Homeschooler Days: Sept. 27, 2024

Join us on Sept. 27, 2024 to experience curriculum-based school programs that allow children to explore history as close to firsthand as possible! Using a variety of activities, our interpreters will lead children through a thoughtful, fun and exciting day they won’t soon forget!

Important Additional Information

• Registrations are for full day only.
• Younger siblings are not allowed to attend with registered students.
• Each program is limited to 15 participants with a guardian/teacher.
• Guardian/teachers are not obligated to stay.
• Please register early to ensure your spot.
• Please refer to your confirmation letter for additional information about this day.

Program Details

Price: $56 per student, GST exempt. Each student is allowed one complimentary guardian.

Program Duration: 9:30 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Check-in: 9:15 a.m.

Lunch: 11:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Grade 1-2 Program

Settling our Prairie Frontier (9:30 -11:30 a.m.)

Introduce your students to the stories of fur traders, Indigenous peoples, and early people on Canada’s western frontier. Discover how the beaver pelt brought Indigenous groups and Europeans together and how communities developed and grew on the prairies. Taste fresh bannock made on the open hearth in the Hudson’s Bay Company Fort. Visit the original log home of Sam Livingston and his Métis wife Jane to compare home life then and now.

Prairie Pumpkins (12:00-2:00 p.m.)

Prairie Pumpkins combines both social studies and science to enrich students understanding of Halloween traditions. This program looks at how Halloween was practiced at the turn of the century, where these traditions came from, and how they were brought from the old country with new immigrants. Taking the creepy out of traditional Halloween critters, we look at the role bats, spiders, and snakes in our local ecosystem. Students will learn how they can protect these creatures and ensure their survival. This program will be done through a combination of stories, artifact demonstrations, and activities.

Grade 3-4 Program

Ways of Life (9:30-11:30 a.m.)

This program will teach the ways of life among the Blackfoot confederacy, the voyageurs, and the Métis of Western Canada. Covering the lifestyles of these diverse groups, we discuss what the population of Alberta once looked like, how it changed, and what prompted those changes. The students will also learn about the relationship each of these groups had with the land.  This will be done through a combination of stories, artifact demonstrations, and activities.

Bison Exhibit (12:00-2:00)

The exhibit explores the significance of bison in the cultures of Indigenous peoples--particularly as a resource for food, clothing, shelter and tools. That co-existence changed dramatically with the closing of the frontier that brought new settlers with livestock to compete for grass and water during a time of climate and habitat change.

 

Grade 5-6-7 Program

Bison Exhibit (9:30-11:30 a.m.)

The exhibit explores the significance of bison in the cultures of Indigenous peoples--particularly as a resource for food, clothing, shelter and tools. That co-existence changed dramatically with the closing of the frontier that brought new settlers with livestock to compete for grass and water during a time of climate and habitat change.

Paddlers and Partners (12:00-2:00 p.m.)

The fur trade was more than jolly voyageurs collecting beaver pelts in their birch bark canoes. However, they were essential to this industry. Would you have what it takes to become a voyageur? Experience the complex interplay of international power politics, high finance, and cross-cultural trade. Profits may have driven the world’s oldest surviving corporation, but the trade was only possible by the partnerships that different classes and cultures forged themselves.