A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Museum

Field Trip: Ingersoll Cheese & Dairy Museum

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The Ingersoll Cheese & Dairy Museum is another place we visiting with KICK this past year.  It was a good visit and very different from the Alymer Dairy Museum. 

The children started off their time here all gathered together in front of the MARVELLOUS wood carving which I would dearly LOVE to show you but they had this annoying little sign “No pictures please”.   GROWL.  I tell you it was FANTASTIC.  Someone took their time carving out the history of the pioneers coming, how they travelled by wagon, moved the milk jugs in the early days and what not.  The clearing of the roads.  The detail in this carving was simply amazing.  You are ever up in Ingersoll.. GO TO THE MUSEUM if only to see this wood carving. 

Anyways, it kept me fascinated while the children listened to and participated in the program they had prepared for them.  Learning to card wood, dressing up like pioneers and such like. 

The group was then divided in half with one group getting to play with the old time toys, and the other half touring the dairy museum.

We went to the dairy museum first.  They crammed a lot into this small barn.  They kept the youth in a small group and moved around in an organized fashion.  It was nice the building was small because then I could move around and take pics and be unobtrusive and still listen at the same time.  🙂 They gave the children ample time to ask questions.  Did you know they produced the largest cheese?   Amazing how big it was.

 

After this the children moved to playing with the older toys.  They made a number of fun today.  I’ll have to see if I can find my notes. 🙂  Here we go, my notes:

13 years to build wood carving of pioneer scene

What would bring along….chickens, turkeys, ducks, cow, horse, oxen, sheep, seed. Animals and plants that would help them start their new lives as farmers.

Showed how to work the wool you’d get from sheep

Children put on some of the clothes the pioneers would wear. Clothing made to last as long as possible. Made skirts longer and then hemmed short and let down as needed. Men with loose fitting clothes to help with doing all the physical work they engaged in.

Redcoats, would go along to help protect the settlers, also represented the government.

Three sisters corn beans squash. Corn supported bean, bean provided nitrogen, squash protected the roots. Large leaves shaded out the weeds.

In Canada we tended to get along with the natives, learning from them.

Ingersoll is a town built around the cheese industry.

The youth were able to practice walking on stilts, playing hand coordination games, Jacob’s ladder and other games. They worked on making simple animation toys and generally had a lot of fun playing.   

It was a rather cool day so none of us lingered long outside once the children were done playing.  Some of us left, others of us moved inside to enjoy the non-dairy part of the museum. 

It was a nice day out, good to chat with new members, good to have fun with each other.  My son would have preferred to tour the museums rather needing to sit through a pioneers presentation (as I think most of the older students would have too) but the stilts!  HUGE hit and a lot of fun.  🙂  As were the hand coordination games.  Makes me want to practice using pencils. 🙂

Field Trip: Aylmer Dairy Museum

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Back in April 2017 we went with KICK to the Aylmer Dairy Museum.   We had a lovely time together with this group and I thought it was about time I shared that adventure with you all. 🙂    The Aylmer Dairy Museum is located (oddly enough) in Aylmer.  🙂

My Son thought this was a pretty good field trip.  The students had fun making butter and ice cream.  The butter they made using small vials with cream that they had to keep shaking while they were on tour.   The ice cream was made using a old fashioned spin machine that the children took time spinning around and around.

While the children were wandering around listening to the presentation, I had fun roaming the milk bottle room.  I don’t know why, but I thoroughly enjoyed looking at all those old milk jars.  All the colour variations in the bottles, the different styles and what not. Just kept me busy while I listened to the tour guide chat with the students and as they shook their little cream bottles.

While the younger children had their turn at making butter, the older children had a chance to see the exhibits part of the museum.

The lower part of the main building held farm type equipment, we saw old horseshoes, hoes, saws and the like.  It’s a well rounded museum that touched on most things concerning a man and his cattle.  There were small dairies all over the place that gradually amalgamated. Their collection comes from all over this area.  They even had a book that showed all the dairies by year and name.  It was interesting to see the history of how they expanded and then slowly started amalgamating.  Regulations and taxes, plus the wars played a role in this.

They had the children do some art work as well.  Learning to make a cartoon figure, making masks for the younger ones and such forth as well.   This is my attempt at the Sponge Bob they walked us through making. 

It was a good museum to visit with nice variety of artifacts.

St. Mary’s Museum

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Yesterday we went to the St. Mary’s Museum with a part of our homeschool group HOPE.

We learned about the toys that children used to play with.

We learned they played with marbles “Ring Taw”, slappers (metal toys that made noise), corn husks dolls, wooden dogs, thumatrope, and zoetropes. Hoops and graces were another game. These games often had the side benefit of teaching important skills of hand-eye coordination, body-eye coordination and so forth. Skills important to survival. Tops was also a game they used to play.

They also had these really neat wind-up toys that were a big hit with the children.

The children all had a chance to make their own thumatrope.

London’s Children’s Museum

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Today we went to the London’s Children’s Museum. We stopped at McD’s for a late lunch afterwards, and the lad played on the play centre afterwards.

The lad played and Played with a boy called Kyan. Kyan is four and they just had a blast together. They met at the dinasaur pit and just clicked.

So he learned cooperative play! He expressed his creativity. We played rough and tumble dinasaur’s and then he had fun burying them in sand. This turned into wash and then dry them at Kyan’s request. I made a rubbing of a dinosaur skin while they played. Then off the two boys went while grampa, Jim and I tagged along. Tried on Firemen suits. Then off to play in the space center, the kitchen, and doctor’s office and in the treehouse. Just action and moving and chatter. They had an excellent time.
Justin and Kyan had to teach Tom (the bad cat from our night time stories) to NOT eat rabbits. So they rushed around finding all kinds of good foods for Tom to eat so that he would learn to be nice. They succeeded! 🙂

They were both goobs. They would run and then just fall for no apparent reason. Parents with girl children would stop and gasp. Those of us with boys just smiled and shook our heads. 🙂 It was actually kinda funny having that ‘kinship’ in parenting that way. 🙂

Both boys were sad when they ran out of energy. We chose to leave and go for a late lunch, Kyan stayed behind to snack with grandpa.

Just a nice day out for all concerned.