Grouptime events

These days people keep in touch with one another through emails, chat lines and other forms of social media.  A long time ago the only way was to send letters by post. The children wrote letters and dropped them off to the nearest mailbox.  They were excited about the walk and predicted how many sleeps it would take till their letters arrived.  We also sent emails to our families and they figured it would be a whole lot faster than sending letters by post.  We constructed our own mail box and we'll be "mailing" letters to one another as each of the children take turns be the mail carrier of the day.

We learned that in the Pioneer days the children did a lot of work at home and it was expected of them to do chores to help the family.  Safety rules have also changed overtime on what children are allowed and not allowed to do by themselves. In our discussion they pointed out that although we don't do the same chores or have the same rules like in the pioneer days we still help our parents because it's important to work together as a family.  We enjoyed taking turns making buckwheat pancakes, whipped butter, oatmeal and washed our dishes after the feast was done.  We had so much fun didn't seem like work at all!

Today we began our exploration of then and now. The children were particularly curious about how it was like at home in the olden days cooking, grooming and the toys children. To get a sense of how different life was back then we watched a video about the Pioneers in Canada. They were amazed by the chores and activities children can do in the olden days. Aston noticed that "they did a lot of work but it might be fun" he thought . Using a Venn diagram we compared our daily activities to that of the Pioneers. The main difference was that people made and collected their own supplies whereas these days we buy most of our things. Children back then were involved in the family livelihood; they were independent and free. Some things have stayed the same. Simone pointed out that like in the olden days families help each other. In the next few days we'll act, dress-up and live like the Pioneers. We'll make our food from scratch and build things using tools from the olden...