Barn Wedding!

My sister is getting married next summer, and this is the barn she is getting married in! It looks a little rough and non-wedding appropriate right now, but it will be beautiful once we clean it out and decorate it for the big day. Her fiancé's grandparents have a gorgeous property out in Beaverly where the ceremony and reception will take place. I am the maid of honour in the wedding, so there is a little bit of pressure to make sure it all works out! Her theme is 'country chic' and the colour scheme is pastel pink and grey. Most of the decor consists of burlap, lace, pink fabrics and hay bails! We are doing all the decorating ourselves... it will be tons of work amoungst the friends and family helping out, but well worth it! I love the idea of a simple, casual country wedding. People are beginning to go crazy with weddings now and putting themselves into a ridiculous amount of debt for one day!! 

Magic School Bus

In our first year science course, we were instructed to create a dramatized science lesson in groups. Our group (Myself, Jordan, Jesslyn, Evan, Ida-Mae) decided to create a lesson about the solar system, using the Magic School Bus as inspiration! Everything you see in the picture, we made from scratch!! The lesson was intended to be approximately an hour, so we had to be really creative in the activities we did. We all took on the identity of one of the students in Ms. Frizzle's class and did a skit at the beginning to mimick the TV show episode that went along with it. After we did the skit and some minor explanation, we had the class create their own planets with art supplies we brought for everyone. The class was instructed to be as creative and open minded as they could! The lesson worked out really well because we had the resources and space to make it work! It might not be that realistic for a real classrom due to the prep work and space required. It may be a neat activity to do with a few classes and do in a gym. 

Kenny Chesney in Vegassss!

Last year I went to Las Vegas in April with my mom and sister once we were done school for the semester. We all loveeeee country music and we were lucky enough to see Kenny Chesney in concert while we were there! It was in a really small venue and felt really intimate because there weren't too many people in the audience. He's such a great performer and did a great job of connecting with everyone in the building. I have been to several concerts, but this was one of my favourites because it was in such a small venue; it is easier to connect with the performer when there aren't as many people. Singing is such a neat talent, kudos for Kenny figuring it out because I definitely haven't figured it out yet!

Taz the Raz

I liked this activity we did in class following along with Willow's drawing, although my Taz looks nothing like hers did! I remember doing this in one of my intermediate classes using a grid to copy the image in small pieces, and even then my image still never looked the same as the original! I am not a fan of drawing, I have never been very good at it and therefore don't enjoy it all that much. I took this as a 'copying' activity more than a 'drawing' activity. This would be a neat activity to do at any age, you could easily adapt the complexity of the drawing. This may inhabit more interest for all learners in the class, including those who may not really LOVE drawing like myself!

Botswana Traditional Dance

When I travelled to Africa in 2012, I camped for the majority of my trip. I made a stop in a really small village in rural Botswana where I was invited to watch a traditional ceremony to celebrate the birth of a child in the village. It was really neat to see the dance, because everyone in the village participated. This photo doesn't include everyone, although there were women, children and men involved. They were singing and dancing, speaking Afrikaans in their songs. The young boys seemed to run the ceremony, with the women and young girls worshipping the elderly men. Although I didn't understand it all due to language and cultural barriers, it was a really neat experience and only made me love Africa more!

Capetown, South Africa

This is a picture taken on a beach in Capetown, South Africa. I took part in a Geography Field School to South Africa in the spring of 2012, Michelle Reid was on the trip too! During our field school we had very little 'free time' because we were all really busy doing research on the Food and Wine of South Africa. This particular afternoon the three of us went to the beach for a couple hours and drank hot chocolate in a little cafe. This photo took us about half an hour to take, because we kept trying to get the 3 of us in mid-air! We had the camera set up on the hood of the car, so it's impressive we ended up getting it at all. 

Placemat Activity

For our Aboriginal Education course we are to do a chapter presentation on our textbook. Since the beginning of the program, it is obvious that presentations with an activity of some sort is more interesting. Our group has decided to do a placemat activity to get everyone engaged in the content. We created these placemats for the class to use during the presentation. They look very basic, and they are, although it is time consuming to create something like this for an entire class! The colours represent the 4 seasons of the year and different forms of spirituality. Once we present the material, I will post another photo of one of the placemats filled out by the class!