Math Class

This is one of my favorite Kid Snippets.  If you didn't know, Kids Snippets are situations told by kids, and acted out by adults.






And that is how I feel during homeschool sometimes.

Ecola State Park

Our latest beach exploration took us to Ecola State  Park.  It was supposedly a great time for whale watching but none of the whales decided to show themselves.  So we scooted over to Indian Beach and had a great time bouldering and searching through tide pools - we're getting pretty good at that.

The picture above is looking at Cannon Beach from an Ecola overlook.  Ecola is a Native Amercian word for whale.  We found evidence that elk had been hanging around the grass at the Ecola viewing area but they were avoiding the whale watching crowds that day.

 Hudson and Lincoln walking along Indian Beach.

This is a great beach for tide pool finds.  We saw quite a lot of hermit crabs, snails, sea stars, barnacles, muscles, sponges, and anemones.

I was curious as to why most sea stars are a shade of purple but every now and then there is a bright orange one.  After researching online, I didn't really get an answer, but from what I gather it's comparable to us having different hair color - black, brown, and blonde hair is most common but every now and then you get a bright red head.

But I did learn some other interesting facts about sea stars like they can extend their stomach out of their mouth to feed on food that is too big for their little mouths.  Their stomachs will attach to the food, a muscle, barnacle, snail or clam, sending digestive juices into their prey's shell through a crack to eat it. Also, I learned that sea stars are considered a "keystone species" meaning scientist look to sea stars as an indicator of intertidal zone health.

This is a picture of the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse.  I was intrigued with this little lighthouse on it's own tiny island, over a mile from the shore, so I did some research when I got home to discover it's name and to read stories about it.  I'm so glad I did.  It has a very interesting history.  I'll try to sum it up a bit but click here to read a Wikipedia article about it and here to read an article from a website dedicated to lighthouses.

To make a long story short, the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse was quickly nicknamed "Terrible Tilly" because of the dangerous conditions there.  Building it and running it was quite a feat. At the time it was built it was the most expensive lighthouse on the West coast.  It became the most expensive lighthouse to run in the country because of all the constant repairs needed due to waves and debris crashing against the lighthouse. Some reports told that the keepers themselves were going crazy, being confined to such small quarters and under such stressful situations.  The lighthouse ran from 1881 to 1957 after which it was sold a couple different times to private owners until it became a columbarium.

For the sake of time I left out all the exciting stories so if you're interested just click on the links above.

Any day at the beach is fun, but those days when we can have fun at the beach and learn something new, well, those days are even better, aren't they?

Christmas

Did you have a good Christmas?  We did.  It was great.  You see these four smiling faces?  They make Christmas awesome.  I love all the excitement, the anticipation, the shrieks and squeals when they open their gifts.  They love it.  They love it all.  They are so fun to give gifts to.  They make it awesome.  It was a good day.

It Makes Me Smile

I haven't done a "It Makes Me Smile" post for a while.  I was thinking about that the other day and decided I need to make more of an effort to write more of these posts.  They help me to be more mindful of the positive things that happen during the week.  I certainly could use more positive things in my life.  I tend to dwell on the negative.  So here's what made me smile the week of December 29.

• The kids still thanking Heavenly Father in prayer for the new gifts they got for Christmas.
• The little bit of sun that was showing this morning.
• Hearing Hudson singing "This Cowboy's Hat" in the dark to Lincoln one night.
• Hudson excitement whenever we get our botany lessons out.
• The kids' complaint the we "go on too many adventures".  One cannot go to the beach too many times, can they?
• Looking through the pictures of our beach adventures, this last Saturday being the most recent:

•  Thinking of how I want to balance our adventures with more time in the mountains.  Yes, mountains definitely make me smile.

Making Quills

One of the kids' favorite thing to do for school is History Pockets.  I purchase mine from Amazon and there are several different books.  Right now we are working on Colonial America.  It's a fun way to incorporate facts or projects about a time we are currently studying.

This is the front of the book:

The picture shows a wooden toy, a Jacob's Ladder.  We made those a little while ago and they were a big hit with the kids.  

From this book we learned how to make our own quills.  It was actually pretty easy and each child made and used their own.

Making our quills was definitely easier than writing with them.  That takes a lot of practice!  You can't press the quill to the paper with too much force or too little.  You can't get too much or too little ink.  There were many splotches and smears.  But it was fun.  The kids loved it and I loved it too.  It felt more like painting than writing.

To make your own quill you just need some feathers (I purchased mine on amazon), sandpaper, water, and of course you need paper and ink.

First, sand one edge of the tip of the feather until it is flat.  Then soak the tip in water for 5 minutes.  Dry the tip and snip a small incision in the tip of the feather - this is suppose to help with the flow of ink into the feather.  And there you have it.  That's it!  Pretty easy, isn't it?

I definitely recommend you check out History Pockets if you have kids around the grade school range. My kids LOVE making them.  It's the fun thing they always want to do, which works well for me because I can say, "If we get all our other schoolwork done we can do History Pockets."  That is usually followed by whoops and screams and jumping from the kids.  We are almost done with Colonial America then we will begin The American Revolution.

It was especially fun to do this project right now because we are studying George Washington and reading about his childhood.  He wrote with quills and was a very good student in pretty much every way including writing.  The kids enjoyed writing the way he did.