Voyageur Week

We had such a great time learning about 'les voyageurs'.  We sang like them, dressed like them, and even cooked and ate like them! Here are some pictures of our voyageur adventures.

 

We celebrated the Festival du Voyageur at Bannatyne.  Stations Included: listening to stories, arm and leg wrestling, tug-of-war, eating bannock and colouring, and a music station (dancing and singing)

 

Playing 'Les Voyageurs'

 

We set up our chairs to make a giant canoe and we paddled down the river.  We sang voyageur songs and paddled until our arms were tired.  Suddenly, we hit some rapids and lost a few little voyageurs who fell overboard!  The next time we came to some rapids, we portaged by carrying our canoe over our heads.  It was a long and hard trek.  Next, we spent a night sleeping under our canoe (tables) for shelter, and we rose to face the river again.  Oh, the life of a voyageur!

Paddling the river

Portaging our canoe

Setting up our tents and fires to cook our bannock

Sleeping and resting

 We spent some time talking about how voyageurs had to make everything from scratch - there were no stores where they were, especially when they were on a trading voyage.  We decided to make our own butter and bannock from scratch.  Here we are measuring out our heavy cream and shaking it.  We took turns shaking it until it turned solid and we could drain off the liquid whey.  We spread the butter on our warm bannock and it was yummy.

We measured and mixed ingredients, listened to and followed directions, took turns and worked together to make real bannock.  We thought it was very cool that we were eating like real voyageurs.  The kids especially loved kneading the dough, and eating the bread with strawberry jelly.