Our Grade 4’s have taken the slogan “Travel Alberta” to heart.  Today we traveled to Cardston, Alberta to visit the Remington Carriage Museum for a presentation called “Poop and Progress – A Stinky Story but Someone Has to Tell It.”  The museum is the world’s largest carriage museum, and the Queen has even ridden in some of their carriages.  It has been there for 17 years, and focuses on transportation in North America from 1850-1920.  Did you know that back then, there were more than 100 000 horses on the streets of New York City by 6:00 am?  All those horses made a huge mess.  Each day there would be almost 4 feet of manure on the streets that had to be collected that weighed more than 300 elephants.

Although we think that we have a lot of pollution now, we learned that there were problems before cars came along.  The invention of the bicycle helped.  An important message was that we have to invent the solution!  Robert Mein told us that we need to pay attention in Math and Science to think about ways we can come up with new energy solutions.

Of course, we also found out some new things about the Grasslands Region of Alberta.  It was very windy there today (over 100 km/h gusts), so you would have to hold on to your hat!  We also saw pictures of lots of flat pastures, with the rolling foothills in the background.

Not only did we think about Science and Social Studies, we also touched on some Math today.  Ask your child to explain why hay = sunshine!