Crawford Lake

On May 3rd (yes, that's almost two months ago, I'm behind agaaaaiiiinnnn!!!) I went with Marietta's class to Crawford Lake for the day. I always enjoy these school trips as it gives a chance to see the kids with their classmates, know the teacher a bit more and see how the class functions as a unit. I have had the extra ability to see this as I have been helping out in the Grade 3/4 class since April doing some marking and helping with the Phys. Ed. class. This has especially been nice to get to know who the students are in their "new" school. It's nice to get a parents perspective of the school, teachers and kids so you can better understand your children when they come home and talk about their day. I have enjoyed it and usually try to make a point of going with on their trips.

The grade 3/4 was studying the Natives and the Iroquoians (the people of the longhouse) and so to compliment this study they had a day trip to Crawford Lake. Through archeology study they discovered that many years ago their was a Iroquois village at Crawford Lake. The kids had an opportunity to see an Iroquois setup, longhouse, and various artifacts that would have been used by the people, helping them to better visualize and understand what they had been learning. And as parents ... we learned lots to, oh to have the time to go back to school - I'm sure most of us would enjoy it and get more out of it the second time around :)




















The Longhouse
















Inside the longhouse the guide lite a small fire to demonstrate how the fire would rise and go up through the roof holes/vents. By this he also demonstrated how much smoke actually remained in the long house and did not go through the vents, thus explaining of the the main reasons why the life expectancy of the Iroquoian people was only around 35 years.
















The flash on the other side of the group is Marietta taking a picture :)































Below they are trying on a baby carrier (cradleboard. The baby was placed in the hide part and carried on their back by placing a strap around their forehead. And I thought I had neck and shoulder problems. Can you imagine the stress this would put on your head and neck to carry a baby all day long in one of these.

Marietta grinding cornmeal - rock on rock

After spending time in the longhouse viewing all the different items applicable to the Iroquois the guide taught the kids a game that the people would play. They would hold their hand out like Marietta is doing and place a stick on the top of their hand. Then they would quickly pull their hand out and catch the stick (without tossing the stick up or anything of that assort, just pull and catch).

Well that wasn't really all that hard, and for those who cheated and would toss the stick upwards to give themselves enough time to catch the stick they quickly learned that this technique was not going to work for the rest of the game. Once you master one stick you move on to two, and then three, etc. and see how many you can do.

Here the kids are trying nine. As you can see Marietta dropped a few :)

After lunch we were free to walk the trails around Crawford lake and view the nature/wild.

Trillium - Ontario's provincial flower (and I just learned from a couple websites that it is not illegal to pick the trillium - although tranplanting this wildflower is very difficult and often results in death - hence the reason they rather you didn't pick or transplant I guess)

My group: Marietta, Tejada, Hailey and Syvannah

I think Marietta took a picture of every bush, shrub, tree, grass, leaf, etc. along the way :) Let's just say she loves photography

A part of the class and their leaders. During our walk we "ran" into a couple other groups and decided to sit down for a group shot.

It was a beautiful day, the weather was gorgeous - warm but not too hot, sunny but not too much. Considering the cool/wet spring we were having it turned out very nice!!