Happy New Year! With the new year comes new adventures and new learning opportunities. Here at Telegraph Road Entertainment, we’re excited to bring you both by diving into another year great Canadian educational books, fun activities, and plenty of days to celebrate.
If you haven’t yet, make sure you check out our Fun Canadian Activity Pad series available on our website at www.telegraphroad.ca. These activity pads feature original illustrations and are great for the whole family, with puzzles, jokes, fun facts, and more.
After taking a moment to relax on New Year’s Day, start 2022 by getting beamed up into some fun sci-fi stories on January 2 – National Science Fiction Day. Science fiction stories allow us to explore technology, look toward the future, and think about how technology affects our culture and society. Read science fiction books and discuss what you might do with the technology in them. You can also discuss how science fiction has inspired real scientific developments.
Are you ready for National Trivia Day on January 4? Flex those mind muscles and show off your trivia talents on this day all about fun facts. Want to learn some great fun facts about Canada? Make sure you check out The Fun Canadian Facts and Puzzles Activity Pad. With hundreds of Canadian facts about provincial and territorial emblems, geography, food, entertainment, places to visit, world records, and more, this book will help you improve your Canadian trivia chops while completing fun word searches, mazes, word scrambles, and other puzzles.
Canada has got the milk – 93.5 million hectolitres per year! That’s plenty of milk for National Milk Day on January 11. Did you know that Canada has over 10 000 dairy farms and over 1.4 million dairy cows and heifers? Canadian dairy farmers work tirelessly to bring dairy products like milk, cheese, and yogurt to Canadians across the country.
To celebrate all things milk, we have a fun science experiment and a delicious recipe.
Making Casein Plastic from Milk
Plastics are made from chains of molecules called polymers. Milk contains a protein called casein that can make a polymer. Follow the directions in this experiment to make your own casein plastic.
Ingredients
1 cup of milk
4 teaspoons of white vinegar
Paper towels (to strain)
Decorative material (paint, glitter, etc.)
Instructions
1. Heat the milk in a saucepan on the stove or in the microwave for a few minutes until it is steaming.
2. Put the vinegar in a mug and then add the cup of steaming milk. Mix with a spoon slowly. The mixture should be curdling.
3. Place the paper towels on a plate. Once the mixture is cooled, scoop the curds out on to the paper towels. Use more paper towels to squeeze as much liquid out of the curds as possible.
4. Knead the curds thoroughly to form a dough – this is casein plastic!
5. Shape the casein plastic however you want. Add colours, glitter, or other decoration, then leave it to dry for 48 hours to harden.
You can make buttons, keychains, figurines, or anything you want with casein plastic. The acid in vinegar curdles the milk by reacting with the casein proteins in the milk. Try using different acids or adjusting the amount of vinegar to see how these changes affect the experiment.
Now that you have your casein plastic creations, it’s time to whip up a delicious milk treat – vanilla custard!
Simple Vanilla Custard
Ingredients
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups of milk
1/3 cup of sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp cornstarch
Instructions
1. Lightly beat the eggs and set them aside.
2. Combine milk, sugar, and cornstarch in a saucepan and whisk them together. Heat on medium until bubbles start to form around the edges, whisking occasionally.
3. Whisk 2 tbsp of milk mixture to the eggs, then slowly add the egg mixture into the remaining milk mixture while whisking constantly.
4. Return the pan to the heat and whish until the mixture thickens into custard. This should only take 2-3 minutes. Make sure you don’t let the mixture boil.
5. Remove the custard from the pan and mix in the vanilla. Serve and enjoy!
Daniel the Beaver loves to wear different hats – and to help you celebrate National Hat Day on January 15, he’s bringing you a DIY hat craft that will make you as crafty as a hatter. Daniel the Beaver’s favourite hat is his sports cap. He loves to make different hats for different occasions.
Materials
Construction paper (multiple colours)
Scissors
Glue
Measuring tape
Instructions
1. First, cut two strips of red construction and glue them together to make a headband.
2. Cut a rectangle for the brim of the hat. Place the headband partially on to the rectangle and trace the curve. Trace another curve about 1 cm inside of the first curve and cut along it.
3. Cut lines from the curved edge to the first drawn curve to create flaps. Use glue to secure these flaps to the headband. You now have a visor.
4. Cut strips of construction a paper in any colour and glue them together into longer strips.
5. Glue the strips along the inside of the headband in an arch, so they all cross in the middle to form the hat dome.
6. Decorate and wear!
January 18 is wonderful! Astonishing! Phenomenal! Fabulous! It’s National Thesaurus Day! A thesaurus is a fantastic reference book that allows you to find many tremendous, superb, sensational synonyms for every descriptive word. Mixing up your adjectives will make your writing more compelling, and a thesaurus can help you expand your vocabulary and turn you into a brilliant writer (or do we mean marvellous). Put your thesaurus to the test today and practise writing some intricate sentences using a plethora of perfect words. Challenge your child to write a short story using words they find in their thesaurus. Don’t have a thesaurus? You can visit your local library or go online and use a thesaurus website. This challenge will help your child develop their vocabulary, flex their creativity muscles, and practise using reference books.
Everyone deserves a hug! National Hugging Day on January 21 is the perfect day to spread love and warmth with hugs. Hugging is great for mental and physical health, helping lower blood pressure, reduce stress, reduce anxiety, and increase feelings of contentment. Make sure you ask someone’s permission before you hug them! Consider this a virtual hug from all of us here at Telegraph Road Entertainment.
It’s never too late to practise your writing, especially on January 23 – National Handwriting Day. Our Cursive Writing Key Skills book will help your child practise their handwriting skills with letter and sentence practise. It is available in hard copy and as a downloadable and printable eBook. Your child can put their handwriting skills to the test by writing letters to their relatives and friends. Exchange handwritten notes with your child to help them practise writing and reading in cursive – plus, these notes can help encourage and inspire them.
Finish January with a warm drink – National Hot Chocolate Day is on January 31. As the days get colder and snowier, it is wonderful to bundle inside with a warm and yummy mug of hot chocolate. Chocolate beverages date back to the Mayan empire over 2000 years ago. Nowadays you can make hot chocolate in a variety of ways, from powdered mixes to intricate recipes using shaved chocolate. Try our hot chocolate recipe below.
Telegraph Road Entertainment’s Hot Chocolate
Ingredients
4 cups of milk
½ cup of cocoa powder
¼ sugar
½ cup chocolate chips
¼ tsp vanilla
Instructions
1. Heat milk, cocoa powder, and sugar in a saucepan on medium heat. Whisk frequently.
2. Add chocolate chips and whisk until melted.
3. Whisk in vanilla.
4. Serve and enjoy!
Try using butterscotch chips to give the hot chocolate a different flavour, and use all your favourite toppings like marshmallows, whipping cream, and sprinkles.
From the Desk of Canadian Curriculum Press
This year, we will be highlighting some of our educational products every month. This month, our desk has the Key Skills Multiplication workbook and Multiplication Flash Cards. Learning multiplication skills is foundational to many areas of math, from calculating area and volume and solving equations, to calculating tax and budgeting. This workbook and flash card combo will help your child gain confidence and speed by reinforcing multiplication skills and quick recall of multiplication tables.
We love hearing from you!
You can connect with us on Instagram at @telegraphroad.entertainment and @canadiancurriculumpress and by visiting our Facebook page @TelegraphRoadEntertainment. Share your learning adventures with us by tagging us on Facebook @canadiancurriculumpress or hashtag us #canadiancurriculumpress #telegraphroadentertainment #danielthebeaver
