Apologies for another late post; we have just returned from a short break in Jasper, Alberta (a post about music for a five-hour car journey may well follow one of these days!).

We saw many amazing sights and stopped to listen to the sounds of waterfalls, bird song… and even an avalanche.

As we explored the town of Jasper on Thursday we were able to stop and listen to just a little of the performance of Warrior Women, a First Nations mother and daughter drumming group who were performing outside the Heritage Fire Hall.

The cheeky children deciding that playing was more important than providing material for this blog.

However, having been lucky enough to stumble upon the chance to enjoy some live music the kids spurned the music in favour of playing on a little train.

I really regret that we didn’t stop to listen to the whole performance and learn about drumming from Matricia and Mackenzie Brown, but I guess our follow-up activity will be to do some research ourselves to find out more about drumming in the First Nations cultures of Canada.  I think we’ll use this lesson plan from freethechildren.com as our starting point.