Cape Dorset, Nunavut!: Winter Carnival

At Sam Pudlat School we celebrated Winter Carnival on Monday, March 19 and Tuesday, March 20! On Monday morning the entire school went skating at the arena. Then in the afternoon the students were arranged into 12 different groups. Each group had students from grades K-6. The groups were arranged this way in an effort to have the older students (grades 5-6) help those in the younger grades (K-2). Once the groups were organized each team was given a name; the team names were communities within Nunavut. I was team Arctic Bay! Each team had a lead teacher and those teachers took their team to an empty classroom where we decorated t-shirts. The purpose of the t-shirts was to keep the teams organized and to help the teachers keep track of who was on which team. The students loved decorating the t-shirts! They especially enjoyed decorating my t-shirt. All of the students wanted to sign their name, as well as draw pictures on it!

On Tuesday the students were instructed to wear their t-shirts and to meet with their team for breakfast. The day was organized in a way that each group would travel to a different station every 20 minutes. The stations included, igloo building, ice carving, hockey, sledding, paper crafts, reading, maple syrup, mural decorating, drum dancing, relay races, hot chocolate, and beading. I was in charge of helping out with the maple syrup station. We boiled maple syrup to a "just right" consistency, which we then poured on to a snow table. The students used a Popsicle stick to twirl the maple syrup from the snow, which resulted in them having a toffee pop. The reactions to this activity were either really good or really bad; some students loved it while others hated it! Overall the day was a huge success. Although by the end of it I was exhausted!

Below I have included some pictures of the winter carnival! I was not able to get a picture of the igloo, nor did I even get to see it, because some of the kids destroyed (smashed) it as soon as school ended. But I did get a few pictures of the ice cravings which were incredible.