Canada Unit Study for the Geography Fair

For anyone who knows us or has been reading my blog for a while, you probably aren't surprised that Canada was chosen for our geography fair project and you probably know who's idea it was. Colin wants to live in Canada, where he imagines he'd be surrounded by hockey and find outdoor ice rinks on every corner. 

Since it was our first geography fair, I thought it would be best if they just did one country together. Colin immediately said Canada, but the girls weren't too thrilled with that idea. They named other countries, but never seemed set on one so I talked them into doing Canada. I figured Colin would do more of the work since he's older and should do something he's interested in.   

We used the Download N Go (DNG) study, Expedition Canada. From this we got to watch lots of videos showing different parts of Canada. We learned about a different animal each day, some places there, inventions, history, popular sports, Canadian cities, geography, and holidays.



Some of the books we read



Caleigh made this beaver, a national symbol of Canada, and this totem pole, which were made by the First Nations peoples.

Lego Creations: Colin made the CN Tower and Caleigh made an inukshuk, both of which we learned about in the DNG study.

In addition to DNG, we also used Homeschool Share's Canada lapbook and a Canada mini lapbook from Fortunately for You for our lapbook. I think this is the first time we've ever done an actual lapbook. We usually just add the mini books to our notebooks, but I wanted something they could display at the fair this time.

We made maple cookies with real maple syrup. You can find the recipe we used here.

Kids at the geography fair. Along the bottom of the table, we taped coloring pages for each of the provinces and territories.The kids spent a lot of time coloring them.

Display board: It was Colin's idea to use black and red. Caleigh came up with using maple leaves under the letters in Canada. On the bottom right is a Mountie paper craft that Molly put together. Also on the board: map of Canada, map of North America, flag, popular sports, major industries, major crops, information about what the word Canada means, languages, holidays, animals, and Levi from Children Just Like Me.

On the right, we brought along some of the inventions from Canada. On the left toward the front of the table is a French Canadian counting book.

In this picture, you can see Colin's hockey helmet, a puck, the Lego CN Tower, and a French/English color words matching game.

I'm so glad we did the geography fair. It was lots of fun showing our display and seeing everyone else's. The girls and I weren't too excited about doing Canada since it doesn't seem as exciting as some other countries, but we did learn a lot of new things and it ended up being a good study for us.

In my previous post, I have some pictures of other projects at the fair and Molly getting a henna tatoo.