It’s time for another round of Around the World in 12 Dishes, and this month we’re in Canada! My main knowledge of Canada is from Revolutionary War time period, so this was a fun country for me to research as I put together a Canada unit for elementary (I’m working really hard to not just cook a meal, but also get in some studies of the country).
So, here’s what we did this month:
Canada recipe: Maple Syrup Cookies
This month our schedule just was not working to cook an entire meal, and I’d done some preliminary research that found me the recipe for maple syrup cookies, and I knew that’d be a hit (and it was). The kids were very excited about it and wanted to make the entire thing by themselves, so they did, aside from my putting the cookies in the oven and taking them out.
Here’s the recipe, if you want to make your own, we mostly followed this recipe.
Ingredients: 1 cup butter softened (or microwaved to soften right before you make them), 1 cup brown sugar firmly packed, 1 egg, 1 cup maple syrup, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 4 cups of flour
Directions:
- Mix together the butter you hastily melted in the microwave with the brown sugar and maple syrup. Happily show off your skill at leveling the sugar, and spill large amounts of sugar on the counter.
- Argue over who gets to crack the egg, finally let Superman do so. Then mix in the egg.
- Add the vanilla, only spill about an extra teaspoon into the mix.
- Stir together the dry ingredients before adding them in, only spill about half a cup of flour on the counter.
- Cheerfully scoop handfuls of dough into ball shapes and then roll them in sugar.
- Impatiently wait for cookies to bake, then declare them to be delicious through a mouthful of cookie.
Canada lapbook, the heart of our Canada unit for elementary
I’ve figured out recently my kids are old enough to read simple reports on the states, but most books I check out from the library either have too much information, the wrong information, or not enough. Or the library doesn’t have a book on that country. So, I spent an hour or two researching and bugging my Canadian friends with questions and came up with:
Canada report for elementary aged kids
My boys took turns reading the report and finding the information they needed.
And yes that picture is from making cookies, but I really like it, and needed a 3rd picture for the collage.
To get the lapbook pieces head over to Creating Country Reports, I also talk through the process of how I taught them to find the information.
Canada craft: Inukshuks
So, I saw this blog post about 3 months ago where they made these really cool stone statues for part of their Canada unit, and I swear I pinned it to my country studies board, I found the blog it’s from: Our LIfe’s Adventures. Then I spent 30 minutes looking for it and never found it. Thankfully Valerie from over at Glittering Muffins had a clue what I was talking about and she gave me a name to look up.
These are stone statues built by the Innuit people, and they have been recreated multiple times, the image was used in the Olympics, basically they’re everywhere…..
So, I had a great plan we were going to build one of these out of stones using hot glue to hold them together.
And the kids gamely tried, but we have limestone here, and the hot glue just wasn’t sticking to it, and then Superman accidentally put the hot glue gun down on his sister, and we decided to call it.
That’s when Batman said, “Why don’t we use the blocks
Only Batman’s hopes were cruelly dashed when I wouldn’t let him glue the blocks together. He still has plans to do that, he fondly remembers gluing our last set of Jenga blocks together to make cannons.
Now eventually it deteriorated into a general mass-building frenzy of all our building materials, the cans, the peg dolls, the Phoenician boats, our Bethlehem set. All of it. The entire family room was covered in their creations.
Adventures In Mommydom, Afterschool for Smarty Pants, All Done Monkey, Crafty Moms Share, Maroc Mama, Creative World of Varya, Glittering Muffins, Kid World Citizen, Mermaids’ Makings, The Educators’ Spin On It and The Mommy Talks have come together to help you on your food journey and will each cook a dish with our children and post about it – to help inspire you to have a go! Then go out there, cook, blog, and join in the linky fun!
Are you looking for more geography resources, then try The Ultimate Homeschool Geography Guide.
What fun!! I love the way the the block in Inukshuks turned out!!
I did too. It was really fun listening to the kids talk through it.
Those maple syrup cookies sound good!
They are delicious, and very quickly disappearing.
Thanks for the Canada information. We’ve talked a lot about Canada with watching the Olympic ice skaters lately, so this will fit right in with what we’re experiencing to provide some background information on the country!
Yea! Glad it can help.
My mom is from Canada. One of these days I need to teach my kids about Canada. It’s one country we haven’t studied yet, and I have lots of relatives there! Your cookie recipe looks yummy.
It’s delicious! Canada for being so near to us has surprisingly little in the way of picture books on it for being so near to us. I was rather disappointed in that part for studying it.
Oh dear about the glue gun hope your daughter recovered. Your son came up with a great solution! I know it was a bit of a struggle for my youngest to stack and glue his stones when we did it. Those cookie were so good glad you tried them
She recovered pretty quickly, and it was a good way for me to distract them to a different way of building them.
Our cookies are disappearing really fast.
This is a cool unit! I vaguely remember doing these sculptures too – seems like a long time ago, for our Arctic unit. Canada is a very interesting country to study and, hopefully, we will get to it… one day 🙂
I have many “one day” projects. 😉
Hello from Canada 🙂 Great idea for Batman to use blocks for the inukshuks – they look like lots of fun – we often build some temporary ones for fun at the beach using whatever rocks we find. And those cookies sound delicious – it’s funny, I love maple syrup – everyone I know gifts it to me, and we stock up every spring at a sugar shack (my family thinks I would bleed syrup if I were cut), but I find it so precious I can rarely bring myself to baking with it! Interestingly, many many Canadians have never tasted maple syrup – so sad 🙂 This post has planted a seed that perhaps I might include posts about Canada on my blog…. similarly to the differences in the states in the US, you can find many differences between regions and provinces here. hmmm I might do something with that!
Oh that would be very cool to see, I know I’m always interested in seeing how people do things differently.
Wow, those cookie look yummy, glad they were a success! I might try making them too! Good idea for the block Inukshuks, glad to have helped you remember the name 🙂 What Marie-Claude write above is true, I consider it precious, rarely cook/bake with it and many people I know never had the real maple syrup, just table syrup (blah!). I used to go to the sugar shack every year as a kid in Quebec but in Alberta they don’t exist 🙁 I do always try to buy maple syrup from Quebec though 🙂 Thanks for participating again!
The Inukshuks were such a hit I’m trying to find a good craft for Iceland…… That’s been a bit of a search.