Poutine, Nature and Rehearsals Galore

I just needed a little blogging break last week. There was nothing bad going on. I just had no inspiration to write. It is almost time for the Spring show, The Mystery of the Seahorse. Anne is working hard and putting in lots of hours at rehearsals. She had a tiny emotional breakdown one morning this week worrying about her Cecchetti exam. I reminded her that there was lots on her plate right now which can feel overwhelming and that no matter what happened we were proud of her for working so hard on her dreams. My girl has 10 shows (in two different productions) and a Cecchetti exam all in the next three weeks. It is a ton of pressure and she handles it all so well the majority of the time.

Anne as Pearl on the left (The Mystery of the Seahorse)

School is wrapping up day by day. Three math workbooks were completed this week between the two of them. Dean only has review worksheets to complete before end-of-year testing. He will also complete his World Geography course next week. It is nice to have a bit more free time to get other things done -- such as yard work. Anne is plowing through the three courses she was behind in. At the rate she is going, she may finish by mid-June instead of the end of that month.

Done!

I picked up a brand new Tinker Crate at a consignment shop this week. Dean put it together in no time at all. This particular crate was all about chaos theory.

Dean got new Lacrosse gloves for his live action role playing games. His thumbs were getting jammed without protection. He loves his two classes each week and would gladly do more if he could. He will be helping out with two weeks of live action role playing camp this year and three weeks of acting camp this summer as a counselor.

I took this crew to Starbucks this week. They are such a silly and sweet group of teens. Gotta love teenagers! They did have one difficulty at the mall this time. They were playing a game of their own in the mall and unwittingly marched through the middle of a group of about 12 to 15 hooligans (keeping about a eight foot distance from anyone). (I am calling that group this because I had seen them climbing on vending machines and catcalling and being very loud. However, my group hadn't noticed them.) Before they knew it, a teen girl was shouting in Dean's face, accusing him of trying to hit someone and he was being surrounded and trash talked by a group of boys. His sweet girlfriend stood next to him while he tried to talk calmly and sensibly to the group, but they weren't having it. I was sitting about 20 feet away and marched into the middle of the circle to intervene. I was raised in an inner city high school, and I know all too well how this level of posturing and trash talk can quickly escalate. Fortunately, they didn't want to tangle with a middle aged mama suggesting calmly that we call the mall and city police to come and help us settle this issue. While they were digesting my suggestion, I moved my group quickly out of the area. It took us about two hours to process the whats and whys of the incident. My homeschool crew is totally not familiar with not being able to resolve things with a simple "sorry, it was a misunderstanding" statement. The two in our teen group who are public schooled were very familiar with the escalation but still had plenty of trouble figuring out what went wrong. Basically, what went wrong is that the hooligan group was looking for trouble and my group wasn't paying attention to their surroundings and giving the hooligans a wide enough berth. I imagine my group's misstep is why some say kids need to go to public school to be "socialized". However, positive and negative socialization comes in many forms all the time and in many places.

Anne continues to LOVE her job. She can't wait to get there each day. Here she is tagging clothes for sale.

The guys and I had a lovely walk at the bird sanctuary one day. As usual, we saw lots of wild life and very few birds. We saw one woodpecker and heard lots of birds. We also saw many turtles, squirrels, butterflies, and dragonflies. We found a very muddy part of the path. Dean didn't want to get his shoes muddy, so Tim ferried him across the mud piggyback style. They crack me up.

Dean loves this tree and has been climbing it since he was about three years old.

We finally made it to a cafe that specializes in poutine. This was a fun, ethnic dish to try out. It is a dish from Quebec, Canada. We had the traditional dish and the local dish with pulled pork and mac and cheese. We liked the local dish better but completed eating both dishes. It is fun to try new things.

What a blessing it is to homeschool!

Blessings, Dawn

Reviewing Bear Safety

The bear activity in our neighborhood has been very high this spring and summer. We have a mother bear and two cubs visiting our street and yard daily. In fact, my husband and dog got up close and personal with the bears in our backyard twice in the past two weeks. Once recently, our dog chased the mother bear out of the yard. She ran away, but as soon as she got on the opposite side of the fence, she stood up and roared at the dog and my husband. Then last night, two baby bears were in our backyard and ran up a tree when they heard our dog barking. Luckily, my husband saw them from a good distance and was able to get Boomer (dog) back into the house quickly. They had a field day with our trash cans and trapped us in our house for about an hour. We didn't see mom. We see them walking through our yard or down the road several times a week. So now we are not letting the dog play in the backyard anymore.

All this to say, we really need to review bear safety with our children. Below is a list of suggestions.

• Do not approach or sneak up on a bear.
• If the bear stops its activity, you are too close.
• Never turn your back on a bear or run from a bear.
• Slowly back up and make lots of noise.
• Raise your arms above your head and wave them vigorously.

If a black bear attacks you, fight like mad. Use anything you have as a weapon. Never play dead with a black bear.

We will be ordering an air horn. It will hopefully scare away bears and warn others inside that someone in the yard is in trouble. 

Blessings, Dawn

N Is for Nature Study ~ When the Neighbor's Tree Came for a Visit

Our nature study came to us this week. A very heavy rainstorm and high winds proved too much for the neighbor's tree. It fell into our yard, crushing the fence as it came. Thankfully, it missed the power lines and the house. The kids started to play in the tree before the rain even stopped.

The tree is enormous! Being a homeschool mom, I immediately saw the learning opportunities in this unexpected adventure. We set to work exploring/playing fort in the tree. We found that the tree had started to uproot from the saturated ground and then broke near the base. It was a violent break with many jagged tears.

The kids collected pine cones, bark and needles to help us determine what kind of conifer tree we had acquired. It turns out that it is a Norway Spruce. This tree has the potential to grow over 100 feet tall with a width of 40 feet. It can live to be over 100 years old. Upon measuring, our neighbor's tree was 60 feet tall and very wide as you can see in the picture with people standing in front of it (below).

Mostly, the kids just wanted to be in the tree. They really are enjoying it. The neighbor will be clearing it away and mending our fence in a few days. Until then, I am sure the children will delight in.

I am joining ~

Blessings, Dawn

Urban Nature Study for Homeschoolers ~ Weeks 8 and 9

We are having incredible weather around here. It is unseasonably warm and we are having bouts of intense rain. It is certainly a very rainy winter.




Rain and River Flooding ~ Recently, the two rivers that intersect on the west side of our city seem to overflow every few days. Our nature studies are becoming more and more about erosion, flash floods and rivers. We went for a walk on Christmas Eve to one of the local parks. It runs alongside the larger of the two rivers. It was flooded. Luckily, our city is actively turning as much waterfront as possible into park land, so that floods are not as damaging as they could be.

The parking lot is under water.

The river is covering the pathway.

The river went back within its banks on Christmas but left them again last night. This time the water flowed into a little historic shopping area and threw mud all over the streets and sidewalks.

It has been so warm that the colony of vultures living in our neighborhood has been very active. We have more than 100 of them. Vultures sit high in trees and spread their wings out wide to warm themselves up. This particular day was very rainy and cloudy. The vultures were trying to dry themselves out during a break in the rain. They are called a committee when they are all sitting together in trees.

They are called a kettle when they are flying in a large group.

I am amazed how much wilderness we are finding in the city. It is there if we just look around.

Blessings, Dawn

Nature Study for Urban Homeschoolers ~ Week 7

We decided to do a one foot square nature study in our urban environment. We went to our usual park and picked a leaf covered area close to the river. We figured we might find a few bugs since the temperature was in the 60's. However, we only found an earthworm. We scraped away the leaves and then looked at the moss under the leaves. We picked up some of the moss and observed the tiny roots underneath. We also collected several acorn tops that were in our one foot space. The kids then began digging into the soil. They found it filled with small rocks. They found an earthworm that was about three inches long. It was not interested in laying on our ruler to be measured and quickly slithered into some dead leaves. We also found a weed with long roots to compare to our moss with very short roots.

We walked over to the location where the river goes under a bridge to see where the water line was now that the river had returned to its banks and was at normal levels again. Last week the river was almost touching the underside of the bridge. This week the water was much lower and the homeless were once again sitting under the bridge when we peeked under.

Lastly, we observed how the small brush and banks were affected by the flood. The light colored sand was thrown halfway up the bank by the raging flood last week.

That was it for us this week.

Blessings, Dawn

Nature Study for Urban Homeschoolers ~ Weeks 5 & 6

Between the stomach bug and Thanksgiving, we didn't make it to the park last week. However, we did make it there twice this week. So I am counting one of our days for last week.
Week 5 ~ We decided to focus on the many different types of bark for our first nature walk this week. It is amazing all of the different varieties. We found  barks that were rough, smooth, peeling, dark, light, and white.

We saw lots of lichen growing on several trees and I will be adding that to our list of things to learn about this year. We were able to identify a few trees by their bark. Some are very obvious like the River Birch pictured below.

River Birch

We also noticed that many of the trees in one area were all leaning in the same direction. We wondered if they had all been pushed almost over in the great flood of 1916. As I mentioned before, we are doing our study this year in a flood plain and we know this entire area was under water (rushing water) during that flood. We will have to figure out how to age a variety of living trees to determine if they are really that old. It seems unlikely, but if not the flood, then what calamity made them all bend and then grow in the same direction?

The rain was really picking up and I was worried about the camera so we checked the river depth (a visual check) and headed back to the car. The river was near it's banks and moving at a quick speed.

Week 6 ~ After two more days of steady rain, the river overflowed its banks. We had to head out and see how our urban study area was doing. Our urban study area is in a park on one side of the river and  a road and industrial area on the other side of the river. The park was still accessible and we took a few quick pictures. The pictures below were taken at almost the same place as the one above with Dean in it. As you can see the trees that are usually on the edge of the river are in the river.

 A little farther down we took a picture of the bridge that crosses the river and leads into the park. This underneath area is where homeless people often sleep. As you can see, it was almost hitting the bottom side of the bridge. We missed the shot, but an entire tree went by while we were standing there.

Next, we decided to explore the road opposite the park and the quarter mile or so farther down river from the park that often floods first. Sure enough the river was completely over its banks on one side of the river and flood waters were covering the road. We had to cross the river to the road on the other side of the river because the police had blocked the road.

Water is on the road on the other side of the river.

Crossing the river on the bridge. The water is almost touching the bottom of the bridge.

This is not extreme flooding for our area. This is pretty typical and happens a few times a year. It can be much worse and has flooded out the buildings in the pictures a few times since we have lived here. We were here in 2004 which was considered a 100 year flood, and the worst flood recorded for our area was in 1916.

2004

1

1916

Disclaimer ~ We used lots of caution in approaching the river. We used the zoom function on our camera and were not as close as some of the pictures suggest. In fact, several pictures were taken from the car. We never crossed any police lines. Use all caution when dealing with a raging river and flooded roads. Never drive through flood water.

Blessings, Dawn

Nature Study for Urban Homeschoolers ~ Week 4

We explored our urban park this week on a warm day in the mid 60's. Timothy (our oldest son) joined us this week. We are completely absorbed with Nutcracker rehearsals now, so I didn't have any goals for the nature study today. I told the kids to keep an eye out for squirrels. We counted seven squirrels. They were very busy collecting acorns and scurrying up trees.

Watching the squirrels got the children climbing trees. Every time I turned around, Dean was in a tree.

Then, Tim decided that he was going to jump to a concrete structure in the river. He wanted to look in the hole in the center of the concrete structure and see what was in it. He made it without getting wet but couldn't find a way back. After many jokes about bringing him food and blankets so he could live there, he decided to try and jump back to a slippery bank. He didn't make it and came out rather wet from the knees down!

Does anyone have any idea what this structure might be? There was nothing in the hole. It went straight down to the river (like maybe a pipe used to come out of it?).  We think it might be from the days when this land held a bleachery plant.

We wrapped up our nature walk by collecting several kinds of berries. We have not figured out what they are yet. 

We are pretty sure they are both poisonous. If we manage to identify them soon, I will come back and label the pictures.

Blessings, Dawn