Preparation for Yellowstone

In late June we'll be going to Yellowstone!  We're all excited--Miss L is still not 100% on the concepts of calendar time and keeps asking if we're leaving "next week".  Sorry, sweetie.  The plan is to keep going with our usual homeschool stuff through the month of May, then break in June to focus our studies on Yellowstone--history, geology, animal life...I can't wait.  May might feel like a long time. 

I've been pulling together our books and things in preparation.  The list, as it stands today.

Guidebooks and Overviews:

• For my beginning reader, Yellowstone (Ready to Read Level 1) and for slightly older, Yellowstone National Park (A True Book) by David Peterson. Unfortunately the latter is a bit in-between the two kids' reading levels but it'll be ok as a reference.
• For the grownups, Rough Guides Yellowstone & Grand Teton.

Maps and Hiking:

• To introduce basic map reading to the youngest, There's a Map on My Lap! (Dr. Seuess Learning Library).
• A thin book on day hikes Mr. K can flip through, and help plan our individual days: Best Easy Day Hikes Yellowstone.
• A good topographic map.  Essential.  We love the Trails Illustrated series, and the one of the whole Yellowstone park that we picked up during our trip there pre-kids will probably do fine.  They also make more detailed ones for the individual trail quadrants, but I don't think we'll be doing a lot of backcountry hiking.  If we end up needing one of those we can probably pick it up at a visitors' center at the park.
• Tim Cahill's Lost in My Own Backyard, a collection of his essays on hiking Yellowstone.  This is a slim book we'll probably bring along to read-aloud while we are there.

History:

• Yellowstone Moran, by Lita Judge.  Storybook about Thomas Moran, a painter who explored the area in the early days.  Moran's paintings were influential in convincing the government to set the area aside as the first National Park.
• The Land of Curiosities, Book 1: Adventures in Yellowstone, 1871-1872 by Dianna Neil.  Fictional chapter book set in the early days of white settlement in the area.  We'll do this as a read aloud in the weeks leading up to our trip.  If we like it, we'll take Book 2 along to read while we are there.
• Searching for Yellowstone: Ecology and Wonder in the Last Wilderness, by Paul Schullery, an interdisciplinary book on the history and ecology of the park that I'll be reading.  I'm also considering Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone, by George Black.

Wildlife and Ecology:

• Who Pooped in the Park? Yellowstone. The kids like this narrative of animal tracking for other national parks we've visited. 
• Buffalo Music, by Tracey Fern.  A storybook about a woman who raised Bison and eventually became an early herd in the park. 
• The Wolves Are Back and The Buffalo are Back by Jean Craighead George.  Lovely childrens books about the disappearance and reintroduction of wolves and buffalo in the area.   I want to also let my kids know that these reintroductions are also controversial and that wolves are causing problems for many farmers in the area.   I'll find a way.
• Wildfires by Seymour Simon.
• We'll probably pick up a wildlife/nature guide or three in the park.  I'll update this here afterwards!

Geology and Geysers.  This is my bag, baby, so we get kinda technical here.  This list increases in difficulty as you descend.  There are not many books written specifically for kids on the geology of the area, but the ones near the top can be understood by the bright and interested elementary student.

• Geysers: What They Are and How They Work by T. Scott Bryan.  One of the few children's titles.
• Roadside Geology of Yellowstone by William Fritz
• Geology Underfoot in Yellowstone by Marc Hendrix.  Highly recommended and well-written narrative.
• Geysers of Yellowstone by T. Scott Bryan
• Windows Into the Earth: The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks by Smith and Siegel
• USGS Professional Paper 729-G, The Quaternary and Piocene Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana  Free PDF!  But I have the hard copy because I'm a nerd and I don't want to print those big maps.

Grab bag random stuff:

• Yellowstone's Hot Legends and Cool Myths by Robert Rath.  Graphic novel that includes some Native American myths as well as stories from early "mountain men" and the 1988 fires.  I just left this one lying on the coffee table, and it worked a charm in getting the kids interested in some of the other topics. 
• Ginger Bread Tracks and Pine Needle Pasta: A Savory Guide to Yellowstone National Park.  A kid's cookbook that also teaches yellowstone science!
• Photographer's Guide to Yellowstone & The Grand Tetons by Joseph K. Lange.  You don't think I'm going to go without my camera, do you?
• Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park.  The first chapter, on deaths that have been caused by falling in hot springs, is both nausea-inducing and fascinating.

The Science Show, Episode 2: Laws of Motion

Sometimes the kid gets on a kick.  He's made three "The Science Show" videos in the last 24 hours.  Episode 2 here on the Laws of Motion is the best so far.  Gotta keep up with him!  Or teach him how to use a tripod.

Poetry Thursday

Who Am I?

The trees ask me,
And the sky,
And the sea asks me,
                   Who am I?

The grass asks me,
And the sand,
And the rocks ask me
                   Who I am.

The wind tells me
At nightfall,
And the rain tells me.
                    Someone small.

Someone small
Someone small
                    But a piece
                                  of
                                  it
                                  all.

~Felice Holman 
found in The Tree That Time Built

Notes on Dinosaurs

So, many kids are dino-crazy and want to study them, but a lot of homeschooling parents don't know where to start.  Or after you've whetted a child's appetite by watching Walking with Dinosaurs or some simple dinosaur reader books, where do you go from there?  Last night I met with a few other homeschooling moms to share ideas, run down the basics on dinosaurs to get your feet wet, and give some ideas on books and resources and activities that may help extend and enrich a dinosaur study.  Most of our ideas focused on the elementary years but many are applicable to much older students as well.   I previously posted about some of these resources, but I've expanded the list and added an assortment of themes or "pegs" to help organize your thoughts and activities about dinosaurs.  You can find the outline of what we discussed and a list of resources as a pdf document free to browse or download at the link below.

Notes on Dinosaurs

Drop me a line if you have any questions or would like to discuss ideas.  Enjoy!

First Year Reflections

It's been about a year since we started the homeschooling journey.  What a year!  It began almost suddenly, out of necessity and the realization that the available public school would not work for Mr. K.  In hindsight, that shouldn't have been too surprising.  We've always known he was wired a little differently from his age-mates (upon seeing a lobster in a tank for the first time at about 11 months, he signed "fish-bug"), but that didn't become as drastically obvious until he was thrown into a class with 23 others.  But this is not the post for a detailing our problems with "the system".  This is the post about how this first year of homeschooling has been eye-opening and how we are finding our way through.

My usual instict, before I start any new thing, is to research the heck out of it.  Then at somepoint my gut says, "ok, you know all you need to know for now, jump in and come back and fill in the gaps later when you find out what they are."  Because we pulled Mr. K out of public school fairly quickly, I could not do as much research as I might otherwise about homeschooling methods and local resources.  No matter.  The internet swooped in to save the day.  I found a couple message boards and online communities to ask questions and find a place to start. 

The first thing I discovered, is that just like public school or anywhere else, making friends and finding your community can be hard.  We don't fit in with the conservative Christian homeschooling community, which, like in most places, is the majority around here.  It did take a little while, but I'm hooked in now with a secular network of open-minded, diverse homeschoolers in our region and made some good friends who we have much in common with. 

The second thing I discovered, is that OMG homeschooling can be big business!  There are dozens of books on methods, a million different types of curricula, piles and piles of available enrichment materials, and vast websites exhorting you to why one particular thing is better than all the others.  Many people have very strong opinions about the "right" way to homeschool, and many of those people are very articulate and well-reasoned, and it is easy to lose the forest through the trees and forget what works for your kids and family, and the reasons why you chose to homeschool in the first place.

The third thing I discovered, and that I hope to continue to re-discover and re-evaluate in the coming months and years, is that my children are by nature curious, eager to learn, and a joy to be around.  I knew this before, I did, when they were both toddlers and then pre-school age.  When both kids were small I found a used copy of "The Unschooling Handbook" and read it, embracing many of the ideas within as the way we'd raise the kids when they were tiny and into the school years.  Then I lost this knowledge when Mr. K started having trouble in the kindergarten, reacting to his increasing behavior problems with additonal strictness and more rules, just the way the public school did.  This was the wrong approach--what really needed was more room, more time to learn according to his clock, not according to an educationally basic but rigid schedule with mandatory "circle time" that was torture for his wiggly self.   He needed to learn in his hands-on, bookish, accelerated way and be treated respectfully, treated more like the man he will someday be...what's that old line: I am raising adults, not children.  Something like that. 

A last thing I discovered is that the types of methods and curricula that work best for us are open-ended and highly adaptable.  Extensive scriptedness is DOA.  Anything that talks down to a child's intelligence will be given at minimum an eyebrow and likely the boot.  Work that exists in a vaccuum from other things we are studying or from our lives will be quickly viewed as busywork, so any of the "skills" such as writing that may come slower need to be done in a relaxed and loving manner and integrated with other interesting studies.  The kids are pretty self-motivated for their ages, and interesting projects and work that can be child-driven is wonderful, but I need to stay rightthere for guidance and support.   On our "this works" list for us right now is MBTP, BFSU, Brave Writer/The Writer's Jungle, and Math Mammoth.  For now, we have turned out to be eclectic but Charlotte Mason-y homeschoolers with strong respect for both Unschooling and Classical schools of thought.  Most of our learning comes from good books and hands-on activities, and wonders never cease, the kids actually seem to enjoy working together, most of the time.

If I had to predict the future (and of course I can't) I think that the kids may get more Unschooly as they age and can take more responsibility for their own learning.  Someday, they may even want to return to public school.  We'll cross that bridge when it comes.  I don't know exactly where we are headed, but this last year has been endlessly interesting and rewarding, and I look forward to seeing where we go next.

Two Wetlands

It's been another long, gray PNW winter.  Whenever the sun breaks for a few minutes, everyone in the area dashes outside to enjoy the weak sunshine and soak up Vitamin D.  Our little family took one little hike the last sunny day and enjoyed it so much we immediately drove down the highway to take a second one.  Both were through wetland areas, but very different types of wetlands which made for interesting observations. 

First was West Hylebos Wetlands Park, an inland forest bog (swamp).  The skunk cabbage is just blooming and not too stinky, yet...we learned that another name for skunk cabbage is "swamp lantern" and I much prefer that name for such a luminous plant!

Most of these bogs in the Puget Sound have long since been destroyed by peat mining, but by some accident this one still exists.  It is amazing to see the giant trees, just barely upright on the super soft and saturated ground. In many, many places, the giant trees toppled and their huge root wads are up on display.  When the trees come up they may destroy the walkway.

The kids very much enjoyed the easy hike and loved taking pictures of the interesting surroundings.

We decided to go back and do it again in each season to observe the changes. 

It was such an easy and enjoyable morning hike, that none of us wanted to go home yet and we decided to do a second trail after lunch. 

Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge!  We'd gone here with some homeschool friends during the week, but because we were with a group, we didn't get very far on the trails.  We went much, much farther this time.

Nisqually wetland is a seashore delta, a very different and much larger wetland than the Hylebos Creek area.  Lots of Canada Geese and interesting shorebirds to watch.

As usual I forgot the guidebooks.  (Why can I not ever remember the guidebooks???) And I can't remember what kind of bird is that green-footed one. 

My eagle-eyed kids spotted some amorphous blobs attached to some drowned vegetation, see it?

Frog eggs, we think.  Neato!

We had some good discussions afterward comparing and contrasting the two areas and the different types of life and vegetation.  I asked Big K which one he liked better and he said, "The second one.  Because we went farther."  Methinks he's going to be going through a lot of hiking shoes.