I admit, we've read Paddle-to-the-Sea before, twice even. Once when Eldest was doing Ambleside Year Two, and once with Middle. We've thoroughly enjoyed it, but all the while I was dying to do more with it, as well as the rest of the Holling books. Well, that time has finally come. As a starting point, I got Beautiful Feet's Geography Through Literature Study Guide, and the accompanying maps. Then, after a vain search online for notebooking pages, I made some myself. I'm rather pleased with how they turned out, and how I was able to tailor them to fit with our other areas of study. I managed to tie in nature study, zoology, grammar, math, and creative writing. Of course, I've only completed pages for the first two lessons, but our first lesson today was successful enough to encourage me to keep it up.
First we talked about, and drew, sign of spring in Nipigon Country, as noted in the text. Then we talked about signs of spring where we live, which is a very different animal. No melting of the snow pack here, for example.
After that we watched some Youtube videos of Canadian Geese while the kids colored in a picture of one. Since we were discussing the principles of lift, thrust, and drag as it relates to the flight of birds yesterday in our zoology text, we took a little Youtube detour at that point to watch a video on how birds fly. As they finished coloring, I read to them a little more about the geese's habits, etc., and they wrote down a few of them.
Then we worked on a little sheet I had made up with the seven different animals mentioned in the first three chapters. I had pictures of the animals, their common names, and taxonomy. We used process of elimination to figure out which taxonomy matched which animal. Middle, an avid fan of the "Sisters Grimm" series, could hardly contain herself when she recognized Canis lupus as the Gray Wolf.
We voted to skip the planned experiment on ballast so Dad can participate with us in doing that tonight.
I expected much resistance to the grammar page, I asked them to pick out a proper noun, common noun, action verb, and pronoun from the text then make up their own story using those words. They hate putting pencil to paper, but got so caught up in creating their stories they forgot to complain. Eldest even put hers into comic strip format.
We finished off with a few math problems, and a discussion on what kind of person the boy who made Paddle-to-the-Sea must have been. A good time was had by all, and I finally feel like we're really getting involved with Holling's story, instead of skimming over it.
P.S. I found this great website that has full page text and illustrations of this beautiful book available for free online, as well as a 30 minute movie that was made to go with it. The movie differs from the book in many details, but has its own good points.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
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Hummingbird Moth aka Sphinx Moth
Chapter 1- The Graceful Imposter
Believe it or not, out here in the desert we see more hummingbirds hanging around than I've seen anywhere else I've lived. It's probably the wide open spaces. Once I even saw a hummingbird just sitting in a tree in our backyard. I've NEVER seen a hummingbird at rest, it's amazing how small it looks with it's wings folded against it's side. But around the time the monsoon season got underway, we started seeing them more frequently, hovering around our desert willows and birds of paradise. Really small hummingbirds, a little odd looking....
I never caught them on camera, the above photograph was 'borrowed' from the web, but after awhile we realized what we were seeing weren't hummingbirds, but the hummingbird moth:
It's hard to tell from the above photo, but these are good sized moths, with wingspans up to 5". And suddenly, they were everywhere! You notice a moth that size when it buzzes your head, or accidentally flies into your house and starts beating against the windows to get out. Our cats had a field day, we found more than one set of wings sans body on the floor of our garage. Then , without our really noticing, they quietly receded.Chapter 2: Guilty by Association
As the monsoon season progressed, our little desert homestead blossomed. The normally brown rocky turf gave way to a tangle of green. So it was on the relatively blank slate of our gravel driveway that I first noticed a bright yellow caterpillar with a horn on the end just like the hornworms that had attacked my tomatoes. In fact they looked exactly like hornworms except for their color.
I'm normally pretty lasseiz faire about the flora and fauna around here, we don't cultivate a lawn and we let the desert pretty much go through whatever cycles it's going to go through, but I've seen hornworms strip a tomato plant down to nubs, and I had gone to SO much trouble and expense this spring to put in a garden, my first reaction to these little yellow cousins was panic. I told my girls I'd pay them 25 cents for each worm they picked off the ground and put in a bucket:
An hour later, they'd each earned $10 and it was clear this was a losing war. The driveway was crawling with them and they hung on every bush like Christmas decorations:
I'm normally pretty lasseiz faire about the flora and fauna around here, we don't cultivate a lawn and we let the desert pretty much go through whatever cycles it's going to go through, but I've seen hornworms strip a tomato plant down to nubs, and I had gone to SO much trouble and expense this spring to put in a garden, my first reaction to these little yellow cousins was panic. I told my girls I'd pay them 25 cents for each worm they picked off the ground and put in a bucket:
An hour later, they'd each earned $10 and it was clear this was a losing war. The driveway was crawling with them and they hung on every bush like Christmas decorations:
Chapter 3: It All Comes Together
As you've probably already guessed, there is a connection between those graceful hovering moths and the caterpillar inundation. We figured out pretty early on that these little yellow guys were the progeny of the White Lined Sphinx Moth, Hyles lineata. After a couple of weeks their numbers quickly lessened, and when we did see one it was no longer munching or crawling, but turning around and around in a little circular hole in the ground. I had hoped to see thousands of little cocoons hanging from our bushes, but these guys burrow in the ground. And yesterday I spotted one of those big moths on our front porch. I wonder whether the eggs this generation of moths lays will lie dormant until the next time conditions are right, or if they'll hatch again in a couple of weeks? I always thought the natural world operated on regular cycles, but so far this has been a "make hay while the sun shines" sort of process. A live, reproduce, die, and do it all over again as fast as we can kind of thing. And it just rained again today, so weather conditions seem favorable. Time will tell.
(Thanks to Barb, who wrote a post a couple of days ago on her excellent blog The Handbook of Nature Study, about the Hummingbird Moth. I can't wait to get out my copy of the handbook and learn even more about these interesting creatures.)
Friday, August 22, 2008
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100 Species Challenge
Ever since we moved out here in the middle of the desert, it's been my goal to at least be able to identify all the things we find on our property, plant, animal, etc. I've learned a few things here and there, but I needed a good reason to focus on that task, and involve the kids. I found out about the 100 Species Challenge on Melissa Wiley's blog. The idea is to be able to name 100 different species of flora in the area. I think we'll also keep a separate list for fauna, since we're studying zoology this year. People from all over the country, even all over the world, are participating, so it should be fun (and education:) to see everyone's entries. Anyone is welcome to participate, and here are the official rules:
1. Participants should include a copy of these rules and a link to this entry in their initial blog post about the challenge. I will make a sidebar list of anyone who notifies me that they are participating in the Challenge.
2. Participants should keep a list of all plant species they can name, either by common or scientific name, that are living within walking distance of the participant's home. The list should be numbered, and should appear in every blog entry about the challenge, or in a sidebar.
3. Participants are encouraged to give detailed information about the plants they can name in the first post in which that plant appears. My format will be as follows: the numbered list, with plants making their first appearance on the list in bold; each plant making its first appearance will then have a photograph taken by me, where possible, a list of information I already knew about the plant, and a list of information I learned subsequent to starting this challenge, and a list of information I'd like to know. (See below for an example.) This format is not obligatory, however, and participants can adapt this portion of the challenge to their needs and desires.
4. Participants are encouraged to make it possible for visitors to their blog to find easily all 100-Species-Challenge blog posts. This can be done either by tagging these posts, by ending every post on the challenge with a link to your previous post on the challenge, or by some method which surpasses my technological ability and creativity.
5. Participants may post pictures of plants they are unable to identify, or are unable to identify with precision. They should not include these plants in the numbered list until they are able to identify it with relative precision. Each participant shall determine the level of precision that is acceptable to her; however, being able to distinguish between plants that have different common names should be a bare minimum.
6. Different varieties of the same species shall not count as different entries (e.g., Celebrity Tomato and Roma Tomato should not be separate entries); however, different species which share a common name be separate if the participant is able to distinguish between them (e.g., camillia japonica and camillia sassanqua if the participant can distinguish the two--"camillia" if not).
7. Participants may take as long as they like to complete the challenge. You can make it as quick or as detailed a project as you like. I'm planning to blog a minimum of two plants per week, complete with pictures and descriptions as below, which could take me up to a year. But you can do it in whatever level of detail you like.
1. Participants should include a copy of these rules and a link to this entry in their initial blog post about the challenge. I will make a sidebar list of anyone who notifies me that they are participating in the Challenge.
2. Participants should keep a list of all plant species they can name, either by common or scientific name, that are living within walking distance of the participant's home. The list should be numbered, and should appear in every blog entry about the challenge, or in a sidebar.
3. Participants are encouraged to give detailed information about the plants they can name in the first post in which that plant appears. My format will be as follows: the numbered list, with plants making their first appearance on the list in bold; each plant making its first appearance will then have a photograph taken by me, where possible, a list of information I already knew about the plant, and a list of information I learned subsequent to starting this challenge, and a list of information I'd like to know. (See below for an example.) This format is not obligatory, however, and participants can adapt this portion of the challenge to their needs and desires.
4. Participants are encouraged to make it possible for visitors to their blog to find easily all 100-Species-Challenge blog posts. This can be done either by tagging these posts, by ending every post on the challenge with a link to your previous post on the challenge, or by some method which surpasses my technological ability and creativity.
5. Participants may post pictures of plants they are unable to identify, or are unable to identify with precision. They should not include these plants in the numbered list until they are able to identify it with relative precision. Each participant shall determine the level of precision that is acceptable to her; however, being able to distinguish between plants that have different common names should be a bare minimum.
6. Different varieties of the same species shall not count as different entries (e.g., Celebrity Tomato and Roma Tomato should not be separate entries); however, different species which share a common name be separate if the participant is able to distinguish between them (e.g., camillia japonica and camillia sassanqua if the participant can distinguish the two--"camillia" if not).
7. Participants may take as long as they like to complete the challenge. You can make it as quick or as detailed a project as you like. I'm planning to blog a minimum of two plants per week, complete with pictures and descriptions as below, which could take me up to a year. But you can do it in whatever level of detail you like.
