I'm in the middle of my "Symbols of Canada" unit with my Grade 1's. It has been a learning experience for me, as I haven't taught Grade 1 since I was a student teacher, but it has been really fun! I'm enjoying bringing in resources for my kids all about Canada and British Columbia. Last week, I showed them "O Canada" from Ted Harrison, a Canadian painter who recently passed away. I love Harrison's paintings. They are full of colour and his style is so distinctive. As a class, we discussed the images in the book and pointed out Canadian landscapes and symbols. This week, I brought in "S is for Spirit Bear" by G. Gregory Roberts and Bob Doucet. While Ted Harrison's book has a lot of images of Northern Canada, "S is for Spirit Bear" focusses on British Columbia. It is an Alphabet Book of B.C. with beautiful illustrations by Bob Doucet. We live in B.C. and my students could relate to a lot of the images in the book. Anyone who lives on Vancouver Island will recognize the next image of the BC Ferries. I live in Victoria - B.C.'s capital city. We are on Vancouver Island, off the west coast of Canada. My kids were very excited to tell us all about their experiences taking the ferry to Vancouver, to visit family, and to other destinations.  We've also been working our way through a Canada booklet I created (that you can download for free here). The booklet has 8 pages altogether, with information about the RCMP, Canadian coins, totem poles, and other symbols. This week, we completed the following page. We discussed the maple leaf and the beaver as important Canadian symbols. We also talked about where we could find these symbols (on money, on the flag, etc.). When the students were finished their page, we made beavers for a class display. I made one as a demo, using heart shapes for the face, nose, and teeth. Their beavers turned out adorable! This is how the display looked when it was finished. I have to say, I was nervous to go down to primary, but it has been a lot of fun. I'm only with this class on Fridays, and I'm sad that we only have 14 Fridays left until the end of the school year. It doesn't seem like much time at all!