Geology Day and Sensory Bins

 Last Friday we were lucky enough to attend geology day at Lava Beds National Monument. This was supposed to be just for school groups, but since I have somewhat of an in with the supervising ranger there we were able to tag along with one of the public school classes.

This year we are studying Earth science, however, we are several weeks away from the topic of geology.  But I felt the kids would get more out of a geology day if we knew what exactly geology was went over some of my well planned lessons ahead of time.  And since we found out we could go to geology day only 2 days beforehand, we did a last minute crash course in geology the day before.

Here the girls are smooshing moistened graham crackers together to mimic the movement of tectonic plates to make mountains. They thought this was awesome. 

And here they learned more about tectonic plates using jam and graham crackers. I let them cover the crackers with dyed whipped cream (because I was not motivated enough to make frosting), then they put the two graham crackers on top of strawberry jam and pushed them together to mimic magma rising from under the Earth's crust. This one wasn't quite the amazing visual that the mountain graham cracker activity was, but they still liked it and of course asked to eat it at the end. 

We also read some books, looked at rocks from our rock collection and learned the difference between the three types of rocks, studied the rock cycle, looked at pictures of the layers of the earth, and read more books. 

Here are the girls at geology day. We went with some homeschool friends and you can see our four girls off to the side. They had such a great time with all the hands on activities.  I feel like they learned a lot too! And hopefully when we come back to geology in a few weeks they will remember this!

In other news, I've started the addicting process of making sensory bin activities for Hanna! Here she is with her ragamuffin hair (we are in that wild hair stage of toddlerhood) playing in the blue sensory bin. I colored rice blue using vinegar and blue food coloring (I just mixed enough in with the rice to coat it, then laid it out on cookie sheets to dry) and added blue pom poms, blue silicon cupcake liners, blue fake flowers, and any other small blue toys I could find. I am planning to make more of these with other colors to help her learn the colors, plus some seasonal and just for fun using other fillers besides just rice. There are so many amazing sensory bin ideas out there- just a google search away! When I was looking for ideas I also read a lot about how great sensory activities are for toddlers, so I am really excited to have these for her. Plus, it keeps her busy during homeschooling. The only problem is that the older kids would rather play in the rice than do their work!

Our Summer

We are back to the blogging world! I honestly don't know where the summer went.  We were busy all summer but I don't feel like we had a lot of plans or trips or anything.  I guess Summer is just like that. And after living in Death Valley for four years where summer is an endless and extremely HOT 10 months, I think summer will now always feel very short anywhere else. 

At any rate, here are some highlights from our summer.  And now that we have started school again, I will hopefully be back to weekly blogging!

Day trip to Crater Lake

The girls and I were SO excited to get all of our homeschool materials for this year in July. They wanted to get everything out and look at it, so we made piles on the floor before I organized it all. We are so blessed to live here where we have a great homeschooling program and can get all these amazing books for our homeschool!

Yes, I forgot to turn my pictures before loading them on the blog. But it's late and I don't feel like redoing it. So turn your head please. This is the girls at Junior Ranger day at Lava Beds with Daddy.  

One day we discovered that we could stick balloons on Hanna's head with static. The older girls thought this was great. I thought it was pretty funny too. 

Camping trip to Redwoods in August with our good friends the Rasmussens

The kids had a great time again this year at the Tulelake fair

We started school at the beginning of September, and I quickly realized that Hanny didn't care if I had spent hours on school plans or that I had a daily schedule all laid out that seemed absolutely perfect on paper.  So after about 6 days of trying to do school my way and Hanny screaming at me every one of those days, I realized that I would have to be more flexible.  Instead of getting everything done in the morning on my schedule, on day 7 we got out the dried beans and measuring utensils and we all played with Hanny.  After a long while of just playing, I took one of the older girls at a time and we got our lessons done.  We did our literature at nap time and we finished science just before dinner, but we all had a really good day instead of a frustrating one.  Lesson learned: be flexible; listen to your toddler; ENJOY your children instead of just checking things off on a list of things that must get done that day. 

We just returned from our last trip of the summer around the Pacific Northwest, which, by the way, is my favorite place ever. This is Kaiya at a  beach in Olympic National Park.

Another sideways picture. Sorry. Another beach at Olympic.

Someone offered to take a family photo in the forest at Olympic. So nice. 

The Girls at Mount Rainier.  Pictures do not do it justice. This place is beautiful.

The girls getting their Junior Ranger badges from Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. 

We hope your summer was great as well!