If you haven’t gone lately, take your kids! It’s magical at there at Christmas.

The cabinet maker at Black Creek Pioneer Village

Beautiful Upstate New York

For me, it’s a great opportunity to get my kids out doing real work, you know the kind where you can actually see what’s being done and you have to use your body to actually do the work? Most years, the main job on the farm is loading hay from the barn into a big truck for transport and sale. It typically means a chain of us manhandling 750 – 800 bales of hay, which makes for a pretty good workout, I’ll tell you. This year we also helped cover next year’s garlic crop with straw, to protect it from the elements over the winter.

Hooray! My son can work!

One of the highlights on this trip was the work crew we were with: a local Amish farmer and a large group of hard-working Amish lads (his sons and nephews, who were visiting from Illinois) came by to be neighbourly and help out. He was a cheerful and very pleasant fellow and it was an interesting cultural experience for my son: the younger Amish boys didn’t even speak English!

The friendly Amish farmer and his oldest son loading up hay bales

Amish boys (with my son in the background) moving the hay out from the back of the barn

A few days after Thanksgiving, we were visited by a flock of wild turkeys. Clearly there will be food for the next Thanksgiving because those turkeys were huge! (Don’t worry, no harm was done to any of the turkeys, and – truth to tell – we didn’t even eat turkey this (American) Thanksgiving. We’d already had turkey for our own (Canadian) Thanksgiving.

This photo does not do justice to the actual size of these animals, nonchalantly pecking their way through the backyard.

My youngest son and I concluded the Thanksgiving experience with a trip to a beautifully restored 1924 movie theatre where we watched the latest Harry Potter film and both thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Lafayette was built in 1924 and has been fully restored.

I’m happy to report that Black Creek Pioneer Village is joining the Toy Mountain campaign organized by CTV and the Salvation Army. Visitors to the Village are asked to bring new, unwrapped toys which will be distributed later to children in need of a little extra cheer this year.

Let’s do what we can to help each other out. A little generosity can go a long way, and help make this a better city for all of us.

Gingerbread Village competition at Black Creeek

When it is all set up for the public, the Gingerbread Village will have a small train steaming through the display. Based on the house I saw, the Gingerbread Village is going to look great. Starting December 4, visitors to Black Creek will be able to see the miniature village and buy raffle tickets to win one of the houses! Here are some more shots to whet your appetite:

If you've been to Black Creek Pioneer Village before, you may recognize this building. It's the Dominion Carriage Works.

First place winner Suzanne Zimmerman with Gill Haley, one of the judges. Suzanne's dog at the first to houses she made, so third time was the charm for her beautiful rendering of the Tinsmith Shop.

Burwick House: this creation won third prize in the competition.

Look at the detail on the Doctor's House, which took second prize.

This shot shows the front facade of the winning entry: the Tinsmith Shop.

This shows some of the detail at the back of the Half Way House.

Third place winner.

I think this is a great idea.

While marks give us a sense of objectivity in assessing our child, I believe that at least part of that is an illusion. I know. I used to be a teacher. Sure, some work is obviously an “A” and some is obviously an “F,” but the vast majority of student’s assignments are less cut-and-dried and one teacher’s “B” is another teacher’s “C.” It get’s even murkier when you try to grade “participation.” Yes, the teacher has to make the assessment criteria as clear as possible (and then stick to them!) but if you go too far with that, you end up focussing on the mark and not the actual learning.

The new reports will also move the learning skills and work habits to the top of the report. Brilliant. These are the building blocks of success in school and in life: the way we work with others, our initiative, our verbal skills, our ability to solve problems etc.

In addition, the province is apparently doing away with the cut-and-paste comments they used to use. I suppose they saved time for some teachers, but they were pretty soulless, if you ask me, and often so general that they offered no meaningful insights.

I like the idea that the new progress reports will not lock teachers and students into fixed marks. It’s still early and kids should have a chance to turn things around without dragging the whole year’s marks down because they had a slow start. No marks in the first report also means we’ll have to think a little more than if we just had a row of As Bs and Cs.

My favourite  aspect of the reports is something they’ve been doing at my son’s public school for some time now: “student-led conferences.” This Thursday I will sit down with my son in his classroom and he will guide me through the work he has been doing and give his own assessment of what he’s been doing well, and what he can improve upon. His teacher will join us for a part of the conversation and give her own thoughts. My son feels like he is in charge of his own progress and we are there to support him in reaching his goals.

I don’t know if all public schools have student-led conferences, but that – together with a progress report – seems like a winning combination for starting out the school year. When the reports and marks do come in January, we’ll have had a chance to assess how he was doing and make adjustments before the results are carved in stone.

What do you think?

Come out and enjoy!

School children learning about life in pioneer times.

Dressing up is so much fun!

The "princess" in this photo is actually my older son. But that's what you get when you have three older sisters who like dressing you up!

Dressing up is a fun way for a child to live a little more into their imagination. I remember when I  was little and my mom sewed me a devil costume. I remember the adults were clearly amused, but I also remember that in my own head, I felt pretty cool dressed up like that. That’s the imagination at work. We just see the outside when we see a child dressed up, but on the inside they are pretending, often with rich imagination, that they are something different. Besides being a lot of fun, that creative energy is great for young developing minds. I’m convinced that more creativity in our youth makes for better bankers, engineers, and police officers later on.

Fearsome pirate? Nah! It's just my son and his cousin playing in the backyard.

The son in these photos turned 18 today. He doesn’t dress up anymore, but he has a fine mind, and I have not doubt that years of vigorous play have a lot to do with that.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Eric

Children can decorate their own pumpkins at the Howling Hootenanny at Black Creek

Halloween is a lot of fun for the young (and the not so young often!). So where did the tradition come from?

Traditional beliefs in early Ontario held that All Hallows’ Eve,” the night before All Saints Day, was a time when the spirit world and the world of the living intersected. Some viewed this time with hope, wishing to reconnect with lost loved ones. Seances and mediums who could speak to the dead where more common in that time than one might imagine! At the same time, it was frightening and and people hung a broom over their doorway to ward off malevolent spirits, or left treats out to appease them. Even today, Halloween mixes feeling of excitement with a delicious element of fear. No wonder kids love it!

Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere this Halloween at Black Creek Pioneer Village

The Jack o’ Lantern tradition came from Ireland where people would hollow out a turnip and place a candle inside it to let wandering spirits know how to find their way home. Here in Canada, pumpkins were more readily available (and frankly make a better lantern, if you ask me!) and so our pumpkin carving tradition was born.

Just one more thing about Black Creek this Halloween: they have built a really cool giant slingshot – the height of a person! Visitors can shoot crab apples into the valley, or aim at targets that have been set up. Go check it out!

Have a happy and safe Halloween,

Eric