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.
