Canadian Geographic Kids! aka CG Kids

Winter is still lingering here even as the light is returning and days getting longer. More light, but still cold with a little hope on the horizon: looks like this week should be considerably warmer.

Even so, we optimistically borrowed Lost in a Forest-- BC's Rainforest Vancouver, Haliburton's Boreal Ontario, by CG Kids, from the library. My son gave it 5 stars out of 5! And we are now craving forest exploration. Yes, yes, winter forest exploration has it's own benefits, but we're very ready for spring now. Besides, my son is looking forward to finding insects and bugs!

Typically we enjoy CG Kids around here. Short (25 minute episodes) and targeted to youth 8-14 years old (but great for all ages), the CG Kids adventures take us across Canada engaging in all kinds of discoveries. One of the features I like best is when they show quick experiments to do. For example, the Lost in a Forest episode explained why leaves turned colour in the Autumn. The experiment was to tape a leaf to a piece of paper, cover half of it with tin foil, and leave it out in the sun. The results should have the leaf half green where the sunlight was absorbed and the autumn colour for that leaf where the sunlight was prohibited.  We can't wait to tests this out ourselves! There was also an easy chromatography experiment demonstrated that would be very easy to duplicate.

There is even a show on Edmonton-- Edmonton to the Extreme!

This wonderful resource is going on it's sixth season. Over at the Canadian Geographic website, you can explore all current and past episodes here. It is a TV series and I suppose available that way. We usually take the dvds out from the library, but it looks like our library is way behind with only 35 episodes ;-)

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