Wow. Not a single additional post in 2018. Damn. I kinda suck at this keeping up with a blog thing.
Honestly, not much new going on. We've been 90% unschooling lately. Brianna goes to England this summer. Olivia is finally reading with a LOT more fluency. Joshua is still not getting speech therapy but is finally getting OT again.
I am going to be starting a new blog about our road trips. Living on the road. Places we've gone. Off the beaten path cool stuff. I'll post a link here once I've got something going
Showing posts with label Geography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geography. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Country Study - Thailand
Corresponding with our Universal Yum box, we studied Thailand. We had loads of fun opening our first Yum Box. The girls are super happy that I signed us up for it and can't wait for the next one each month.
Here's some resources that we used:
The Impossible (movie)
Foods of Thailand (book)
Social Studies Explorer: Thailand (book)
Culture in Thailand (book)
The Changing Face of... Thailand (book)
How Tsunamis Work (youtube video)
We also youtubed various videos on actual tsunami footage from 2004.
Tsunami re-creation
Brianna wrote a report on the 2004 tsunami. This was her best researched report in a while, I think she enjoyed putting it together!
Here's some resources that we used:
The Impossible (movie)
Foods of Thailand (book)
Social Studies Explorer: Thailand (book)
Culture in Thailand (book)
The Changing Face of... Thailand (book)
How Tsunamis Work (youtube video)
We also youtubed various videos on actual tsunami footage from 2004.
Tsunami re-creation
Brianna wrote a report on the 2004 tsunami. This was her best researched report in a while, I think she enjoyed putting it together!
Friday, October 14, 2016
Weekly Wrap Up - 10/14/16
The remnants of sickies are still hanging around our house. As I'm sure you don't want to see a pile of snotty Kleenex, this is a picture-less Wrap Up.
This week is Fire Prevention/Safety Week. We started out the week watching a video our local firefighters put together about smoke detector and battery replacements. We just checked and changed batteries in ours last week so it was a "yay we already did that!" moment.
Being that it's my busy season for my home business, the girls have had a lot of independent work. I mean, most of Brianna's already is, but Olivia too has been mostly working on Reading Eggs and Math Seeds rather than paper worksheets.
We did a nature walk. The girls insist on calling it a "nature walk" even if it's something we do often and it's right next to our house *sigh*
We started our first Country Study in over a year. Getting a subscription to Universal Yums certainly helped get the ball rolling! (check my post about Universal Yums here) Our Country Study this round is Thailand. Look for a post next week to read all about it!
Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip Homeschool Moms
This week is Fire Prevention/Safety Week. We started out the week watching a video our local firefighters put together about smoke detector and battery replacements. We just checked and changed batteries in ours last week so it was a "yay we already did that!" moment.
Being that it's my busy season for my home business, the girls have had a lot of independent work. I mean, most of Brianna's already is, but Olivia too has been mostly working on Reading Eggs and Math Seeds rather than paper worksheets.
We did a nature walk. The girls insist on calling it a "nature walk" even if it's something we do often and it's right next to our house *sigh*
We started our first Country Study in over a year. Getting a subscription to Universal Yums certainly helped get the ball rolling! (check my post about Universal Yums here) Our Country Study this round is Thailand. Look for a post next week to read all about it!
Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip Homeschool Moms
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Universal Yums
The Hmmm...schooling Mom wrote a blog post about Universal Yums a while ago and I knew this would be something my kids would love. And it ties perfectly to our Country Studies!
Thankfully, in Canada, we are considered international so we get our boxes later than the US. Which means I get to find out what country is coming up this month so I can plan a country study around it.
I was worried about Olivia, the crazy picky eater not getting any enjoyment out of this as we struggle to get her to try basic foods let alone foods that "look weird" or have another language on the packaging.
Thankfully, in Canada, we are considered international so we get our boxes later than the US. Which means I get to find out what country is coming up this month so I can plan a country study around it.
When you first open the box you see a tissue paper flag (which I thought was awesome) and a little information book. The information book gives you some info on the country, some fun trivia and and explanation of what each snack is.
We signed up for the smaller snack box which promises a minimum of 6 snacks. Clearly, they are very generous with their "minimum of 6" as we got 9 different snacks and a total of 17 items!
I was worried about Olivia, the crazy picky eater not getting any enjoyment out of this as we struggle to get her to try basic foods let alone foods that "look weird" or have another language on the packaging.
She really impressed me though! She actually tried *everything*. There were items she didn't like but didn't let that discourage her from trying the next item.
Here is her "super spicy face" (not surprisingly, being Thailand, there were a few spicy snacks. This was her face towards the bread sticks, yet she ended up eating almost the whole box!
Brianna is a big food lover like me so I knew the monthly snack boxes would be right up her alley. Here she's testing the spicy sesame peanuts. "They're not *bad* but the sesame makes them wrong!"
Brianna's favorite item was the coconut chips.
Olivia had a tie for favorite items being the garlic bread toast (basically garlic melba toast) and strawberry wafers.
My favorite item was the tea drink (sorry, no pic). It was similar in flavour and texture to a milkshake. It instructed to drink it hot or cold, we went for warm.
Brianna's favorite item was the coconut chips.
Olivia had a tie for favorite items being the garlic bread toast (basically garlic melba toast) and strawberry wafers.
My favorite item was the tea drink (sorry, no pic). It was similar in flavour and texture to a milkshake. It instructed to drink it hot or cold, we went for warm.
The girls loved this addition to our Country Studies and look forward to the next box. While it's a money spending thing (and I'm a super frugal person), it's totally worth it!
Linking up with Hip Homeschool Moms and Practical Mom
Linking up with Hip Homeschool Moms and Practical Mom
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Current Curriculum - September 2016
This post contains NO affiliate links
Previous post from last July here.
This post coincides with iHomeschool Network's Annual Blog Hop. This week (which I'm late on!) is Curriculum Week. Check next week for School Room Week.
We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. Joshua started "Preschool" on Sept 6, 2016. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10, Olivia is anywhere from Gr. 1-3, Joshua is preschool/Kindy.
So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.
Joshua:
He's juuuust starting out so is mostly using left overs from Olivia as we see what he like/works well for him. Some of the more common printables that we're grabbing are from 1+1+1=1, Our Little Monkeys, Homeschool Creations, Confessions of a Homeschooler and Teachers Pay Teachers.
He's still working on speech with his speech therapist. At the time of this writing, he is approx 1 year "behind" in his speech for the typical 3 yr 3 mth old child. This is WAY better than his completely non verbal-ness from a few months ago, so we'll take it! We still make use of sign language. He still uses it for words he doesn't know and we'll use it when we are trying to figure out his gibberish.
Once he has a better grasp on constant language we'll start ABCMouse with him. Olivia really liked it and he loved watching her when she did her lessons so is already familiar with it.
Olivia:
English:
We're playing around in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We do dictations for Brave Writer's Friday Freewrite and to write her Brownie Journal (basically, what she did at Brownies on a given day).
We're almost done 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program. Olivia picked up a lot of the more "sight" words with that. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words. We have oodles of early readers that we share in reading and Olivia is reading more and more of the words in each book.
In the spring started Reading Eggs, an online program like ABC Mouse, but instead of learning sounds, she's now using it to read. She loves it and asks to work on it even on the weekends.
Math:
Olivia is almost done Early Math on Khan Academy. Her main curriculum is Math Mammoth, in which she just started the Gr. 2 level. It worked well for her for Gr. 1, so I hope it continues to!
With our ReadingEggs subscription came a subscription to MathSeeds which is meant for 3-8 year olds. MathSeeds starts out really young (Olivia was being made to identify numbers), but she doesn't seem to care. I'm not sure (since she didn't care) if there is a test out area to start at a higher level.
Extra Curricular:
Olivia just finished her 2nd year of soccer. She has grown so much in it since last year. Last year she would pick grass and stare off into space. This year she actively took part in drills, actually went after the ball on the field and even scored 2 goals!
Olivia joined Brownies this year. I was a Brownie as a girl, so was super excited for her to start. For some reason, she's picking up on Brianna's "I can't sleep away" and is nervous about the possibility of camps. She's slept at a friend's house several times with no issue, so I don't think it'll be a problem, but she sure thinks it will be!
Brianna:
Math:
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions. However, she's been struggling so much with math that we're trying something new altogether. We've started Time4Learning. She responds really well to "computer school work" so I'm hoping this helps with her math. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts.
Brianna struggles a lot with math so she's "behind", only doing Gr. 6. But that's the beauty of homeschooling. She can be working on Gr. 10/11 science while being years behind in math. Math is something that we spend a lot of time trying out different things for.
English:
We're semi-using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" (bits and pieces, at least) Brianna especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes. For spelling, as always, we don't do a lot of focus on spelling because of Brianna's Dysgraphia. Her spelling HAS improved on it's own through the use of texting, social media and using spell check on her typed work. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo for the 3rd time. The first year, she struggled to hit 12,000 words. Last year she did an impressive 20,000 and wasn't even done her story! We use CNN's Student News for daily writing (we watch the clip and she picks one topic to write a summary about).
French:
Brianna is almost done her first year of Rosetta Stone. My grandma bought the kids the full 5 year lesson set, so she'll be good through high school. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours tests Brianna's French periodically.
Arts:
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.
She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll learn about him and read/watch some plays.
She wants to do some basic art lessons to improve her drawing, so I'm looking into some good lessons for that. She also wants to learn to sew. She took a crochet class in the winter and will hopefully look to improve further in that.
Phys Ed/Health:
Brianna normally runs with the Cornwall MultiSport Club. This year I had back to back surgeries, one being major abdominal surgery, so her coach was out of commission for the summer. Brianna is very much not self-motivating, but we hope to get her back into basic training now that I'm almost 100%. She is still walking/running/biking 10k for Terry Fox this year. She does youth yoga classes a couple times a month and yoga videos at home. Because she is overly flexible, she loves it and it greatly improves her balance and fidgeting.
Civics:
We took part in our town's first Pride parade this year, so there will be a lot of diversity learning going on in the near future.
Life Skills:
Brianna babysits and does random jobs for neighbours. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's looking forward to being able to get a "real" job in a couple years. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us.
Extra Curriculars:
Like Olivia, Brianna is signed up for Girl Guides this year. For her age group, she will be in PathFinders. As she has anxieties about sleeping away from home, she is super nervous about camps, but we will be trying to get her to sleepover more in the coming months at various friends' so she can try to get used to it. She also joined a Teen Tuesday program through the library where she gets to hang out with kids her age and do various activities.
Both Girls:
History/Geography:
We're are going to start doing Country Studies again. The kids really enjoyed them. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will. We'll be reading through History of the World and Geography of the World as our his/geo base outside of the Country Studies.
Science:
We're currently finishing up on our Biology course. After that, we'll be taking a break from a set topic while I can put together a Weather unit. Since we live in Canada and winter is coming, it works lol Both girls went to science camp over the summer and had a blast.
Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.
Reading:
I made a post here about our reading plans for the year, with book titles and links.
Previous post from last July here.
This post coincides with iHomeschool Network's Annual Blog Hop. This week (which I'm late on!) is Curriculum Week. Check next week for School Room Week.
We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. Joshua started "Preschool" on Sept 6, 2016. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10, Olivia is anywhere from Gr. 1-3, Joshua is preschool/Kindy.
So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.
Joshua:
He's juuuust starting out so is mostly using left overs from Olivia as we see what he like/works well for him. Some of the more common printables that we're grabbing are from 1+1+1=1, Our Little Monkeys, Homeschool Creations, Confessions of a Homeschooler and Teachers Pay Teachers.
He's still working on speech with his speech therapist. At the time of this writing, he is approx 1 year "behind" in his speech for the typical 3 yr 3 mth old child. This is WAY better than his completely non verbal-ness from a few months ago, so we'll take it! We still make use of sign language. He still uses it for words he doesn't know and we'll use it when we are trying to figure out his gibberish.
Once he has a better grasp on constant language we'll start ABCMouse with him. Olivia really liked it and he loved watching her when she did her lessons so is already familiar with it.
Olivia:
English:
We're playing around in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We do dictations for Brave Writer's Friday Freewrite and to write her Brownie Journal (basically, what she did at Brownies on a given day).
We're almost done 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program. Olivia picked up a lot of the more "sight" words with that. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words. We have oodles of early readers that we share in reading and Olivia is reading more and more of the words in each book.
In the spring started Reading Eggs, an online program like ABC Mouse, but instead of learning sounds, she's now using it to read. She loves it and asks to work on it even on the weekends.
Math:
Olivia is almost done Early Math on Khan Academy. Her main curriculum is Math Mammoth, in which she just started the Gr. 2 level. It worked well for her for Gr. 1, so I hope it continues to!
With our ReadingEggs subscription came a subscription to MathSeeds which is meant for 3-8 year olds. MathSeeds starts out really young (Olivia was being made to identify numbers), but she doesn't seem to care. I'm not sure (since she didn't care) if there is a test out area to start at a higher level.
Extra Curricular:
Olivia just finished her 2nd year of soccer. She has grown so much in it since last year. Last year she would pick grass and stare off into space. This year she actively took part in drills, actually went after the ball on the field and even scored 2 goals!
Olivia joined Brownies this year. I was a Brownie as a girl, so was super excited for her to start. For some reason, she's picking up on Brianna's "I can't sleep away" and is nervous about the possibility of camps. She's slept at a friend's house several times with no issue, so I don't think it'll be a problem, but she sure thinks it will be!
Brianna:
Math:
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions. However, she's been struggling so much with math that we're trying something new altogether. We've started Time4Learning. She responds really well to "computer school work" so I'm hoping this helps with her math. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts.
Brianna struggles a lot with math so she's "behind", only doing Gr. 6. But that's the beauty of homeschooling. She can be working on Gr. 10/11 science while being years behind in math. Math is something that we spend a lot of time trying out different things for.
English:
We're semi-using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" (bits and pieces, at least) Brianna especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes. For spelling, as always, we don't do a lot of focus on spelling because of Brianna's Dysgraphia. Her spelling HAS improved on it's own through the use of texting, social media and using spell check on her typed work. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo for the 3rd time. The first year, she struggled to hit 12,000 words. Last year she did an impressive 20,000 and wasn't even done her story! We use CNN's Student News for daily writing (we watch the clip and she picks one topic to write a summary about).
French:
Brianna is almost done her first year of Rosetta Stone. My grandma bought the kids the full 5 year lesson set, so she'll be good through high school. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours tests Brianna's French periodically.
Arts:
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.
She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll learn about him and read/watch some plays.
She wants to do some basic art lessons to improve her drawing, so I'm looking into some good lessons for that. She also wants to learn to sew. She took a crochet class in the winter and will hopefully look to improve further in that.
Phys Ed/Health:
Brianna normally runs with the Cornwall MultiSport Club. This year I had back to back surgeries, one being major abdominal surgery, so her coach was out of commission for the summer. Brianna is very much not self-motivating, but we hope to get her back into basic training now that I'm almost 100%. She is still walking/running/biking 10k for Terry Fox this year. She does youth yoga classes a couple times a month and yoga videos at home. Because she is overly flexible, she loves it and it greatly improves her balance and fidgeting.
Civics:
We took part in our town's first Pride parade this year, so there will be a lot of diversity learning going on in the near future.
Life Skills:
Brianna babysits and does random jobs for neighbours. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's looking forward to being able to get a "real" job in a couple years. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us.
Extra Curriculars:
Like Olivia, Brianna is signed up for Girl Guides this year. For her age group, she will be in PathFinders. As she has anxieties about sleeping away from home, she is super nervous about camps, but we will be trying to get her to sleepover more in the coming months at various friends' so she can try to get used to it. She also joined a Teen Tuesday program through the library where she gets to hang out with kids her age and do various activities.
Both Girls:
History/Geography:
We're are going to start doing Country Studies again. The kids really enjoyed them. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will. We'll be reading through History of the World and Geography of the World as our his/geo base outside of the Country Studies.
Science:
We're currently finishing up on our Biology course. After that, we'll be taking a break from a set topic while I can put together a Weather unit. Since we live in Canada and winter is coming, it works lol Both girls went to science camp over the summer and had a blast.
Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.
Reading:
I made a post here about our reading plans for the year, with book titles and links.
Friday, February 19, 2016
Weekly Wrap Up - Feb 19th
We started the week with Family Day and a day of laziness. Then on Tuesday we got hit by a nice winter storm that had Brianna shovelling majority of the day. Freezing rain > snow > freezing rain > snow does not make for a pretty property.
Olivia's friends finally came back from their European trip. You'd think they were gone 4 years instead of 4 weeks!
We finally caught up on Mystery Class. I've lost 10lbs so far this year. Brianna started a new chapter in math. Olivia is doing a science unit about the senses.
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| My car ate my snow brush |
Olivia's friends finally came back from their European trip. You'd think they were gone 4 years instead of 4 weeks!
We finally caught up on Mystery Class. I've lost 10lbs so far this year. Brianna started a new chapter in math. Olivia is doing a science unit about the senses.
Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Mystery Class 2016
Mystery Class is back! We missed last year so we're pretty excited to start again this year. Brianna loves trying to guess where the locations are and see how her guesses change through the class.
We got a bit of a late start due to various illnesses but we're catching up!
Brianna is tickled that we have 2 "odd" mystery locations, in one has a very long day and another has a very short day.
Right now, Mystery Class is mostly just graphing photoperiods (daylight vs. night time) and doing journal pages, both teaching about the earth's axis, longitude and latitude and Prime Meridian. After the Spring Equinox we'll start getting clues to the specific locations.
We got a bit of a late start due to various illnesses but we're catching up!
Brianna is tickled that we have 2 "odd" mystery locations, in one has a very long day and another has a very short day.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Weekly Wrap Up - Feb 5th
On Monday, Brianna organized and ran her first homeschool coop meeting. Our usual coordinator is out of the country so our family has taken over for the time being. Brianna's great with crafty stuff, so she found this cute Pompom Popper craft to do.
On Tuesday, we ran our No Technology Experiment. Check out the results here!
We've started our 3rd round of Mystery Class. I'll have a post about that soon!
Olivia had a rough week with her attitude. She was refusing to do schoolwork, generally not listening and being hateful. Friday was a MUCH better day.
We started reading an Our Canadian Girl series for Black History month. This series is on Rachel, a girl trying to come to Canada to escape slavery. Olivia will be taking part in this read aloud, her first longer-than-10-minutes read aloud, so hopefully it goes well
Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
On Tuesday, we ran our No Technology Experiment. Check out the results here!
We've started our 3rd round of Mystery Class. I'll have a post about that soon!
Olivia had a rough week with her attitude. She was refusing to do schoolwork, generally not listening and being hateful. Friday was a MUCH better day.
We started reading an Our Canadian Girl series for Black History month. This series is on Rachel, a girl trying to come to Canada to escape slavery. Olivia will be taking part in this read aloud, her first longer-than-10-minutes read aloud, so hopefully it goes well
Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Alberta (and BC) Bound!
Last summer Lee and I took an epic 3 week road trip, driving from home (near Ottawa, On) to Victoria, BC and back. We car camped and couch hopped. The event being surrounded by the trip was our friend Leslie and his wife April's wedding, in which Lee was the Best Man. It was something I had always wanted to do and was seriously the best vacation ever.
Being that we're a homeschooling family, it was also a great geography lesson for the girls who "followed" us from home. We talked to them each night over Skype and sent postcards through the mail.
Being that we're a homeschooling family, it was also a great geography lesson for the girls who "followed" us from home. We talked to them each night over Skype and sent postcards through the mail.
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| The kids trying to stow-away on our van-bed the morning we left |
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| Giant Nickel in Sudbury, Ontario |
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| Heading into the mountains of western Ontario |
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| Lake Superior |
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| A wolf wanted to check us out outside of Wawa, Ontario |
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| Terrance Bay, Ontario |
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| The Terry Fox Memorial outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario |
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| Time Travellers! |
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| Finally got out of Ontario! |
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| The flat lands of the prairies |
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| As the speed limit increases (68.5mph) |
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| Meeting up with my Kindergarten best friend, Holly, after 20 years |
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| Fog line over the Assiniboine River in Manitoba |
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| Saskatchewan! |
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| Meeting up with fellow homeschoolers, Carla and David in Saskatchewan |
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| Sitting on the Alberta/Saskatchewan boarder in Lloydminster, Ab/Sk (pardon the face, it was very bright) |
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| Back in Alberta after 17 years! |
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| Our friends had an awesome 80's/candy themed wedding in Edmonton, Ab (also where I was born and raised) |
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| I was the wedding organizer, which meant I got to slave labour the other wedding party members |
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| The Groom and his Best Man |
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| Bride, Groom, Man of Honour and Best Man |
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| Lee's Best Man speech was a tear jerker |
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| My second mom growing up, Ana, in Edmonton, Ab |
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| Outside of the wedding, Lee's goal for this trip was to go to West Edmonton Mall |
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| Another homeschooler, Allison, in Edmonton, Ab |
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| My best friend from high school, Steve, in Edmonton, Ab |
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| First views of the Rocky Mountains (in the height of forest fire season) |
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| A beautiful shallow lake outside Jasper, Ab |
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| Glacial fed river in Jasper National Park |
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| Finally, British Columbia |
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| We had fun buying lottery tickets in each province |
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| The Rockies get clearer, and bigger. |
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| Speed limits increase again (74.5 mph) |
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| Seeing my now 17 yr old brother, Theo, for the first time since he was 10. And my step-mom, Norma, in Surrey, BC |
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| On the ferry to Vancouver Island |
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| The redwoods of Vancouver Island, Sooke, BC |
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| My Grandpa Tim and my Aunt Nikki, in Sooke, BC |
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| Stepping into the Pacific Ocean, in Sooke, BC |
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| One of the scary things about driving in the mountains, rock slides. This one was an older one and thankfully very small |
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| Amazing animal crossing bridges in Banff National Park |
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| Beautiful Badlands of Alberta, near Drumheller, Ab |
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| At the Royal Tyrell Museum, near Drumheller, Ab |
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| Hoodoos, near Drumheller, Ab |
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| Lee's favorite part of the drive, huge prairie farms |
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| The saline lakes of Chaplin, Sk. One of the largest bodies of salt water that is no where near a coast, in the world. 6-7 times more salty than the ocean! |
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| Back in Ontario! |
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| At the Panorama Amethyst Mine, the largest amethyst mine in Canada, north of Thunder Bay, On |
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| Our haul from the mine |
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| 10,000 kilometers! (6,200 miles) |
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| HOME! |
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| Our complete route |
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