I am very excited to have posted my first unit on Teachers Pay Teachers. It is a spider research project that uses the internet for research. Hope you get a chance to take a look! (link below)
Here is the link: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spider-Research-Project-1450597
We've had a nice long summer at our cottage in Point Roberts. I came across these old photos and thought it might be fun to compare the then and now. Our beach house was built by my grandfather in the early 1960s, and it was given to us in 2001, right before our oldest child was born. Every summer we work away at it, making updates and repairs as best we can with what we can afford. Here it is with the original exterior paint colour:
and now (so far...)
more renos to come...
It has been a productive summer of various projects, especially at our beach house in Pt. Roberts. 
Among those activities, we took down a dead tree in our backyard, which was chopped into some much-needed firewood.
Mark also took out a window that looked out onto our back patio and replaced it with french doors that now lead right to the porch. We picked up the doors second-hand and I refinished them by using a heat gun to remove the old paint. Then I sanded and repainted them.
So here is the before...
and the after:
Mark and I might not have been the only ones with a few projects up our sleeves this summer!
We've had lots of different outings close to home, enjoying West Coast beauty: 
We rode our bikes from our home to Crystal Falls and did a bit of mountain biking to get there. The kids LOVED it!! 
It always amazes me when we visit a place of great beauty in Vancouver that we are seeing for the first time. This time it was Whytecliff park in West Vancouver.
Hope you summer's been full of adventures!
We've been away for a couple of weeks, enjoying what we love most about summer...
Have you ever wanted to stop those weeds from creeping in or had an area of your yard that you would like to transform into a garden? Or do you simply want to clear an section of your woody yard from bushes and weeds? Consider using cardboard as a base instead of yard cloth. It is free and easy to come by and it will decompose throughout the year, leaving the ground clear of weeds and unwanted growth. We started using this "cardboard" technique at our beach house where we are starting to add gardens to what used to be over-grown areas. We put cardboard around this bush that we planted in the fall. This was an area that was normally full of weed, including that nasty morning glory vine that winds around all the plants and their branches.
By Spring the cardboard had desintigrated and we were able to start creating this new garden space. Recently, we built some garden boxes to grow vegetables, and cut back a lot of blackberry bush and other shrubs that grew right behind.
I recently put down cardboard over the places that we cleared and added some ground cover on top, as well as some old bark. We may add more bark mulch soon.
I also put down cardboard to stop weeds and blackberry from growing between the garden boxes and plan to add mulch over top of that as well. We were excited about the idea of using cardboard as an alternative to yard cloth, and hope that you will find it useful as well!
This year we headed to the Ship to Shore festival in Steveston for Canada Day and enjoyed the annual parade and fireworks in Point Roberts for July 4th!
Garry Point, Steveston
This year there was a bit of a "show-down" between the firefighters and the kids on the road! Water balloons, water guns and hoses!
Hope you are enjoying your summer so far!
After a couple of somewhat stressful, worrisome days of teacher striking we headed to the near-by park after dinner for a walk and bike-ride,
feeling the mild, summer air.
(the little brown spot in the middle is a beaver).
By the time we left, the sun had gotten brighter and then started to fade again behind the clouds as it went lower in the sky. Our only thoughts then were of the surprises from nature that we had noticed along the way.
Happy start to summer everyone!!
This could easily have been one of the most gorgeous weekends so far this year. It was a full weekend with lots of kids' activities (carnival, Tae Kwon Do competition), gardening and yard work and time with friends and family. All the best things!
During the month of April, the students completed the "bridge challenge" which was a summary of all of our learning about Structures. 
They made a plan to design their own bridge, based on some samples of bridges that we had discussed in class, such as suspension bridge. 
The bridges had to span at least 30cm and hold the weight of two cars. 
The students were provided with some materials and were also asked to bring in some materials from home if they chose to. Many of them worked with their parents on the projects at home. The final bridges were on display for our student-led conferences
and the students were very proud and excited about what they had designed and created. All of them met the criteria too!
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