Insert pictures of tiles here.


Today, when we met, we were studying different kinds of poetry. We listened and looked at poems by e e cummings, W.H. Auden and Rudyard Kipling, Shel Silverstein and A.A. Milne. We each took a favourite book of poetry and chose poems to read aloud.

Eleanor reads from A Light In The Attic by Shel Silverstein

Miranda reads from Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Sophia reads from Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne

We also talked about different forms of poetry. Sophia shared some haiku she had written when she was reflecting on a poster for some summer soccer, music and arts camps she had seen:

Music

Notes slur together
Kickdrums and snares keep the time.
This is our music. 

Soccer
Feet pounding in hope.
We know this is our game now.
Victory in view. 

Art
A dip in the pot.
Two strokes on a canvas page.
A new masterpiece. 

We spent some time learning about the poetry form of the cinquain. A cinquain is a five-line poem and it starts with a noun, then 2 adjectives, then three words ending with -ING, then a four word phrase and then a synonym for the first word (your topic). We then spent some time together on how we felt when we learned about the Holocaust two weeks before. We had been reflecting during the morning on how a poem can paint a picture in our minds with just a few words, or how poetry can convey sadness, anger or humour and fun. We spent some time brainstorming ideas from our recollections.  These are the cinquains that the three of us (Miranda, Sophia and Eleanor) wrote together.

Soldier
Brave, courageous
Hoping, caring, wanting
Fighting for their rights
Warrior.

Holocaust
Horrible devastation
Killing, stopping, hating
Lives frozen in time
Lost

Remembrance
Vivid nightmare
Learning, weeping, staying
We say never again
Recollection

Street Smarts (Girl Guide Badge) by $ophia

This term Eleanor and I started taking the sky train to school.

We decided this would be a great opportunity for me to earn my street wise girl guide badge!

This is us embarking on our first quest on transit.

For my girl guide badge requirements I have to:

1. draw a map of my route to school
2. be able to read a street map and give directions
3. brainstorm the top 10 safety tips every kid should know
4. design a colouring book for kids about safety
5. brainstorm ways to increase my own personal safety
6. create a puppet show for kids about safety.

It's still a work in progress but I'm working on it.

So far I've done numbers 1, 2, & 5. I'm half way through 3 too.

Until next time I'm $ophia Pallister, signing off.

GOOD NIGHT!!!!

Super-Awesome Science with Eleanor Pallister!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First of all, speaking of earth science, here is a little bit of art my family did where we painted rocks!

I have a learned a lot about plants this term. I am super, super, super, excited. I think you will be too when you hear I coloured celery! Colouring the celery taught me about water in plants veins. 

 This is me, my friend Miranda and Sophia collecting leaf specimens. We noticed that the leaves could be ver small and point or very big and round.

This is us THROWING leaf specimens!

This is when we were looking at seeds and how seeds travel in little tiny helicopters. (Not real helicopters. They are shaped with sort of a helicopter propellor on them, and spin.) Trees have lots of different ways to spread their seeds and some are with helicopters!

This is a tree which some really odd sap was coming out of, if you look closely you can see on a diagonal slant off my shoulder, you can see sort of a whitish purple blomp of sap. It came out of the tree but but didnt ever drip down far enough so a solid crust formed around it and when you touched it would sort of dent in.

This is a tree which has been uprooted. This was not the only tree which we saw uprooted in our neighbourhood, there were about 3-5 trees we saw like his after the wind storm. The reason why all these trees which which are very supportive was that in the past when we had wind storms, there usually weren't droughts before that. But this summer there was a drought right before the windstorm so all of the roots were dry, and not strong. So that's why when the windstorm came tree branches and trees fell over like crazy. This part where my foot is, is a massive, massive, massive tree root where it just snapped!

This is a nursing tree which I found on a hike I went on.  (Not like milk-nursing, it is called a nursing tree because it gave up it's stump/roots and is giving its nutrients to make a new tree.) So this old tree died and new trees seeds got blown on to it, and the weather made it become a new tree.

This is me with my brownie troop going tree planting! It was so mega-fun! I hung out with all of my friends. The trees were little babies and they were in little pots. There were 3 simple steps to planting the trees. Step 1: take the plant out of the pot. Step 2: take your tree and place it in the hole. Step 3: re-bury the tree, but make sure it is not up to the stem or it will rot and grow moldy and snap and die! We had mega-awesome fun and I even saw a salmon go up stream to lay its eggs. We watched it go upstream 6 times and on the last time it made it! And I got a tree planting t-shirt.

This term I have made a amazing car/rocketship/hippopotamus! In this picture I would like to show you how I used screws and hinges to make a door. In the pictures above you can see the wings of the rocket ship we attached them by gluing and taping them on. We also put on wheels but a few of them are falling off. We haven't finished painting it yet.

The steering wheel was made from a old CD and a toilet paper tube. The gear shift lever is made of a styrofoam ball, and old box and a whole lot of tape! If you can look above the steering wheel, that is the windshield window. We used blue cellophane, and taped it on. it was mega-fun and amazing to do it. 

This is the control panel. it shows so many amazing buttons and things, or if you're low on gas, or honk your horn, or a windshield wiper, though the windshield wiper we made broke. 

They are some birds which I saw outside my front window, they were flying from lawn to lawn to lawn. it was like they all had the same mind! They flew all at the same time from lawn to lawn and up on to telephone lines, to lines. it was a amazing how they did it.

Oh, excuse me! That's not supposed to be on here! Next slide!!!!