Trees

After taking a lovely trip to Yellowstone, where we capped off our Church History and National Park units, we settled back into school with a much more practical agenda for the winter months. Our days of trips and outdoor adventures will be coming to a close with the onset of winter, and although the long hours spent at home during the winter will be less exciting, I think they will prove to be very necessary to our ultimate educational goals. In other words, I think it's time to get more serious with reading and math and stop having so much fun!! Well, not that reading and math can't be fun, but not in the same way that all of our science and geography units have been fun. Anyways, even though we are settling into a more rigorous math and reading routine, I did decide to take the kids on one more great outing before we entered our winter hibernation.

This time we took a trip to the local apple orchard. We've been here before to pick apples, but this trip to the orchard would be somewhat different. Pick apples we would, but we had much more to do there than just eat glorious honey crisps in the cool fall breezes. This time we would be holding class in the grassy orchard, spending time examining the trees, and the fruit, and the seeds. If you recall back to the beginning of our school year when I posted the different curriculum requirements, there was a science requirement that read:
Children should know that there are two kinds of plants: deciduous and evergreen.
And that was about all it said on the topic of trees and most plants. As always, however, this would not suffice for our home-school. As a result, we decided to kick off a full unit on trees, and one that would last over several months rather than beginning and ending in the apple orchard. As I mentioned before, this unit actually came into my mind when we were talking about the lodge pole pines of Yellowstone. The kids were so interested in the fires and how the pine cones "popped" in the heat that I thought it would be a good starting point to kick off a full unit on trees. So, that is just what we did. I found two diagrams, one of the lifecycle of a deciduous tree, most of which are angiosperms (i.e. and apple tree) and one of the lifecycle of an evergreen tree, most of which are gymnosperms (i.e. a lodge pole pine.) These diagrams were perfect because they focused on seed propagation, and let us return to a discussion of the lodge pole pine cones and how they burst and spread their seeds after the fires. We could then compare and contrast that with the seeds that grow on the angiosperms and eventually turn into the delicious fruit that we all love to eat. This led into a conversation about how those seeds were spread and on and on. The kids loved our tree lessons, and were so excited to go study the apple trees close up.
And wouldn't anyone be excited to have school in this quaint little setting?



It all started with the usual hay ride into the orchards...







followed by a few minutes enjoying the farm animals. Mason was a little timid at first, but not EmmaLee. In fact, some of the chicks got loose while we were there and Emma single-handedly rounded them up.







After playing with the farm animals, we walked through the corn maze,



and then proceeded with plenty of apple picking...





and then lots of apple eating and apple cider drinking.



Then we pulled out the tree books and read and read. It was homeschooling at its best.

While we did lots of tree crafts and tree lessons during this time period, our tree talks won't end here. We'll revisit trees again in December with our Christmas tree. Then we're going to do an honorary tree unit in February when we talk about family trees. And then we will be off to collect and boil down our own syrup in the March Maple Tree Festival up in St. Paul. Perhaps we will even go swinging on birches when we get to our poetry unit, or spend a day in the summer climbing trees just for good measure. Who knows, and who knew trees could be so wonderful!

Oh, and I almost forgot to include this picture of us truly enjoying the fruits of our labors in the orchard:

National Parks

After spending a week and a half saving the planet, we dove head-long into our next unit on national parks. We had no time to lose as our Yellowstone Trip was only about ten days away. Still, we had to be thorough. We started out by talking about national parks in general. We talked about what national parks are, how they came into being, and who is in charge of watching over and protecting them. (The Park Rangers) We actually took quite a bit of time looking up national parks in a national parks book we purchased, and the kids loved playing National Park Memory--a special version we picked up at the Science museum.



My favorite part; however, was when we moved into the discussion of the very first national park in the whole wide world: Yellowstone National Park. I just love Yellowstone, having gone there many many times as both a child and an adult. I was so excited to have this chance to teach my kids all about it, not to mention to take them there. I decided to break my Yellowstone Unit into two parts: 1)Geothermal Features and 2) Yellowstone Wildlife.

First, geothermal features. This section was a blast to teach--literally. First we reviewed the layers of the earth and everything the kids learned about fault lines in Summer Camp. Then we took a day to talk about volcanoes--Yellowstone is actually sitting on a large dormant one. During this discussion we of course had to construct our own volcano and cause it to erupt. The kids thought that was great. Unfortunately, Nick deleted the picture of our amazing handiwork! After talking about volcanoes, we went into a long section on the active geothermal features in the park, namely, geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles. I have been to the park many times and I never realized the difference between all of these things. It was fascinating, and the kiddos loved it. They were so excited to swim in a hot spring, smell a fumarole, and watch Old Faithful erupt!

As we talked about all of the geothermal features, as well as the Yellowstone volcano and earthquakes, somewhere along the way we got side tracked on the Yellowstone fires. We got so side-tracked, in fact, that I decided to make a third section simply on the fires. Spence was especiallly taken with them-watching online video after video of the great forests burning. Then of course we had to talk about how they fought the fires and watch video after video of the airplanes dumping water and chemicals on the fires in an attempt to put them out. The kids were mesmorized. They were also devestated thinking that the whole park was still burned down. Fortuntely, we learned that the park was not entirely burned down, and that the fire actually did much good for the park. This lead into a discussion of the famous lodge-pole pines that dot the park. We learned all about their life span and how important fires can actually be to their growth. I even learned something as we discussed the logde-pole pine cones that contain the seedlings for new trees. Only under extreme heat can the cones pop and release their seeds. And only with adequate light (i.e. not being blocked by too many big trees) can the seeds take root and grow. It was an interesting tangent, and one that gave me an idea for another special unit when we get home from our trip.

Because we got side-tracked, we didn't get to our wildlife segment before leaving on our trip. I did; however, teach them all about the wildlife while we were in the park. We talked about the deer, elk, moose, and bison. We talked about black and grizzly bears, including what to do if you were ever to meet a real bear in the wild. We read about eagles and trumpeter swans. We studied marmots and chipmunks and beavers. And of course, we traced the history of the gray wolf and it's significance in the park. All the while we munched on special Yellowstone Animal Crackers and marked off the animals on our Yellowstone Bingo Cards as we came across them. It was awesome! A school special unit and a family vacation we will all never forget. (For all the pictures check out the Yellowstone Post on our family blog.)