Life in the Knife

Teacher's note: This post is from our friends in the Great White North!  One of our projects this term was to learn about our community and compare it to a different one.  We decided to blog with the students of 3B in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (that's Mrs. Betts' daughter's class!). We sent them a blog post about life in Surrey(see our earlier blog post) and they replied by sending us this post about their community.  It sure sounds like a fascinating place to see!  We now plan to compare our community to theirs . .  looking for similarities and differences.  

Dene Culture

Dene people are a group of First Nations people who live in the NWT. Dene people like to live off the land, which means they go hunting for their food and make their own clothing. Dene people have many beliefs and stories that they share with us at school. We even have elders who come in to share their teachings with us. Dene people have their own games that they play with materials from the land. We had a few Dene adults come to our school to teach us some games. They taught us snow snake, which is a game where you throw a stick into the snow as far as you can (it wiggles along the ground like a snake). Another game they play is leg wrestling. This was one of our favourite games.

Fun Activities in Yellowknife

Yellowknife has similar activities to most cities. We like to play sports at our Multiplex or our Fieldhouse and go swimming at our swimming pool. In Yellowknife we do a lot of outdoor activities for fun as well. We have lots of trails and lakes. We go hiking and fishing in the summer. We love to go to the lake in the summer to swim, tube and hang out at the beach. In the winter the lakes freeze over so we go ice fishing and snowmobiling. We also go cross country skiing. Sometimes when it isn’t freezing cold we can play ice hockey on the lake!

Animals in our Community

We have a lot of the same animals that you find in BC. When we go on road trips out of Yellowknife we see a lot of Bison crossing the road. Bison are HUGE! We have to make sure that we stop for them or we will CRASH!! We also have lots of foxes in Yellowknife. They run across the street a lot. You can see them in backyards, forests and parks all the time. Ravens in Yellowknife are very annoying. They pick out your garbage and make a big mess! This sounds like raccoons that you have in Surrey! Ptarmigans are a type of bird. They are very hard to see in the winter. In the summer female Ptarmigans turn brown first to blend in to our rocks to hide from the predators and protect the babies. The males stay white to distract the predators.

Transportation

In Yellowknife we use cars and trucks to get around town. Yellowknife is very small and it only takes us about 10 minutes to get anywhere!! We use trucks in the winter to make sure we don’t get stuck in the snow. In the winter we have some unique ways of getting around. We use dogsleds and snowmobiles. They are very entertaining to ride! In Kindergarten we got to go to a dogsledding camp. It was a little chilly. There are also lots of boats and sea-doos in the summer.

Food in Yellowknife

We grow some food in our gardens, but most of our food comes from the grocery store. We have a few different grocery stores. Most of our food in our stores comes by trucks from suppliers in the south. We also get food from hunting and fishing. We can get nice pickerel and white fish from Great Slave Lake. Our class made Duck Soup a few weeks ago. The Ducks were hunted in Yellowknife and we made soup from the meat. 

Landscape and Weather in Yellowknife

In Yellowknife there are lots of rocks and trees. There is barely any grass. Our trees are short and skinny because our growing season is so short they don’t have a lot of time to get big like the trees in the south. In Yellowknife we can hunt in winter and summer. There are lots of things we can hunt like caribou, duck, ptarmigan and muskrat. In Yellowknife it is really cold in the winter. The temperature is around -30 degrees. Here we have indoor recess at 30 below (which means we have it A LOT!!). Spring comes very late. We usually still have frost in May. In Yellowknife we have a city garden in June. When you drive past it you can see lots of lettuce, sunflowers and all sorts of vegetables. 

Tourism in Yellowknife

People always come to Yellowknife to visit. Lots of people love to see the northern lights. There is a place called Aurora Village and you can go out to see the northern lights and go dogsledding and warm up by a fire. Other cool things to do in Yellowknife are travel on the Ice Road. The Ice Road is a road on Great Slave Lake that you can drive on to get to Dettah in the winter. It can be a scary feeling driving on the ice! Another reason people may come to visit Yellowknife is to go dogsledding. You can go on tours around Yellowknife on a dogsled or watch the dogsled races that take place. There are lots of other reasons to visit Yellowknife like fishing on Great Slave Lake, swimming and experiencing Dene Games! Yellowknife is awesome; you can even see Folk on the Rocks.

Festivals that happen around town!

There are lots of festivals in Yellowknife. Two of our favourites are Folk on the Rocks and the Long John Jamboree. Folk on the Rocks is a music festival that happens every summer. Musicians come from all over and some of our local musicians get to play too! We also have The Long John Jamboree. It is a winter festival. There are ice sculptures, a sugar shack, games and much more. At the sugar shack they pour maple syrup onto ice so it freezes to a Popsicle stick. It is delicious! The Long John Jamboree is one of the best festivals in the world.