Hey Hawks.... please see this very important announcement from staff at Hawthorne.

When we can't have a regular Easter...

Hi lovelies.  This past weekend was Easter - a big holiday in Canada and for those who identify as Christian.  My family traditionally travels to my mother-in-law's house every Easter (she is my husband's mother).  My mother-in-law, Rose, lives in St. Catharines, Ontario, which is down near Niagara Falls.  I love spending Easter there for a few reasons:

1. The Niagara Region has warmer weather through the winter so the spring flowers are always blooming by Easter.
2. I grew up in the Niagara Region (in a little fruit-farming town) so going there for Easter is like going home; I get to see my Aunt, Uncle and cousins and also friends from high school.
3. Rose was born in Germany and immigrated to Canada after the Second World War.  Germans have many lovely Easter traditions: one special one is the Ostereierbaum (aka the Easter Tree)
4. Rose makes an Ostereier Baum every Easter.

I decided that, since we couldn't go to St. Catharines this year because of self-isolation, we would try to make our own Ostereierbaum that would make us feel like we were at Rose's house.  I had never made one before (my family isn't German).  As usual, I had to make a video of the experience.  You can watch below.  Have you ever dyed eggs before?

Maple Syrup Making: The Final Frontier

Hey lovelies.  Here is the final maple syrup video installment.  All good things must come to an end.  And this was a sweet end! I am still collecting sap however so I will let you know how much I get in the end. 

In the first video, I asked two questions.  Let's look at those again:

1.What is the formula for calculating diameter if you only know the circumference of a circle?  The answer is: D=C/pi  (I would put in the symbol for pi but don't know how on Blogger :)

2.Knowing that the ratio of sap to syrup is 40:1, if I collect two full buckets of sap, 1 bucket that is half full, and two buckets that are 3/4 full, how much syrup will I get in the end?  Each bucket can hold 2 gallons of syrup.  You may need to convert gallons to litres.

Here is how I figured it out:   if I add up all of those amounts, I would have 4 full buckets of syrup, which are each 2 gallons each.  2x4 is 8 gallons.  8 gallons is equal to 30.3 litres but I'm going to round down to 30 litres.  So, we know that the ratio is 40:1, so I am going to divide 30 by 40 to get how much syrup I will get from that much sap, which gives me 0.75 litres of sap.  There you go!

And now, onto the video.  Miss you all!

Also, no gooffing off

Being confined to home most of the day means that I have been tackling some jobs around our house that I have wanted to get to for quite a while.  One is cleaning out our basement storage area. 

While digging around in there, I found a box that I had put away a long time ago, after my mum died, of some projects she had been working on.  One project was a scrapbook of cards and other school things she kept from when my sister and I were in elementary school.  Below you will find a photo of a little something I created one day when playing with my mum's old typewriter.  My mum wrote the date at the top: June 1982 - Age 10.  I remember that I was pretending to be Prime Minister at the time.

I thought you might all enjoy reading it.... also, no gooffing off.

Oak and Maple

Here is a beautiful, wordless picture book movie put out by one of my favourite Canadian middle-school authors, Kevin Sylvester.  Have a look.  Miss you all.

Maple Syrup Making - Part 2

Well, things got a bit "sticky" as I tried to finish this first batch of syrup.  As I say to all of you, I make mistakes every day.  And today I made a big one!  Watch below to see what happened....

Making Maple Syrup ... Part 1

Hey lovelies.  I have made a new video for you - it's a documentary of me collecting sap behind my house and starting to make syrup.  This is only part 1.

Best part: there are math questions! I have put the math questions onto Google Classroom so please go ahead and answer them there.  It may take a bit of research if you haven't covered circles yet in math.  But I know you are up to the challenge!

Ms. Reyburn

Here are the questions, to recap:

1. What is the formula for calculating diameter if you only know the circumference of a circle?

2. Knowing that the ratio of sap to syrup is 40:1, if I collect two full buckets of sap, 1 bucket that is half full, and two buckets that are 3/4 full, how much syrup will I get in the end?  Each bucket can hold 2 gallons of syrup.  You may need to convert gallons to litres.