Category Archives: Geography

Family, Geography

Letters from Thailand: the First

Our dear friend Keri is traveling in the far east. When her letters arrive, it’s a holiday here!

February 12, 2007
Bangkok, Thailand

Dear Jane,

MipimgIt’s customary in Thailand to "wai" people. A wai is when you put your hands together in a prayer position, lift them to where your fingertips are level with your nose & then you bow slightly. You’d lift your hands higher to show greater respect to a person. I’ve only been wai’ed at nose level, but I haven’t done anything to warrant greater respect! A wai is given when saying "thank you," "hello," & "goodbye." Also, adults never wai children. When I do, they laugh at me.

In India people would quickly touch their forehead when saying "thank you." In Morocco & Egypt, they’d touch their heart. Tomorrow I leave for Cambodia & I’m looking forward to learning a new sign.

Bangkok is a beautiful city. It reminds me a little of New York City. It’s big & very busy. Because the weather is tropical, plants & flowers are very abundant and lush. It’s odd to see orchids, an expensive & difficult plant to grow, thrive in the sides of roads & vacant fields.

I hope you are enjoying California. I look forward to visiting you there. Until then, I think of you often & wish you were with me to smell the flowers!

Love,
Keri

Geography

Super-Fun Geography Studies with Journey North’s Mystery Class

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As one of my little ones used to say, I’m so a-cited! It’s almost time to begin a new season of happy hunting with the Journey North Mystery Class. Ten classes of schoolchildren around the world have been chosen to be Mystery Classes, and it’s up to the rest of us to track down their location. You too can join in the fun!

Here’s how it works. Every Friday, starting this week, Journey North will release some special information about the ten mystery locations: their sunrise and sunset times. You use this data to calculate each location’s photoperiod (how many minutes of daylight it had that day). By graphing the changes in photoperiod, week after week (for eleven weeks), you’ll be able to narrow down the latitude of the Mystery Classes.

To help with the narrowing-down, you also graph your own local photoperiod every Monday. Don’t know what time the sun will rise? You can find out here.

As the project unfolds, Journey North will begin to send other clues to help you locate the Mystery Classes. One biggie will be the longitude clues. In April, participants from all over the world will share their guesses, and the big reveal is in May.

We did this last year with a group of online homeschooling friends. Each family took one Mystery Class to calculate data for, and we pooled the data for our graphs. We had such a good time! It was so exciting to hone in on the locations, make our guesses, discuss the possibilities with the other families in the group. Rilla was born near the end of the project, but that didn’t stop Jane from maniacally calculating photoperiods and drawing all those lovely colored lines on our graph.

I highly recommend this project, whether your family does it alone or with a group. So. Much. Fun!

Books, Geography, History

Tree in Our Trail

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Holling Clancy Holling’s books seem to be a staple for the homeschooling library, and ours is no exception. The girls and I have enjoyed several of Holling’s books over the years, especially Paddle to the Sea and Pagoo. (The title character of the latter book served as the namesake for not one, not two, but three hermit crabs who were cherished members of our family for a couple of years. Ah, Pagoo, Pagooess, and Pagooie, we knew ye well!)

Wagonmound
I had tucked Tree in the Trail aside to await the right moment, and the other day I decided that moment is now. It’s the story of a cottonwood tree that takes root along what would later become the Santa Fe trail. Our recent cross-country tripapalooza took us right along sections of that very trail, and the scenery in the book is now very meaningful to my kids!

We are only four chapters in, but so far all of us are loving it. I actually got choked up when the Indian brave who saved the tree as a sapling came back to visit it on horseback later. The girls were transfixed by the idea that there was a time when "horseback" didn’t exist, a time when people didn’t know about riding horses. Sure, we’ve read other books about horseless cultures, but you don’t really think about about the absence of riding animals when you’re immersed in tales of what the characters ARE doing. It was a great light-bulb moment for the kids, especially Rose (my horse fanatic), another making-real of knowledge that had been merely dry fact before. Which is the best, the very best, thing about reading with my children: seeing those lights come on, and basking in their warm glow.

Food and Drink, Geography

The Answer to this Question May Be Where I’m Moving Next

Ria is a homeschooled ninth-grader who loves Chesterton, Tolkien, Irish dance, and chocolate cake—proving her to be a girl of excellent taste. On her charming blog, Liber Parma, she has issued a challenge: find a place where you could have a chocolate cake farm. That is, where on earth could you grow or produce all the ingredients necessary to make chocolate cake without buying anything? Ria writes:

Cocoa beans and sugar cane grow in similar climates, wheat can grow in
many places. We are not sure where you can get baking powder and baking
soda but if anyone else knows please let me know. Salt you can get from
the sea, for eggs you need a chicken and for milk a cow is necessary.
You need a vegetable and a press for vegetable oil, vanilla beans grow
in warm climates just like cocoa beans and sugar cane, and water is
likely to be in any place where people live.

Okay so you have
the background, now I have a challenge for you. Find a place, or several
places where you could have a farm that produces all of these things.
Use books, internet, whatever and have fun. Please comment back and
tell me what you found.

There is already some very interesting information in the comments. Related posts can be found at my favorite geography blog, The Map Guys, and at Studeo.

Ria, I’m afraid I must add a critical ingredient to your list: pecans. You can’t make my mom’s now-famous Rocky Road Sheet Cake without them!

Fun Educational Stuff, Geography, The Cross-Country Move

WikiMapia, or Yet Another Way to Spend Half Your Morning on the Computer

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Ohhhh, this is too much fun. Scott sent us a link to the WikiMap view of the house we’ll soon be renting, and just like that, a new addiction is born. The kids and I just spent the entire morning looking at aerial views of, well, everywhere.

We found our current house in Virginia and Scott’s new California office. Look, girls, there’s Daddy’s roof! Beanie was pretty sure she could see him waving. We scouted the whereabouts of parks and libraries in the neighborhood we’re moving to next month. I may not be packed yet, but doggonit I know how to get to the library in my new hometown. And the Target, and the nearest Catholic church. Yes, we have mapped out our own little baseball diamond of essentials: first base, second base, third base, home plate. Best part: there’s a Schlotzsky’s in the infield.

And the outfield? Great googly-moogly!

Coast2

And because it’s a wiki, you can add your own labels and landmarks to the map, too. People from all over the world are entering the names of churches, schools, hospitals, parks, recreation areas,  and stores. Oh, and also: Ashley’s house. I don’t know which Ashley. But her house is in my outfield.

Fun Educational Stuff, Geography

It’s 10 PM. Do You Know Where Your Post Is?

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The reason I haven’t posted yet today is because last night I read this post by Willa which mentioned this post by Sandra Dodd, which put me in the mood to work a jigsaw puzzle. So this morning I dug out the Global Puzzle, which has been in the basement for three years. I remember because the last (and first) time we worked it, I was pregnant with Wonderboy. None of the kids remembered it, and we spent all day hunched over the coffee table, exclaiming over the relative size of countries.

If you don’t know this puzzle, it’s awesome. And HARD. In a fun way. It’s a map of the world, and unlike other map puzzles, in this one the pieces are cut to match the individual countries. (Except a few really tiny ones clumped together. Very challenging! I need not point out what a terrific geography lesson it is.

Puzzle

Now good night! I have to go finish Africa.

Geography, Math

Math-and-Geographa-Funnies

We use Math-U-See too, but I didn’t see where there this story was going until Kathy Jo explained:

Sam (five-year-old son): “Mama, I don’t know if I do eight or nine. They both suck.”

Ahem. Alright, this one both shocked and confused me for a moment, and I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be horrified. I asked him to repeat himself to be sure I understood correctly– and I had. And then I finally realized what he was trying to tell me.

He’s been doing Math-U-See, and I love the way it teaches the math facts to the little guys. You see, nine wants to be ten, so when it’s added to another number, it sucks away one unit from the other number like a vacuum cleaner. Sam hasn’t completely mastered the nine math facts yet, but he’s gotten very fast at giving me the answers. So today we started the eight math facts. It turns out that eight also wants to be ten, so it sucks away two units from the other number.

Hence, when he came across the problem 9 + 8, he wasn’t sure which way to figure out the problem as eight and nine both suck.

Good golly, is that funny. An hour later, I’m still giggling.

There’s a good geography story in Kathy Jo’s story, too. My kids have soaked up a lot of geography over dinner, both with map placemats or (their favorite) sometimes I put a large world map under a clear vinyl tablecloth on the dinner table. The plastic bugs me, or else I’d leave it that way all the time. Whenever I do ditch the pretty blue cotton tablecloth for the map & plastic combo, the kids get very excited. Their peas are quite the little globetrotters. (“Mom, look, it rolled to Peru!”)

And then there’s our old pal Mr. Putty. He has become such a part of the family that I stuck him up there in the sidebar alongside all the kids. These days he is spending a lot of time in Egypt during our read-aloud of The Golden Goblet. Then he moseys to Rome. When we go swimming, somebody dunks him in an ocean: his goal is to visit every major body of water on Earth by the end of next month. I think that includes rivers and lakes. My children really love pool season.

Speaking of geography stories, Karen had a good one this week.

Geography, Nature Study

Where’s Yours?

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree…”

For Yeats, it was the bee-loud glade. For Mary Lennox, it was The Secret Garden, and for her maid Martha Sowerby, it was the moor, where “it smells o’ honey an’ there’s such a lot o’ fresh air—an’ th’ sky looks so high an’ th’ bees an’ skylarks makes such a nice noise hummin’ an’ singin’. ” For Anne Shirley, it was pretty much anywhere in Avonlea. Most of us have a favorite spot in nature, a quiet retreat where we can steep our souls in beauty. Now you may, if you are so inclined, share your Innisfree with the world. Where’s Yours? is a site that allows you to pin a map with your favorite location and write blog entries about it. Click on a pin to read an entry. (So far most of the entries are pretty spare, but I imagine they will grow as the site matures.)

(HT: Chris O’Donnell.)

Fun Learning Stuff, Geography, Science

Journey North’s Mystery Class: A Progress Report

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In late January I posted an announcement about the Journey North Mystery Class project that was about to start. This has been our first year participating in the project, and I have to tell you, we are having the best time. Can’t believe we haven’t done this before!

We’re about halfway through the project, and it gets more exciting by the week. Here’s Journey North‘s description:

The Mystery Class investigation is an 11-week hunt in which students try to find 10 secret “Mystery Classes” hiding around the globe. The changing amount of sunlight at each site is the central clue. Students take an inspiring journey from knowing only sunrise and sunset times, to discovering exact locations of the 10 Mystery Classes. Mystery Class begins January 30 and ends May 5, 2006.

Here’s how it works. Every Monday we visit this website to find out our local sunrise and sunset times for that day. The amount of daylight between sunset and sunrise is called the photoperiod. Week by week, we have recorded each Monday’s photoperiod on a graph, watching our hometown photoperiod get longer and longer every week. The gray days of February were made a little less gray by the knowledge that we had some twenty minutes more sunshine every week.

Every Friday, Journey North sends out sunrise and sunset data for the ten Mystery Classes. Using this information, we calculate the ten Mystery Class photoperiods and add this data to our graph. (We are working as part of a group with other families from the 4RealLearning message boards; each family calculates the data for one Mystery Class, and we pool our results.)

Graph_2Here’s what our graph looks like so far. (Click to enlarge.) You can see how almost all the lines are on their way to converging at a central point: that’s the 12-hour photoperiod line, which is where everyone will be next Monday, March 20th, on the vernal equinox.

Almost everyone, that is! Mystery Class #6 has been enjoying 24 hours of daylight since the project began. This means they’re somewhere in Antarctica…You can (faintly) see their line at the top of our chart.

The photoperiod data is helping us narrow down the latitude of each Mystery Class. By comparing each Class’s photoperiods to our hometown photoperiod, we are able to make guesses about how far north or south of the equator these hidden classes might be.

This week was a big week: Journey North released the longitude clues. To help us calculate each Mystery Class’s longitude, we were given their March 20th sunrise times in Greenwich Mean Time. By calculating the number of minutes between Greenwich’s sunrise and each Mystery Class’s sunrise and dividing by four (because the earth spins one degree longitude every four minutes), we have been able to determine each Class’s longitude, including whether they are east or west of Greenwich.

So now we’re really narrowing it down! Jane and I are beginning to make our guesses about where the Mystery Classes are located. In the weeks to come, Journey North will give us additional clues about culture and terrain. In late April, our group and others all over the world will submit our guesses, and the following week Journey North will post the answers.

Already we have learned so much during this project. Never again will I have trouble remembering which is latitude and which is longitude. There has been a lot of math and a lot of globe-spinning. (Mr. Putty has been getting a workout!)

If you’re kicking yourself for not having joined in the fun this year, it’s not too late. It would take some serious work to bring your graph up to date, but the data is all still available and it could certainly be done. Or you could just drop in to 4RealLearning and eavesdrop on our group’s speculations. Click on the “Great Outdoors” forum and look for topic threads labeled “Mystery Class.” We’re still collecting longitude data from our group members, and we’ve agreed not to start guessing out loud about locations just yet—we want to give every family a chance to do the guessing on its own first.

And if this isn’t your year to join in the fun, there’s always next year. Regular readers of this blog know that I frequently post links to Journey North—for example, I love the Monarch watch that begins every spring, as we follow the butterflies’ progress from their wintering grounds in Mexico to our own backyards. All of Journey North’s activities are free and tons of fun.

Interesting related links posted by our group members:

Antarctica Journal
World Daylight Map
Daylight Savings Time Map (This site gave us a clue a couple of weeks ago when the sunrise/sunset times for one of the Classes suddenly shifted by an hour.)
NationalAtlas.gov
On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World’s Weather (A picture book by Marilyn Singer.)

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