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LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON
It may have looked like the Class 3 students at Bompas School were doing nothing more than creating snowflakes from paper Tuesday but in fact they were learning much more.

Anna Keller, director of the Kids Travel Company, teaches students at Bompas School in Fort Simpson to embrace their uniqueness. - Miranda Scotland/NNSL photo

The instructor had them follow the lead so that all the creations were the same while another pointed out how silly the idea was. Not all snowflakes are the same and neither are people, Anna Keller, director of the Kids Travel Company, told the students.

The message came in loud and clear for six-year-old Cassidy Barry

"We learned we're all different," Barry said, after enthusiastically recounting the activity.

The Kids Travel Company is visiting Fort Simpson this week to share anti-bullying messages with all the grades at Bompas School. The workshop instructors are students from Vanguard College in Edmonton, Alta., and executing the workshops is part of their schooling.

Representatives from the Kids Travel Company are also currently stationed in Fort Resolution, Fort Smith, Hay River and Yellowknife.

"I hope that every place we go to that people are accepting, and also just that they aim to figure out what the truth is in their own life and that they grow up following that," said Keller.

Over the five days, the college students plan to teach the children about the importance of embracing everyone's unique qualities, if you want a friend you have to be a friend, and how to love bullies. Bullies are often people who don't feel accepted, said Keller.

The company also talked to the kids about the power of words and demonstrated their affect by hammering nails into a wood board.

"Even when you take the nail out it leaves a mark," Keller said. "Once you say something you can't take it back ... The words that you say to people can actually affect them for life."

The lessons are taught through hands-on activities, such as skits, and the theme is "science rules, bullies drool." At the end of each day, students in the workshop will take home a workbook that promotes what they learned through mazes, crosswords and written questions.

Keller said children shouldn't feel like they can't do anything to change circumstances. Everyone should realize that they have the power to make a situation better or worse through their actions, she said.

"If you're being bullied I would for sure say, 'Go and talk to someone about it, don't let it continue to happen,'" she said.

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