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.

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

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.

Field trippin' (Rocks, Minerals, and Earth Science for Homeschoolers, Part 2)

Continued from Part 1.  Now that you are thinking about rocks and earth science, and you're on board with the field trips, now what?  What do you take with you, where should you go to see the good stuff? 

Now, none of these things are mandatory to a good field trip experience, but they do help.  If you are a hiker, you've already got most of the important things.  This is my geology field trip packing list:

1. A small first aid kit.  Doesn't have to be fancy, but if you find yourself without at least band aids and moleskin, you're gauranteed to need them.  But I shouldn't even have to mention that, because you already have something like this in the car, and the little one would be superfluous, right?  Right?
2. Bags!  A comfy, roomy backpack to carry your gear (I like water bottle pockets and lots of nooks and crannies with a big central open area), and more ziplock baggies than you're going to expect, to carry the ever-important snacks, keep trash separate, and cart home small pebbly treasures.  Trust me on this one. 
3. A camera.  It is so pretty outside!  And kids are so cute!  And sometimes you need to take a picture of a flower or something you want to identify later.
4. A notebook.  If you make a habit of spending time outside in damp weather, rite-in-the-rain is a good idea.  If you are a fair-weather field tripper, whatever notebook you prefer. 
5. A magnifying glass or hand lens.  Any old magnifying glass will do, but if you are feeling fancy, my kids love to use my hand lens under my supervision.  Good optical quality, small, conveniently hangs around the neck on a lanyard.  Just gotta get your eye up close to the thing, that's the trick.  A student hand lens I wouldn't feel too bad about scratching up is this one.  I find having a magnifying glass or hand lens on me far more important than the next item...
6. A rock hammer.  Geologists use these to crack open rocks to see "fresh" material inside and kids just find it fun to bank on rocks, but they don't vary too much and you really don't need one for casual field trips.  Mine usually stays in the car.  Estwing makes the nicest rock hammers, but the budget models do fine for student use. 
7. Safety glasses.  If you are bringing #6, bring these too.  Shards of flying rock hurt.  Minimize the chance you'll need that first aid kit.  Buy cheap ones at the hardware store or kid-size ones online, not a big deal which kind because you're not wearing them very long.
8. Water and snacks.  Seriously.  Do not forget the water and snacks. 
9. Layers for conditions warmer or cooler than expected.  A change of socks can be a wise use of space. 
10. A hat, season dependent.  Toque for winter, wide-brimmed hat for summer.  Sometimes both but that's for the advanced class. 
11. Map of and/or to the destination and compass.  Not mandatory for your afternoon stroll at the beach on the other side of town, but anywhere unfamiliar or mountainous, a good idea.  We keep a Gazetteer in our car at all times, just in case a road trip breaks out.  If there is a specific destination in mind where we will be spending some time, I'll often have a specific map as well, which brings me to...

OK.  All packed up.  Now, where do we go? 

Good question!  I am often overwhelmed by too many options.  The way I see it, there's two kinds of field trips: the afternoon trip, and the destination trip.  Each has a slightly different kind of destination and mindset. 

The afternoon trip is somewhere nearby, within an hour or so, that you can see a little nature, low-key and easy.  Since we live in the Puget Sound, we have a couple state park beaches we like to visit on this kind of trip.  You get familiar with these areas and go to them more than once, and over time get to see the small changes that occur seasonally and yearly.   Other good choices for this kind of trip, depending on your location, could be a river delta, sand dunes, a rocky creek, a lakeside.

The destination trip is longer and gets you really outside the comfort zone.  Depending on how far you can travel, it can take a day or a weekend or a week.  Day trip destinations are good if they are 1-3 hours away and have lots of good interesting stuff to spend 4-6 hours when there.  Finding the day trip destinations can be tricky, since you often already think you've been everywhere in your area, but that is rarely really true. 

Good places to look for destination field trip location ideas:

1. State Parks.  Any you've missed? 
2. National Parks.  These places are our national treasures for a reason.  Don't just do the "car tour" if you can help it; after a liesurely stroll through the interpretive center, ask a ranger for recommendations for a good short hike and get away from the crowds.  Remember though not to collect any rock samples from these heavily-traveled and protected areas.
3. The website for your state's Department of Geology.  Sometimes it's called a Geological Survey, or is a part of a Natural Resources division, or something like that.  But every state has one.  Many of these state departments have education as a part of their mission statement and have good lists of local resources and field trip locations for you to browse.
4. Regional geology guidebooks.  There are Roadside Geology and/or Geology Underfoot guides published for many states.  While these books are written for adults, many kids also find them interesting to browse.   There is also a growing collection of regional geology guides/activity books for kids by Cynthia Brown being published for children that can be worth a look.
5. If you want to try rockhounding (intentionally looking for and collecting specific mineral specimens), hook up with your local rock and gem clubs for guidance. Rockhounding books exist and give information on where to find specific types of rocks/minerals in an area, but even with those guides it is often difficult to find specific things on purpose and the legalities regarding rockhounding vary from place to place.
6. Hiking guidebooks or websites like this one.  The point is just to go outside and look around, not find a world-class unique geological feature at every stop.  Most hiking guides for an area that bill themselves as "With Kids" or "Easy Day Hikes" have wonderful places in your area that kids can enjoy.  Sometimes you can cross-reference these hikes with the regional geology guidebook to help explain what you're seeing and that, is fun!
7. And one of my favorites--Serendipity!  Don't plan a specific destination.  Pick a direction and go.  Take a few turns in the road you've never taken before.  Take that Gazetteer with you and see what you find in that area you've never been. 

Now, you know where you're going, or you just got back and want to find out more about the pretty stones you found or that crazy rock formation or that big mountain.  Where to start for further reading and keep that enthusiasm going?  See Part 3.

Fibonacci Spirals in the Woods

A few weeks ago I ran across the wonderful videos by Vi Hart combining mathematics with doodles and plants and flowers.  These start by beautifully demonstrating how many plants and flowers grow in spiral forms that follow the Fibonacci series of numbers (you remember, in which each number in the series is the sum of the two previous-- 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.)  Part 1 is below. 

This captured my imagination. So during one of the sunbreaks, the kids and I watched this again, then headed out to the trails in the woods out the back, to see if we could find any spirals.  Being mid-winter, it's not the best time to go looking, but we did find cones from a Douglas Fir and some kind of lonely pine tree (we forgot the identification books in our haste to get outside). 

Then, we brought the cones inside and got to counting. 

Like Vi Hart, we used different colors to help keep track of the rows of spirals.  Glitter glue was involved. 

And it worked!  For both types of cones, Fibonacci numbers represent!

If/when we try this again in the spring or summer, I'm going to make sure we have *fresh* tubes of glitter glue on hand, and find larger cones or flowers to count.  These little guys were still tight and tiny.  Definitely a fun diversion, though!

Miss L just saw the video screen again over my shoulder as I type this and asked to watch it again.  So, until next time...

A conversation about Rockfish

One of our traditions for New Years Day is a trip to a local zoo or museum--yesterday we went to the Seattle Aquarium.  It happened to be Rockfish Day!  So the kids learned all about Rockfish and they are happy to tell you all about them.   We had a nice conversation over fish & chips at the aquarium cafeteria.

If a picture is worth a thousand words

This photo should tell you what this blog is about.

L at the Grand Canyon, June 2010