Shi-shi-etko -- Book Review and Native Residential Schools

Disclosure: Groundwood Books gave me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Imagine being a young girl and being forced to go away from your home and family to go to a boarding school. You have never left your neighborhood, but if you do not go your parents will be arrested. At the school they will not let you keep your name, religion or language. They will try to take away everything about your culture in your life. This is how life was for many Native Americans from around 1876 until the 1990's. Shi-shi-etko by Nicola I. Campbell and illustrated by Kim LaFave tells such a story about a young Native American girl named Shi-shi-etko. 

Exploring Tonga -- Global Learning for Kids

In December Global Learning for Kids explored Tonga. I have to admit I had not heard of Tonga (and didn't vote for it). I turned to the library to find some information to share with Hazel. However the only children's books that showed up with Tonga in them had to do with Africa and not Oceania, which I knew was our focus. I then looked at the adult books (because I was desperate to find something, anything on this little country). The adult books were slim pickings as well, but here is what I found. (Recently I searched for Queen Salote since one of the books was about her and found one children's book with her in it so I'm going to get it tomorrow so I can at least share about the country's most famous queen.)

Origami Zoo Kit -- Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

So Hazel's birthday was last week. We had a fun ducky themed party for family and a few friends. And we will be having a Wild Kratts themed party for her school friends. You will be seeing some posts about that party this week and next! However Ann at Tuttle Publishing sent Hazel a gift this year. It was one of the first gifts she got this year!

Sharing Saturday 16-1

Wishing you and your family a happy and healthy 2016!!

We have had a fun two week party with many great ideas shared!! Last week I featured a few of the Christmas themed posts and the party continued.  This week will be more general posts from both weeks. Our features are just a sampling of the wonderful things shared, so if you haven't checked out the rest you should!! The features for this week include Christmas Math & Science, Christmas Crafts, Holiday Lessons, and a few favorites. I have also started a new craft link party (the crafts just have to be family appropriate and not necessarily kid related) and it is a place to share crafts, reviews of patterns, craft books, etc. and patterns. I hope you will come check it out tomorrow.  Sunday will be the beginning of this month's Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop for all your posts that are culture (multicultural) related!

Ducky Themed Birthday Party

This week we are getting ready for Hazel's birthday. Our tradition is to do a family/mostly adult party for Hazel on her birthday and then have a bigger kid oriented one later with her school friends since her birthday is always over Christmas break. This year she wanted her family party to have a ducky theme. I thought this would be easy. I had bought some duck printable paper ages ago so I used it for the invitations. I found a few cute ideas for wording on-line and combined the parts I liked.