Homeschool AP Environmental Science: Water Quality Monitoring Using the Creek Critters Citizen Science App

 

What, you mean you didn't spend YOUR New Year's Eve looking for aquatic macroinvertebrates in a local creek in order to evaluate its water quality?

I'm just kidding, y'all. The only reason WE spent part of our New Year's Eve looking for aquatic macroinvertebrates in a local creek is that we'd already procrastinated on this particular lab for so long that now it was winter, but I noticed on my weather app that the temperature was going to get up into something like the lower 50s on that day. Will and I weren't sure if any colleges would ask to see her lab notebooks when they evaluated applications, but we figured we might as well jump on finishing up any labs we could, just in case they did. 

Joke's on us for procrastinating, though, because this lab was FUN! Like, legitimately FUN! I'd do this lab again in a heartbeat, air temperature in the lower 50s or not. 

Will and I used this Creek Critters app to guide us through the lab. I bought a little aquarium net (which Amazon tells me I bought back in September, in case you were wondering how long we'd been procrastinating on this lab!), but otherwise we already owned the small clear container, larger clear container, and plastic spoon that were all we needed to complete the lab.

Here's where we conducted our lab:

This is the same little creek between two parks that my Girl Scout troop did our chemical water quality analysis this summer, so it was interesting to compare the results between the two types of monitoring.

You do get your feet wet during the collection part of this lab, but only by a couple of inches. Then you take your stuff back to shore, sit somewhere dry, and start identifying creek critters!

When you see a likely-looking critter, you use the plastic spoon to transfer it to a very small clear container:

And, of course, you put a little creek water in with it so it's comfy:

Then you peer nearsightedly at it for a good, long while:

The best part about the Creek Critters app is that it walks you through identifying your critter:

You also don't have to try to count the number of fingernet caddisflies, or whatever, in your sample; just find one, then move on to identifying something else:

Like an aquatic sowbug, perhaps!

Here are all the creek critters that Will found in our sample:

And yep, that water quality result is POOR. On the one hand, that does match with the chemical water quality analysis that my troop did last summer, but on the other hand, I have a theory that there might be aquatic macroinvertebrates that simply aren't there in the winter?

So I guess we DO get to do this lab in the spring, after all, because obviously we've got to take another sample so we can compare our results! 

Creeks and Fossils: Earning the Girl Scout Cadette Eco Trekker, Senior Eco Explorer, and Ambassador Water Badges

With a multi-level Girl Scout troop, activities tend to snowball. I'm absolutely of the mindset that not everybody has to earn a badge for everything, but... to be honest, I'm actually not so much of that mindset in practice, not with my older Girl Scouts. It was different when they were Brownies and Juniors, we met up more often, and they were all eager beavers who could be counted on to also earn a ton of badges outside of meetings. 

Now that they're all big kids, we don't meet up as often for badgework. The kids are all too busy with all their other kid stuff! Combine that with the fact that older Girl Scout badges are more work and take longer to earn, and these busy kids don't really earn them on their own at home, anymore, either. 

So when we do make the time to meet together, in an activity that the kids have chosen and are enthusiastic about, then yeah, I want them all to be able to earn a badge for their work.

And because they're at three different levels, that means three different badges.

For this meeting, the activity that the kids were enthusiastic about was finding fossils in our local creek. One of our troop co-leaders is an expert in local fossils and spends much of her free time looking for them in the many creeks around town, so she and her Girl Scout took charge of the fossil activities. I added in water activities to fill in most of the rest of the steps to earn the Cadette Eco Trekker, Senior Eco Explorer, and Ambassador Water badges, and the kids collaborated on the activity for Step 5 for each badge.

Field Trip to a Local Creek: Cadette Eco Trekker Badge Step 1

I didn't discover creek stomping until I moved to this little Indiana town, but now it's one of my favorite activities. When my kids were small, I'd put them into their swim trunks and we'd all go down to our favorite creek. We probably never walked more than half a mile in either direction down the creek, but still we could stay there for most of the day, me reading on a bank while the kids splashed and fought and caught crawdads and minnows and filled their pockets with fossils and geodes.  

It turns out that going to the creek with teenagers is much the same!

Lesson on Fossils and Geodes: Senior Eco Explorer Badge Steps 1-2, Ambassador Water Badge Step 1

My co-leader gave the kids a lecture on crinoids, the main fossil that we find locally. She showed them images of what crinoids looked like when they were alive and examples of fossils from her extensive collection. She can look at a fossil and tell you exactly what part of a crinoid it is, which is a super cool superpower!

Afterwards, the kids played in the creek and hunted for fossils and geodes:

I'm really glad that I remembered to bring my rock hammer, because it was a hit (ba-dum-dum!)! Everybody likes bashing open a geode and seeing what magic is inside.

Stream Health Assessment and Water Quality Testing: Cadette Eco Trekker Badge Steps 3-4, Senior Eco Explorer Badge Steps 3-4, Ambassador Water Badge Steps 3-4

I get bored with the similar structure of Girl Scout badges, but it sure does help with a multi-level troop! Steps 3 and 4 of each badge ask the Girl Scout to explore and work on an ecosystem issue; for the Ambassadors, the issue must be water-related.

To complete these steps, I taught the troop how to conduct a visual stream assessment, combining this worksheet with this contextual information. We talked about floodplains, channelizing, banks and erosion, and habitats for macroinvertebrates. Our town just experienced a major flood, and its impact on numerous local businesses has been in the news, so we also discussed how proper stream management is crucial not just for the sake of the natural environment, but also for urban infrastructure. One of the flooded businesses is located directly on the floodplain of a creek, and our entire downtown, which flooded so quickly that patrons were trapped in bars and restaurants, sits directly on top of another creek that was closed in and covered by a heavily-trafficked street. The flash flooding was a big disaster, with one person dead and one business still closed due to the damage; if the city had respected the creek's floodplain and maintained its riparian buffer zone, it likely wouldn't have been so dangerous or caused so much damage.

If you want to add more context, particularly regarding your area's overall watershed, these topographic maps are a great resource. 

A visual assessment is a great way to monitor a stream's overall health, but you can't get the whole picture with just your eyes alone. I wanted the kids to get some experience conducting chemical analyses, so I walked them all through how to collect water samples, then we reconvened under a nearby picnic shelter and I taught them how to do several of the tests from my favorite water monitoring kit:

With the supplies that I had left after Will's APES labs, the kids were able to test for dissolved oxygen, fecal coliform, nitrate, and pH. While we did the tests, we discussed the importance of dissolved oxygen, the fine line that is nitrate, and how fertilizer and sewage runoff are so dangerous partly because they're so nutritious for bacteria and algae, which will consume all the dissolved oxygen if they grow too much, and that will suffocate all the rest of the life in the stream. 

Both the dissolved oxygen and nitrate results for our stream were shockingly low, and I am VERY curious about that!

Make an Art Project: Ambassador Water Badge Step 2

Fortunately, my co-leader is also an artist who works with fossils, and so she was able to set the kids up to make absolutely beautiful collages with some of their fossils and cool rocks:

The kids had a fabulous time with this activity as they explored aesthetically-pleasing ways to display their collections. Some kids made collages in pendants, some made collages in frames, and some organized their collections in little bottles. They all turned out so cute!

Share What You Learned: Cadette Eco Trekker Step 5, Senior Eco Explorer Step 5, and Ambassador Water Badge Step 5

All the badges we covered have, for their final step, an activity that encourages the kids to pass on their knowledge, teach someone, educate, inspire, etc. Girl Scouts really encourages kids to find their voices, and older kids, especially, are often asked to try their hands at mentoring or teaching.

The kids in my troop each completed this final step independently, although we talked about possible avenues for sharing while they worked on their art projects, and they edited a Google Doc of ideas and possible scripts together. We brainstormed possibilities like writing a letter to our local Parks and Recreation Department informing them of the results of our water quality testing, writing a letter to the newspaper, making a flyer or brochure and displaying it or passing it around, writing a Google Maps review of the park with our water quality test results included, and other ideas. When we meet again, they can share what they shared!

When I teach kids, I always wonder if the info stuck. Did they learn anything, or were they just along for the ride? Did they understand the importance of dissolved oxygen and nitrates, or were they just dropping tablets into water and looking at the pretty colors? After all, I know well that a polite, biddable kid can act like they're 100% with you, doing everything you ask, with their eyes glazed over and cartoons playing in their head.

HOWEVER... this morning, my kids and I spent a couple of hours at a local park, hanging out with friends while Will completed a science lab (nectar guides for the win!). On the walk back to the car, we went across a pedestrian bridge over one of our town's many, many creeks. I stopped to look down at the water, and the kids stopped with me.

"Hmmm," one said. "This creek has definitely been channelized. And it doesn't have a very good riparian buffer zone."

"It's got fish, though, so it must have some habitat for macroinvertebrates."

"It could just be a hardy species."

"Look at that bank erosion!"

Yeah, I think they earned that Girl Scout badge!

We Took Part in a Water Quality Sampling Blitz

 I think you'll agree that someone who has earned a 5 on the AP Environmental Science exam is now qualified to give service in the area of environmental science.

And if that someone can put another lab into their possibly-not-yet-terribly-robust APES lab notebook at the same time, then all the better!

A couple of weeks ago, the Limnology Department at our local university held a water sampling blitz for our local watershed, and Will and I were two of the lucky citizen scientists who took part. Our job was to drive to several GPS coordinates, figure out a way to access the creek at each location, then fill out a Qualitative Habitat Evaluation field sheet, measure the stream's pH and temperature, and collect water samples for more testing back at the base. 

We brought a lot of bug spray, because the streams were all beautiful, but accessing all of them basically required parking at the side of the road, inevitably anxiously near No Trespassing signs and Trump flags, then climbing down a steep ditch through underbrush and copperhead nests, always to end up somewhere quite magical:

Fortunately, I had an adept scientist at hand. While I got to admire the scenery and take photos, she buckled down and did most of the work:

Fortunately, even when we met a stream bank that was too steep even for my mountain goat lab partner, we still had a way to get our samples:

Seriously, how cool is that? It works because water doesn't change temperature very quickly, so the extra time to take a bucket sample doesn't effect the measurement. 

The bad news is that none of the streams performed particularly well on the Qualitative Habitat Evaluation or the pH tests--

--and considering how many cornfields, yards, and cow pastures we saw on the edges of our streams, I'm not feeling optimistic about the results of the nitrogen or fecal coliform tests that we also measured out the water for back at the base.

Nevertheless, many of the streams managed to look happy enough, and it was magical to tromp through somebody's yard, scramble through the underbrush, slide precariously into a ditch, and then suddenly find ourselves somewhere like this:

Just out of view cars were still driving down whatever country road we'd stopped on, cows were still mooing and corn rustling, suspicious people were still peering out their windows and around their giant Trump flags at our parked car, but at the bottom of every ditch it was just us, the birds, the crawdads, and a little piece of natural wonderland trying its best.

It was the best kind of science, and not a bad way for an eleventh-grader to spend a school day, either.

Our Hawaii Study: Round-up and Resources (Repost)

I published my first round-up list of our unit study of Hawaii back in 2015. Last year (okay, we actually only finished it up a couple of weeks ago, but we STARTED it last year!), the kids and I accomplished another unit study of Hawaii, and it was just as fun with older kids doing more advanced work.

Instead of making two separate unit study write-ups, I went back and revised my 2015 blog post on our Hawaii study to reflect all of the new activities that more advanced students can do, and the specific areas of interest to older students. 

This is that blog post!

This is an overall roundup of two different unit studies that the kids and I have worked through on the topic of Hawaii over the years. The first time we studied Hawaii was in preparation for our first visit there in 2015, when the kids were around the ages of nine and eleven.

The second time we studied Hawaii was in preparation for and after our second family visit to Hawaii, and specifically for the purpose of earning the Girl Scouts of Hawai'i Aloha fun patch. Earning the fun patch is really... well, fun!... but if your kids are older or have studied Hawaii before, then the requirements to earn it may not seem rigorous enough. I adjusted the requirements to be more rigorous and challenging while still fitting the eight themes that the patch program covers, which I'll tell you about below. You still want to follow along in the official patch program guide, because it contains valuable information written by the Girl Scouts of Hawaii to other Girl Scouts around the world, but you can substitute the actual activities.

Here we go, then!

1. Geography and Geology of Hawaii

A good beginning goal for a unit study is to memorize the location of Hawaii on a world map, to memorize the state symbols associated with Hawaii, and to understand the geology that has shaped it--and is continuing to shape it!

One of the larger geography activities in this section meets the Kaua'i requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

A. map of Hawaii

I printed out a giant map of Hawaii from Megamaps, and taped it together for the kids. They then painted the ocean and labeled the eight major islands:

I put their map on the wall and we used it for daily memory work to help the kids memorize the islands. 

When the kids did this project again in 2019 (because yes, giant mapmaking is still fun for thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds!), they were able to complete it entirely independently, and with this list of instructions giving them further locations to map to research, identify, and label:

1.       Label each island.

4.       Label the ocean.

5.       Label the following landmarks:

a.       Volcanoes National Park

b.       Hawaii’s state capital

c.       Pearl Harbor

d.       Pipeline

e.       Mauna Kea

f.        Mauna Loa

g.       Princeville (our resort!)

h.       Waimea Canyon

i.         Ka Lae

j.         Wailua River

k.       Napali Coast

In both studies, when we read about any interesting geographical feature of Hawaii, or made plans to visit some place such as Ka Lae, the southernmost point of the United States, I had the kids mark and label that site on the map. I think it helped orient them somewhat during our visits.

In preparation for each visit to Hawaii, I had the children look through several guidebooks to see what they wanted to visit. They actually enjoyed this activity more, however, when we were in Hawaii--how fun to look through a guidebook, point to something, say, "I want to go there!", and have the magic tree house rental van take you there right then!

If you want to focus on the ocean around Hawaii, the Blue Planet episodes "Coral Reefs" and "Coral Seas" are fantastic. Here's an interesting and simple demonstration of salt water vs. fresh water. 

B. Hawaii state symbols

I had the children memorize Hawaii's capital, and I printed this Hawaii state symbols coloring page for them to complete, although I had them research images of each of the symbols to get the colors correct, not just rely on the printed legend. And yes, we had to look up the pronunciation for many of the Hawaiian things that we studied! Here's how to pronounce the name of Hawaii's state bird.

In the process of this research, Will became very interested in the Hawaii state capitol building. We'd have gone to visit if it had been in session, because Will really wanted to see the representatives wearing Hawaiian shirts! The state capitol building's web site does have some activity books for children, although we didn't use them.

C. Volcanoes

The goal for this unit was to give the children a good working knowledge of the science and geology of volcanoes. 

One of these volcanoes activities meets the Hawai'i requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

The kids watched BrainPop videos on volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunami, taking the quizzes and completing the accompanying worksheets. Will and I used my DIY bendy yarn to mark the location of the Ring of Fire on our big world wall map, even though Hawaii's volcanoes are actually not due to the Ring of Fire.

Our underwater volcano demonstration works particularly well, as this is how the Hawaiian islands were formed. You can also make a gelatin volcano to model how eruptions work. And if you've never made a baking soda and vinegar volcano before, now is the time!

To see real volcanic activity really in Hawaii, check out these volcano webcams.

To connect Hawaii's history of volcanoes to its particular geography, make a corrugated cardboard topographic map of the Big Island. Those mountains are volcanoes!

If kids are very interested in the process of Hawaii's formation, here's a much more detailed and sophisticated lesson. 

We used these geography and geology resources:

        

2. Hawaiian culture

I knew that the kids were going to see some really inauthentic, touristy versions of Hawaiian culture on our trip, and that's fine, because those are iconic parts of a Hawaiian vacation, but I wanted the kids to also have an understanding of real Hawaiian culture and its value to the Hawaiian people.

If your kids are younger or like paper dolls, there's a Hawaii set in this cute collection. Might as well print all the dolls and explore all their cultures!

Here's a good place to start exploring Hawaii's myths and legends. Do more research on the specific ones that interest you.

A. Hawaiian language

It's important to understand that Hawaii has its own native language and native speakers of that language, especially because at one time native Hawaiians were actively dissuaded from participating in their own culture.

One language activity meets the Ni'ihau requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

I wanted the kids to understand that Hawaii has its own native language, one that is still very much alive on the islands, and I also wanted the kids to have a go at learning some words and phrases. To that end, they both spent several weeks working daily through the first lessons in Mango Languages: Hawaiian. I won't go so far as to claim that they're in any way conversational, but it was an excellent way to get them to immerse themselves in Hawaiian writing and pronunciation. Here they are practicing!

There's a terrific YouTube channel dedicated to teaching the Hawaiian language. We watched all of their videos several times, including this one, our favorite:

B. Hawaiian music

It's fun to listen to traditional Hawaiian music, but don't forget the musical artists who are Hawaiian, no matter the genre they perform in. Music is also a good segue into studying other aspects of Hawaii's history and culture.

One music activity meets the Kaho'olawe requirement of the Aloha fun patch.

I have a free account on Spotify, and I used it to let the kids listen to loads of Hawaiian music. Here's my Hawaii playlist with our favorite Hawaii-themed songs. This song, in particular, is the telling of the Hawaiian creation myth that we saw in the Bishop Museum.

If you want to make your own music, here's a great lesson on the 'ili'ile and how to use them. The ukulele is also an accessible and fairly affordable instrument. Syd was interested in learning, so I bought her this ukulele and this tuner, and off she went!

C. Hawaiian dance

To begin a study on hula, we found this intro video to be helpful. We then spent most of one morning watching YouTube videos from the Merrie Monarch festival, the world's premier hula dancing competition. Make sure that you watch performances by both women's groups and men's groups! We also did these hula tutorial videos together, and although Syd, surprisingly, did NOT enjoy them and in fact left the room in a strop, Will, surprisingly, LOVED them and happily danced along with me. This was actually really great, because there was a hula tutorial at our luau in Hawaii, and Will happily jumped right in, with the background knowledge that she likes doing the hula! If you're not planning to visit Hawaii, an excellent enrichment activity would be having the kids help plan an at-home luau, complete with roasted pork and hula dancing.

D. traditional foods of Hawaii

Hawaii has a fascinating food culture, not just of traditional dishes but also of dishes influenced by its immigrant cultures, by the crops grown by colonizing forces, and by foods eaten during wartime scarcity.

One traditional foods activity meets the Lana'i requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

Whether or not you get to actually go to Hawaii and eat the real deal--sushi! Spam! shave ice!--making at-home versions is really fun. You could make sushi, play with recipes that include Spam, learn about macaroni salad, or make your own shave ice. Do NOT forget the snow cap!

Kona Coffee is a huge deal on the Big Island. We toured Greenwell Farms during our trip, and I highly recommend it, but their website also has some great educational videos on coffee farming. Good enrichment activities for that would be teaching the kids how to grind coffee beans and make you a delicious cup of coffee, or baking a coffee cake or another treat that includes coffee as an ingredient.

The Aloha fun patch guide has instructions for hosting a luau, including recipes for what to serve. We did this for a family dinner one night and had a delicious time eating crock pot Kalua pork, haupia, and coconut cake.

E. sports and games

Surfing is an important part of Hawaii's history and culture, but there are other games historically played in Hawaii that are also fun to experience.

One sports and games activity meets the O'ahu requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

Syd, in particular, got really into watching big wave surfing videos on YouTube. 

We learned how to play two traditional games of Hawaii, konane and lu-lu. If your kids love math, you can use lu-lu to practice creating probability trees!

We used these additional resources to study Hawaii's culture:

     


2. Hawaiian history

The goals for this unit were to understand that Hawaii has a vast pre-colonial history, to understand that it was colonized and its sovereign government overthrown by the United States, and to understand its iconic role in World War 2. 

There's a terrific timeline of Hawaiian history in the Aloha fun patch book. The kids used it for a research project in which they picked one event to learn more about and teach to the rest of us.

A. Polynesians

Here's how we carved our own petroglyphs the easy way!

This tiki mask project isn't super authentic, but the results are fairly similar to the kinds of statues that you see at heiau, in particular. This tapa cloth is also made from paper and not bark, but it's still a fun activity.

The second time we studied Hawaii, we found ourselves interested in Captain Cook, here's a little more about him, and here's a Crash Course video about him:

B. Hawaiian monarchy

Unfortunately, this subject was difficult to find ample resources for outside of Hawaii, although once we were there we really did find ourselves immersed in the history of Hawaii's monarchy and were able to explore some wonderful places important to the monarchy and see some beautiful treasures.

I printed out this large infographic of Hawaii's monarchs and had the children put it on the wall under our map for easy reference. I also tried to get the kids to watch this American Experience episode on Hawaii's last queen, but it was super dry and didn't hold their interest. Matt and I later watched it by ourselves, and it hardly held my interest, either, but I wanted the information so I muscled through.

We used these resources on the Hawaiian monarchy:

  

C. Pearl Harbor

We actually incorporated this lesson into our larger study of World War 2, so you'll want to add in your own pre- and post-Pearl Harbor context to this lesson.

I wanted the kids to understand the logistics of the attack, of course, but I also wanted them to be able to visualize it, because that's how they'll remember. Much of our study took place at the actual Valor in the Pacific National Park, where the kids earned Junior Ranger badges and we took at ferry out to the USS Arizona Memorial. Will, especially, also really loved the Pacific Aviation Museum, and I appreciated being able to see some of the actual aircraft models used at Pearl Harbor and Midway. Both of these places have excellent online presences, as well. The kids didn't enjoy Tora! Tora! Tora! enough to watch the entire thing, but they did watch the Pearl Harbor attack, and it's a really, really accurate version.

We used these further resources to study Hawaii's history. In particular, all three of us adored Under the Blood-Red Sun--we listened to it on audiobook in the car, and the entire family was riveted.

    

4. Biology, botany, and ecology of Hawaii

For many kids, exploring the special plants and animals found in and around Hawaii is the most exciting part of this study. That exploration should go hand-in-hand with learning the importance of conservation.

One biology activity meets the Maui requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

A. ecology of Hawaii

The ecology of Hawaii is extremely important, extremely delicate and, in many places, extremely in danger. 

One ecology activity meets the Moloka'i requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

To help the kids understand the importance and fragility of Hawaii's ecology, I used some of the curriculum materials from the Moanalua Gardens Foundations. It's geared to an elementary audience, but since it covers topics that are more familiar to that elementary audience than they would be to children outside of Hawaii, much of it still works even for older learners. In particular, we played Ecosystem Encounters--the kids loved it, and we learned SO much about feral pigs and happy-face spiders!

If you don't have time for an entire lesson plan or even a board game about feral pigs and happy-face spiders, this Ted-Ed video about invasive species is very informative:

I had each of the kids spend a few school lessons looking up native Hawaiian plant or animal species and creating infographics about them using Piktochart. If kids are very interested in the subject, here's an entire lesson on Hawaii's endemic species, or a pdf board game about Hawaii's watershed.

B. seals

I also had Will read this biography of the monk seal KP2. I thought that it might be too dry for her, but she actually loved it, and when we looked up KP2's home, the Waikiki Aquarium, we saw that there's a webcam of him! We still watch KP2 sometimes!

C. whales

Whales are always fun and fascinating to study. To make the kids' fact-finding projects about whales more interesting, we measured their lengths out and drew them in chalk:

D. sharks

One summer, the kids and I fell down a rabbit hole and spent three months studying sharks. It was AMAZING!

Fun stuff

Here are some fun, non-educational resources that have Hawaii themes:

 

My favorite thing about a Hawaii study is that the subject is so rich that it adapts itself to all levels of learners and a wide variety of interests. Kids who love animals have so much to study in Hawaii! Kids who love volcanoes, too! And kids who love history, who love music and dance, who love storytelling... a study of Hawaii is a great way to engage any learner.

P.S. Want to know more about our adventures in learning, and the resources that we use to accomplish them? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Homeschool Science: Would a Blue Whale Fit in Your Driveway?

It would in ours!

Although, to be fair, we DO have a really long driveway...

Measuring whale lengths was the very last activity that I wanted the kids to complete to earn their Girl Scouts of Hawai'i Aloha fun patch, way back when it was actually a unit study based on our 2019 vacation to Kauai!

We just never got around to it last summer, though, and once autumn hit we had so many autumn things to look forward to that it was less tempting to dive back in. Now that we're spending so much more time on our property, however, and ESPECIALLY now that Will's AP exams are over (yay!), we actually do have the time to dive back into some of our unfinished business... and finish it up!

This activity was loosely based on the time that we drew life-sized dinosaurs all over a local park's basketball courts. My dream *had* been to go back to the basketball courts and draw life-sized whales, but we obeyed our governor's strictest stay-at-home order to the letter, and so to modify the activity to be able to be done on our own property, I wondered if we could measure life-size whale lengths on our driveway, and then just draw models of the whale next to its measurement.

Reader, we COULD!

I swear, these Smithsonian Handbooks are some of the best homeschooling resources that I own:

We have a whole stack of them. We used them constantly from the time the kids were toddlers... to today!

The kids each chose a couple of whales that interested them (fighting over who got to pick the narwhal, because OF COURSE), then I helped them measure that whale's length on our driveway.

Once they got the length measured, they focused on drawing a good model of their whale and learning its gross anatomy and some facts about it to share with everyone.

Here's Syd working on her blue whale, which does, indeed, just fit in our driveway!

I think everyone's favorite part of homeschooling is how we can interact with and love on our pets all day. They seem to know when the kids are doing something especially interesting or unusual, and they always want to join in!

Both kids really enjoyed this project!

Ah, here's one thing that I do NOT so much appreciate about homeschooling. Guess who's fighting again?

Someone threw a piece of chalk at her sister, and someone else kicked her sister. It's fine.

I also like homeschooling because generally, we're pretty chill about distractions here. Want to take a break from memorizing whale anatomy to chalk your father's freshly-washed hair?

It's art!

Spots also participated in Homeschool Art, which is what she gets for lying down on somebody's chalk rainbow:

Eventually, the kids remembered their whales, and finished their whales, and we all took a whale walk along the length of each whale, and then listened as each kid explained interesting facts about that whale's life and significant details of its anatomy:

And that's how we finally finished our unit study of Hawaii!

Six Months Ago: Teach Your Kids to Make Applesauce

One Year Ago: An Alice in Wonderland Birthday Party for She Who is Thirteen

Two Years Ago: Sports Legends and Space at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Three Years Ago: Physics and Force at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Four Years Ago: Homeschool Science: Zometool Crystallizations

Five Years Ago: I Let My Kids Drive the Lawnmower

Six Years Ago: Cahokia Mounds Homeschool Field Trip

Seven Years Ago: Zooming through the Montessori Green Series

Eight Years Ago: Geography with Montessori Pin Flags

Nine Years Ago: Tutorial: Easy Rainbow Cake

Ten Years Ago: My Child as a Confederate Soldier

Eleven Years Ago: Wildflowers, Interpreted

Twelve Years Ago: At Last, a Tie-Dyed Quilt!