Environmental Science

Hey...I wrote this back in September 2015 and forgot to hit "publish"... 

This school year we've making a lot of connections...connections between history and politics...between fields of science like biology and physics...and between science and our lives...  We've done a lot of exploring the connection between the food we eat, the environment we live in, the air we breathe, the products we produce, and the money & politics connected to those products. Here's a list of some of the things we've read, movies we've watched, and websites we've used so far:

1) It started with the audiobook version of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp (Kingsolver's husband) and Camille Kingsolver (Barbara Kingsolver's daughter) . I was reading it for book club, and I was reading huge chunks of it our loud to the family. Finally, I just started playing the audiobook for everyone. I became part of the daily conversation to talk about where the food in our fridge originated. We started making a point of checking labels before we bought...not for nutritional information but for location. We took this statement to heart from Kingsolver's book:

“If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week” (Steven L. Hopp, p. 5)

I wouldn't reach for this book a whole lot sooner than 7th or 8th grade, and I wouldn't expect even an 8th grader to care about every single word of the book...but as background audio while knitting, drawing, or painting, it was perfect. The chapters by Camille Kingsolver were especially helpful in making the book "user friendly" for a younger audience. The audiobook is read by all 3 authors. So, the listener literally hears the change in voice and perspective.

2) We started visiting farmer's markets and discovered the rules for our local markets. Just because a food is at the market does not mean it's local. I've had to jump out of my introverted comfort zone to converse with food vendors about their food. Mane had the experience of learning how a local Hmong family grows peanuts in Minnesota. (Yes, peanuts in Minnesota!!) 

3) We used the Minnesota Grown website to learn about what is in season when in Minnesota. 

4) We started listening to the Climate Change podcast on public radio.

5) Back in 2009, Mane and I attended a pre-release showing of No Impact Man at the Walker Art Center and heard Colin Beaven speak in person. This year we shared the movie with some friends and watched it again. (A word of caution: The language is not all rated G and pregnancy loss is mentioned in the film.) The movie such a contrast to Barbara Kingsolver's book. Kingsolver and her family carefully planned (for several years, actually) how they would spend a year eating locally. Colin Beaven and his wife, Michelle, jumped into their "no impact" project with very little preparation. It's interesting to see people coming at the challenge of living differently from some extreme ends of the spectrum, and it was a great opportunity to reflect with Mane on how change is a process. 

6) Then we watched Food, Inc., a difficult but valuable film. We learned to look away when the scenes got a little too graphic. This movie brought our focus in from local eating to ethical eating. A friend of mine talks about her daughter, who won't eat a chicken unless it's been hugged. This film brought us to that place...where we want to know how our food has been grown, not just where. 

7) We started to move out from the food discussion and into a discussion of plastic consumption with the movie Addicted to Plastic. You can see a brief presentation with a few of the relevant facts here: Addicted to Plastic by Jamie Lamourt.

8) Today we watched Plastic Paradise. As I type, Mane is creating a blog post for her own blog of things she learned from the film. (Another word of caution: The film shows scientists cutting open dead birds to see all the plastic inside their bodies. Not for the weak-of-stomach.)

9) AND we freaked out a little bit about plastic in our clothes...

There's been a fair amount of talk in educational circles about how and when to present environmental issues to children. There's some argument about how much is too much and whether too much information too early has the backward effect of depressing children, rather than inspiring them.

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UPDATE in May 2016:
It has certainly been a year of tackling the environmental issues! Mane wrote a blog post for her Go Green Club on the problem of plastics in the world, we followed our local political movement toward getting plastic bags out of Minneapolis stores, and we've converted to bar soap and re-fill-able shampoo bottles! We're currently working on solving the problem of plastic use while camping. (It's really easy to put everything in the cooler in a ziploc!) And we're wondering about hosting the Bible study kids for outdoor summer play without plastic toys. I would say that, far from depressing Mane, she's been so inspired by the current movements toward reducing plastic use and production. And she's still working toward making a difference in our corner of the world.

More Earth Science

It has been nearly 4 weeks since Mane's grandma, my mother, passed away. Last week we gently began turning our minds back toward school here at Peregrin House. The return to something solid and normal, like earth science, has been helpful. Our minds needed some direction and focus, and what better to focus on than good, solid earth...or maybe major catastrophes like earthquakes and volcanoes...depending on how you want to look at it...

Mane is working on a project mapping where earthquakes happen in the world every day, looking for a predictable pattern, and observing the relationship between earthquakes and volcanoes. (Find the Musical Plates project here: Musical Plates: A Study of Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics.) She started by writing her hypothesis regarding these things in her science notebook. Then she learned how to look up the USGS website where earthquakes are mapped as they happen and how to set parameters for which earthquakes she wanted to appear on the map (those that happened that day between the magnitudes of 4.0 and 10.0). She's practicing using latitude and longitude degrees to mark the earthquakes on the large map. Then she's checking her location against the listed location of the earthquake online!

 After learning about how earthquakes are measured, she and her friend built a seismograph together on Tuesday this week (instructions here):

 And then the lovely ladies went to the sunroom to make potions...

The year of Earth Science

We decided at this beginning of this school year that this would be the year to study Earth Science. In our earlier years of homeschooling, we've taken a very eclectic and practical approach to science, addressing science as it appears in every day life and in our other studies. This year, we've decided to dig deeper into one particular field of science. Earth Science is our choice!

So far, we've read books from the library:

Made a Plate Techtonics Model:

 Made a paper puzzle of the continents to see how they might have fit together as Pangea, Laurasia & Gondwanaland:

 And watched Amazing Earth: Catastrophic Past:

Mane took notes while watching the Amazing Earth movie, too, and I was astonished! I have never taught her to take notes, but I told her I'd be taking notes while we were watching. She sat down with paper & pencil next to me and scribbled down facts throughout the movie. This is suck an important skill, and I'm glad to see her beginning to practice it now!

No Impact

Mane & I went to see No Impact Man together at the Walker Art Center on Wednesday. Earlier in the day we went to Bible Study, did some math & reading, reviewed to portion of the 23rd Psalm that she's learning, and then did some research about No Impact Man. We talked about the things we already do to reduce our impact on the environment, and Mane drew some pictures of those things in her school notebook - biking, walking, recycling, and using less electricity. We related this to Three Names by talking about the ways the world has changed since the time of Three Names. We used a chart from homeschoolshare.com to categorize things into how things were done in the past and how they're done in the present (things like washing clothes and getting water).

At the Walker Art Center we wandered around the sculpture garden after securing our tickets. We arrived super early (by bus) because we wanted to be sure to get tickets. The tickets were free, and the art center was expecting a full house. As it turned out, we didn't have to come as early as we did, but it was fine because we played Swap & Fluxx until we got our tickets and then ran around the sculpture garden until showtime. Mane drew some pictures during the film, and she listened attentively to the film maker after the film. As a special treat, Colin Beaven, the author of the book & subject of the film, made a guest appearance. So, we got to see him live and in person. Mane was quite impressed. ...and she wants to start composting our food waste.

Thursday we met up with some friends and spent the whole afternoon at the beach! This felt like the second special treat of the week - to have it warm & beautiful enough in September to spend another day at the beach! Mane came home with a little collection of shells and a rock...and a darker suntan!

Today Mane played with the children of some friends of ours who are home on furlough from Russia. They have been missionaries in Russia since they got married several years ago, and now they have 3 children. The woman is planning to homeschool her children. So, we had a nice conversation about homeschooling while the kiddos played.

Later we'll be driving (gasp!) Vespera to school and stopping by the bank and the library. We have been SO busy this week that it feels like we've hardly gotten anything done, but I suppose it only feels that way if I think of seeing educational films and playing with friends, and exploring the beach as nothing...which I don't. So, I guess we did plenty, just not what we planned. ;)

The Run-Down from Last Week

Although last week wasn't quite as full as the week before, we felt comfortably busy. On Thursday we drove Mango & Vespera to school so that we could have the car for the day. We spent some time at a coffee shop. Mane took the test for math lesson 25, moved along in the 100 words book, and read me some more of the Berenstain Bears Honey Hunt story. Then I read to her from Story of the World. We read the story of Joseph from the Bible and saw how it fit with this place in history, and we also read The Golden Sandal: A Middle Eastern Cinderella Story. This story is set in Mesopotamia, the region of the world we're studying right now. I like parts of it better than the traditional Cinderella story. It's interesting, too, that we just saw a ballet of Cinderella. So, we're getting lots of practice comparing and contrasting the different stories.

In the afternoon, we met up with another homeschooling family at the Carl W. Kroening Interpretive Center in Minneapolis. The building doesn't look all that beautiful from the outside, but it's a wonderful place inside. There are various activities for kids, including aprons and baskets of plastic foods to pretend Farmer's Market. We were there to watch the birds out the window, but, apparently, there had just been a group of people at the Interpretive Center, and the birds were hiding out. So, we walked through the animal room, which had a bunch of aquariums with different types of turtles (and a centipede - yuck!). Mane says her favorite part was playing with the Farmer's Market and pretending to drive the old car they have set up in the middle of the room. I should have taken photos. I guess there'll have to be a next time, no?

The homeschooling family we met up with has 2 girls, one younger and one older than Mane. The younger girl invited Mane to her birthday party in a few weeks. The two of them are very similar in personality, and they are separated in age by just a year. We picked out a birthday present for her over the weekend, and we're looking forward to getting to visit their house since they've already been to ours.

After the Interpretive Center, we headed over to Sumner Library in North Minneapolis to bide our time until we needed to pick Mango & Vespera up from school. We checked out some books on spring and maple syrup.

Over the weekend we participated in Earth Hour (see the previous post here at Peregrin House), and we also spent about an hour at Borders book store checking out their bargain book sale. Mane and Mango sat down and looked through huge books about Egypt, which was a perfect reinforcement of all we've been learning. I picked out a book called The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Aztec & Maya. I love having real books to reference as we learn history, and learning about the history of Mexico is something we've been wanting to study for some time now. The Aztec and Maya people are in the later part of our Story of the World book. So, I'm getting ready to make it a really great unit. We also picked out a book of poetry that came with a CD of the poets reading their own poems. Mane was fascinated to hear Robert Frost reading Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening, since we have the picture book, and Mane knows the poem well.

As spring comes, I'm definitely feeling more energetic, and I'm starting to look at what homeschooling over the summer might mean for us. I have more energy in the summer, and I'm wondering if we shouldn't do more focused learning in the summer than we've done in the past. ...and then I might feel less pressured in the winter when we just want to sit by the fire and read books.

Earth Hour 2009

This post is cross-posted at The Midnight Cafe, my non-homeschooling blog...



Saturday night we participated in Earth Hour. We turned off the lights from 8:30-9:30pm and sat around the kitchen table telling stories with grandma & grandpa, who live upstairs. Mango set a recorder on the table, and now we have some fabulous recordings of grandma and grandpa telling stories. Mane was enchanted by the candles and by the quiet, warm atmosphere. It really was beautiful and made us want to have Earth Hour every night.

However, on Sunday morning we spent some time researching the carbon emissions of candles or oil lanterns versus electric light bulbs, and we found that even a single candle may give off more carbon than a 60 watt light bulb. Mango says we need to stick with using candles only occasionally for ambiance. They're not a better environmental alternative. What *is* a better alternative is turning off lights whenever we don't need them, unplugging cell phone chargers when they're not in use, turning off the computer when we're not using it, turning off the receiver amp when we aren't listening to music, and using the city bus and our bicycles more.

Mane spent some time on the Earth Hour Kids website, and then we watched a NOVA movie on global warming and more energy efficient choices. We heard all about electric cars, solar panels, wind farms, and reforestation. The options are all so expensive right now, and, with kids, we have to focus on the things that are within our reach. So, we're helping Mane remember things like turning off lights and reminding her that if we all work together, we can make a difference, which was a key message of Earth Hour.

We also spent some time reading about how a group called Engineers Without Borders is working on helping to replace oil lanterns in developing countries with solar powered LED lanterns. It's a good example of how technology can be used to reverse some of the negative effects that earlier technology created...and how environmental concerns interplay with world economics and poverty. Because people in developing countries are less likely to have electricity, they're more likely to use kerosene lanterns, and this contributes to health problems from soot and carbon monoxide, as well as the more global problem of greenhouse gases and global warming. The article we read even pointed out how reading is difficult with less light, making it harder for children to get an education, and, if they do read by the light of the kerosene lantern, they're more likely to get sick from the lantern emissions. It's strange how something as simple as lighting can have such a huge effect.

What struck me most about Earth Hour, though, was the number of places where lights seem to serve very little purpose, yet it was such a huge deal to turn them off Saturday night. Of special note was the Coca Cola billboard in New York. Do we really need to light up billboards at night? Isn't it enough to see them in the daylight? Also, several bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, turned off their "decorative" lights, leaving only the necessary lights to help people drive safely. What are we doing leaving all those lights on all the time anyway? The lights were turned off on the pyramids in Egypt, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Eiffel Tower. I can understand lights for security reasons, but the sheer volume of lights is questionable. It left me wondering how much we could "save" in terms of CO2 emissions if we all gave some hard and careful thoughts to which lights are really necessary.

We seem to honor things by lighting them all day and all night (the pyramids, for example, and the statue of the Virgin Mary in Rio de Janeiro), which raises a myriad of other questions for me. Why? Why do we do that? Do we think the pyramids know they're being honored with lights all night long? Why is it so disrespectful for them to sit in darkness? Perhaps they want to rest at night, too. I don't have such a hard time thinking about turning the lights off on the pyramids, but I cringe to think about turning them off on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. (I have no idea if the lights were turned off on monuments in D.C., by the way). Why is that? Why do a feel that it's disrespectful to turn out the lights on the list of names? It's not really. It doesn't dishonor the dead to let the names rest a while, especially when nobody is there and the people have left this life long ago.

Earth Hour gave us plenty to think about. I have at least three other blog posts floating around in my head, but this seemed the simplest to get down in type right now. If this is simple, I don't know how I'll ever get to the rest. ;) ...stay tuned...

Peregrin House goes to school

Have I mentioned that Mango (that's my husband) is a public school teacher? Well, he is. And his classroom this year has been one gigantic disaster. He's teaching 3 classes he's never taught before, and he was given a truckload of equipment and supplies about 2 days before school started. Now, before you get all excited thinking that's a wonderful thing, please note that these supplies were the leftovers from some departments being dissolved in other schools. In any case, the supplies filled his classroom and he had no room to teach. Furthermore, since he's teaching 3 classes he's never taught before & he has only one prep hour, he has ZERO time for classroom cleaning and organizing. SO, today Peregrin House went to school. Mane and I packed up our lunches and school supplies and went to clean the classroom. Mango teaches in another classroom because his is too full of stuff. Our mission was for Mane to learn some things and for the tables to get cleared in the classroom.

Mane took her math test & worked on a phonics workbook we picked up at Target a while ago. We read about constellations, added several pages to her school notebook about our neighborhood, city, state, country, continent, planet, solar system & galaxy. We also read Down, Down the Mountain again, and then Mane practiced reading/writing/spelling on the white board. She also swept the floor & cleaned out cabinets with me!

The big news is that the classroom is clean enough for Mango to be able to teach there now! And we had a fun time being in his workplace all day, chatting with co-workers and students, and having lunch with Mango. It all worked out way better than I thought it would, and we're all feeling proud and accomplished tonight!

New Friends!

I'm very hopeful about the new homeschool group we visited Tuesday! Mane had a blast, and I really enjoyed hanging out with the other parents. There weren't any girls Mane's age, but there were a few older and a few younger, which is just fine with me and a whole lot more like real life.

Today Mane finished lesson 17 in math with plans to take the test tomorrow. Friday will be a math facts practice day. She has been reading words incidentally all over the place, but she *has* announced that the book we've been using is boring. I told her we need to stick with it, though, and I think we will to a certain extent, but I also plan to do a better job creating variety in her reading experience.

We also read a couple of light books yesterday about the solar system & stars. I wasn't too impressed with them. So, I won't list them here. The plan is to do some drawing tomorrow demonstrating the progression from neighborhood to city, state, country, continent, planet, Milky Way, and UNIVERSE!

We will also be visiting the MN Orchestra tomorrow for "Bach to the Future," and we were excited to learn that some of our new homeschooling friends will be there!

Whirlwind

Today we went to the James Sewell ballet performance with a bunch of other homeschoolers. What a fantastic performance! The dances were choreographed to keep the interest of kids & grown-ups alike...from Vivaldi's Winter to Chopin's piano concertos we were delighted and mesmerized.

After such a delightful morning, we came back down to the hum-drum - beginning math chapter 17 and completing reading lesson 51. Mane rounded it all out by doing a 100 piece jigsaw puzzle of the world. She's getting to know geography rather well.

Last week we spent a lot of time at playgrounds enjoying the autumn weather while it lasts. Sunday this week we saw the first snow. Yikes! Here comes winter. We did our usual Wednesday morning Bible Study, and we spent several hours on Friday socializing with friends.

Mane surprised me while we were in the car the other day. We talked about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring when we were studying Owl Moon a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure she really got it or would remember, but I figured it was an introduction to the naturalists and stewardship of the environment. So, the other day we were in the car, and she said, "Mama, remember how we read about that lady who wrote the book when all the birds were dying? If she wrote it about winter, she could have called it Silent Winter." Which means, of course, that she actually remembered Rachel Carson, the name of the book Silent Spring, AND why it was important. YEAH!