The first week of Evie's grammar level science has her reading about habitat and camouflage, creating a habitat diorama or poster, and doing an "experiment" with camouflaged paper rectangles. I guess if it were raining outside I might follow the curriculum.
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| Using a map key (social studies!) |
But the weather is great, the rains are coming, and I really wanted to meet our friends and hike. Okay, walk. What we homeschooling mamas consider hiking, my husband considers walking. I'm so glad I thought of making our walk a science field trip therefore justifying our attendance.
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| My students |
The mission was: Notice the forest habitat. What lives there? What living things to do you see? Can you find a living thing using camouflage? Learn and memorize the four elements of habitat and describe the habitat of a living thing. Oh yeah!
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| Lizard City |
I was one of those annoying homeschool moms that didn't just let the kids run and play with their friends. I asked them questions (but I had to holler so they could hear me over their enthusiastic chatter. Did I mention we were a group of seven boys and three girls? We would have had nine boys, but two of mine stayed home.) Lizard city was a great place to talk about why cold-blooded reptiles liked to hang out on the rocks on sunny days.
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| My Preschooler |
Although I missed Ian, I really enjoyed focusing on Fiona. Ian knows everything already; he was born with all the knowledge of the world in his head. Fiona and I explored the little things that the boys would run right by:
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| Spider in its Habitat |
Grandad always used to say that Mark was such an adventurous climber that his goal was always the next mountain peak over from the one he was already standing on. He would follow that with "Little kids? They are perfectly content to explore the waterfall on the side of the path."
We finally made it to the creek after balancing precariously across a log (kids) and bush-wacking (pregnant moms, girls under the age of five, and moms carrying babies in front packs).
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| "Where's the water?" ~Our Fearless Trail Guide |
Now we know why the creek is called Rocky Creek. The creek is all rocks! No water! According to a fish biologist I know, this dryness will impact coho production in three years. Since there was no water, we decided to hike up to the "shortcut" to the parking lot along the creek bed. This is where we found our camouflaged creatures:
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| Lichen on a fallen log |
We did find little pools of water here and there and Evie found a crayfish! We also saw little fish which might be salmon fry...or trout fry. They have a dark pattern that helps them hide in the dark creek water. When they go out to sea, they get the silvery color.
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| Evie-wearing her best shirt in a stream! (just like her father-sigh) |
By this time, the battery in my camera was flashing dead and all my pictures were blurry. Sigh. Shane found a camouflaged Northern Red-legged frog in the mud:
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| Rana aurora |
After I made the boys stop harassing the poor frogs, I taught them the habitat chant that we learned at Camp Seymour a few years ago:
Food, Water, Shelter, Space,
Habitat is my kind of place!
We hiked back to the trail head and foraged for blackberries (I'm so sick of eating blackberries) and my brilliant friend and mother of four boys (so far) came up with Habitat Tag. She would shout out a habitat element and the boys would run and touch it before they got tagged. Food was the blackberry bushes, water was a water bottle in the middle of the field, shelter was the trail map (see picture above), and space was...all around them? I didn't see that part of the game. I tell ya, we homeschool mamas all have our strengths and we work as an awesome team!
