And that's how one week after we returned home from our trip, I was pulling out my credit card to book an AirBnB for Will, Luna, and I to come back later this summer and have our own fabulous adventure. Because as much as my kid enjoyed 60 hours of screen-time without adult interference, she's also my best travel buddy, and Luna is hers.
I packed only the essentials, as you can see.
We stopped at the visitor center so Will could see the museum, watch the informational film (I fell asleep during my own viewing of that film, so Will is now more knowledgeable about Indiana Dunes than I am!), and collect both Junior Ranger and Bark Ranger books:
And then it was off to Luna's first real beach!
Luna doesn't really know how to play, so once upon a time when Will and I took her to our local dam's spillway, we were absolutely delighted to see how absolutely delighted Luna was by the rushing water and the waves. She ran at them, leaped at them, snapped at them, barked at them--we had NEVER seen her act like that before, and would never have believed that it was part of her character if we hadn't seen it with our own eyes.
Will and I started dreaming, then, of taking Luna to a whole entire beach full of waves, but I'm pretty sure that when she snaps at the water she's actually swallowing it, and I worry about salt poisoning from seawater. But Lake Michigan is salt-free, and when Luna saw it--or rather, when she saw its waves--she lost her ever-loving mind:
With Will in tow, she ran up the beach and down the beach and up the beach and down the beach, barking hysterically most of that time:
Meanwhile, I hung out in a supervisory role:
When Luna had worn herself out so much that I was pretty sure she'd try to lie down halfway through the long walk back to the car (spoiler alert: she did!), we made the long walk back to the car, then hit up the grocery store, then found our AirBnb. This was my very first AirBnb ever, and it was thrilling. So much space! So many amenities! SO MANY TV CHANNELS!!!
I mean, I know we came here to go to the beaches, but this Airbnb had Netflix AND Disney+!
Enlarging an existing pattern by a fraction of an inch is a pretty common thing to have to do. Sometimes a pattern won't have the seam allowance that you want, but usually you need to do it when you're copying an existing article of clothing.
For instance, to make my daughter's Junior Ranger vest, above when it was still a WIP, I copied her Girl Scout vest. That gave me the footprint of the completed vest, sure, but I still needed to add the seam allowances. Therefore, I needed to enlarge the pattern on all sides.
That's easy enough to do on the straight sides, but what about the curves? I don't have much of a steady hand for drawing, and I don't like the look of wobbly, hand-drawn patterns anyway.
Fortunately, there IS a method for drafting a curve onto a pattern that is steady, accurate, and fool-proof. Here's how you do it!
1. Extend the line from each adjacent side of the curve to the proper seam allowance. In these photos, I'm extending my seam allowance by .25". In the photo above, see how I've extended the line from the adjacent side by .25"? That's where my new curve is going to end on each side.
2. Rest your transparent ruler against the drawn curve, so that the straight edge represents your desired measurement. Draw one short, straight line there. Move the ruler slightly down the curve, and repeat. Do this over and over and over again until you've done this down the entire curve. You'll see that all of your many straight lines will, at their intersection with each other, mark out your new curve.
3. Re-trace the curve and neaten it. I usually trace over my finished pattern in Sharpie, then label it with the size and sewing instructions before cutting it out.
When drawing a pattern from scratch, you'll find a French curve indispensable for making those curves, but for enlarging an existing pattern or creating seam allowances, this method is the most accurate for preserving the original cut of the piece.
This is an update of my original Junior Ranger badges post, first written WAY back in 2018!
July 2023: I just updated my list of Junior Ranger badges kids can earn at home. I crossed out Junior Ranger badges that are no longer available to earn from home, but I added a few new ones, too!
February 2021: I just updated my map of Junior Ranger badges kids can earn at national park sites AND my list of Junior Ranger badges kids can earn from home. Earning Junior Ranger badges is still one of Will's favorite activities!
It's been four years since the kids first discovered the Junior Ranger program at Badlands National Park, and thus began their obsession. I'm never one to let an educational experience go, so since that first thrilling day, I have deliberately organized ALL of our US vacations to include as many Junior Ranger programs as possible, and I've included all of the Junior Ranger programs that it's possible to earn by mail into our homeschool plans.
"How did you figure out where all of the Junior Ranger programs are?" you ask.
Friends, I made a giant freaking map:
Yes, that is EVERY SINGLE NATIONAL PARK SITE WITH A JUNIOR RANGER PROGRAM. I put them all in by hand. I went to every single national park's website, searched for its Junior Ranger program, and if it had one I put it on my map.
When I plan road trips, I check my map for all the national park sites with Junior Ranger programs that we could detour to, and then we detour to them. During our upcoming road trip, for instance, we're visiting Saint Croix Island and Acadia National Park, primarily for their Junior Ranger programs.
But the kids' enthusiasm for earning Junior Ranger badges is unceasing, and yet we cannot spend our entire year traveling to various national parks. If only!
So I went back through every one of those websites, and I noted every park that permits children to earn their Junior Ranger badge by mail. Most of these parks provide the badge book as a downloadable pdf for kids to complete using internet or book research (often the park's own website, but we've also found useful park videos on YouTube). They mail their completed badge books to the park, and in return, the park rangers mail them back their badges and certificates.
It's always, eternally thrilling.
The kids have been doing this for years now, and still have tons of Junior Ranger badges left to earn by mail. They've learned geography, history, and several sciences in the process, experienced the breadth and depth of the national experience in ways they haven't had the opportunity to do in person, and have an intense appreciation for the variety of cultural, historical, and geographic artifacts and monuments that must be explored, preserved, and protected.
Not every national park, or even most national parks, allow their Junior Ranger badges to be earned by mail, mind you. You'll know if one does, because it will say so on its website or on the book, and it will have the book available as a downloadable pdf and include a mailing address for the completed book to be sent to. Many parks will state, kind of pissily in my opinion, that they do NOT allow badges to be earned by mail, and that's their right, but I think everyone loses when they do that--why stifle a kid's desire to learn? Why refuse an opportunity to grow someone's knowledge and love of your national park?
Before you get your kid all revved up on earning these badges by mail, you should know that since you've got to mail the completed badge books to each park, you'll be paying a few bucks for postage and manila envelopes each time. If you're conserving resources, check out the online badges that I've noted in my list--those let kids either do or submit their work online, so you don't have to pay for either supplies or postage.
Fortunately, MANY national parks are happy to have more kids interested in them and working to learn more about them! Here are all the national park Junior Ranger badges that you can earn by mail:
NOTE: I do NOT include Junior Ranger badges in which the badge book is offered as a pdf from the national park site, but kids cannot mail them in or submit them online to earn the badge without a visit to the site. Lots of national park sites offer their badge books as pdfs so that kids can get a head start on the book (which is a great idea!), and some sites even allow kids to mail in their badge books later if they didn't have time to complete them at the park, but this is is solely for badges that kids can earn entirely from home. I'm also not including any of the newer "virtual Junior Ranger programs," which let kids complete some web activities and then print an image of the Junior Ranger badge. Those can be fun, but this list is solely for physical badges that kid can earn from home.
Denali National Park and Preserve(Alaska). This was my younger kid's favorite Junior Ranger badge to earn by mail. She LOVED researching the sled dogs, and was thrilled when the ranger who mailed her badge to her wrote a letter to her that told her even more about them!
Jimmy Carter National Historic Site(Georgia). This is another badge that had a profound effect on my older kid. She was unexpectedly moved by the story of Jimmy Carter, and he's now one of her heroes.
Lake Mead National Recreation Area(Nevada). This is another one you can request by email, but I don't know if you can actually complete it without a visit.
This is one of my absolute favorite activities that we do in our homeschool, but it's partly so wonderful because it's so adaptable. Sure, it can be your entire geography curriculum, or just an enrichment to another spine. You can include it in your history studies, or in the natural or earth sciences. Even if you don't homeschool, these Junior Ranger books are so fun that kids can simply DO them for fun. My kids do, and they think it's a nifty trick that I also let them count them for school!
If your kids love earning Junior Ranger badges, then they'd likely be interested in learning about the national park system as a whole--there's so much to explore there, from history and culture to geology and the sciences. Here are some of our favorite resources for learning about and exploring the national park system:
P.S. Want more obsessively-compiled lists of resources and activities for kiddos and the people who want to keep them happy and engaged? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!
Our in-person explorations this summer were supposed to be the Western Caribbean with our Girl Scout troop, southern Alabama and Louisiana with our family, and several assorted camping trips and weekend adventures with just me and the girls.
Honestly, though, at this point I'm so tired of complaining about the pandemic that I don't even feel like complaining about it. We're together at home, safe and sound, making our own fun more or less.
And instead of real travel on a cruise ship with lots of friends, exploring Mayan architecture, taking young people to get soft serve and pizza at 3:00 am just because we can, the four of us are eating popsicles at home and I'm only up at 3:00 am every day because a mockingbird lives right outside my bedroom window.
Whatever. It is what it is.
It's been several years since we took our family trip to Yellowstone National Park, and so when Yellowstone kindly announced that it would allow children to earn its normally park-only Junior Ranger badge at home, I decided that it was the perfect chance to make our own fun and I turned it into a unit study.
The study broadly follows the Yellowstone National Park Junior Ranger badge book, which at least right now Yellowstone is still offering on their site, still with the possibility to earn the Junior Ranger badge from home. The subheadings for this study match the activity titles for the Junior Ranger book, although you could complete this study without referencing it.
SUPERVOLCANO
Naked Science: Supervolcanoes is a terrific documentary about the Yellowstone supervolcano, although it scared the snot out of Syd and I have somehow managed to inform everyone that I have seen in person since we watched it (being that we watched it about 6 weeks ago, that number amounts to Matt, two socially-distanced friends, and the physical therapist helping me with my rotator cuff tendinitis) of exactly how long we in Indiana can expect to live after it erupts, and what we can expect to die of.
The documentary speaks quite a bit about calderas (there's a great Jurassic Park moment in which the scientists are frustrated because they know there *should* be a caldera at Yellowstone but they just can't find it, and then one of them is flying over the park in a helicopter and realizes that they haven't been able to see it because they've been IN it--it's that large!), and so this DIY caldera project makes a great hands-on activity to accompany it.
HYDROTHERMAL FEATURES
It's a shame that we're not really at Yellowstone, because these were the sights that I enjoyed most when I've gone! Here are a couple of decent virtual tours of various hydrothermal features at Yellowstone, and here's a fun little PBS documentary entitled Yellowstone and Their Steaming Acid Pools of Death:
It's an apropos title!
It's very easy to model hot springs and fumaroles, at least--here's a handy tutorial, as well as a list of hydrothermal features and good definitions for them. I had the kids memorize the types of hydrothermal features, but our modeling didn't go quite as well. The hot spring and fumarole were fine, of course, but my idea that perhaps the kids could engineer a way to DIY a stovetop geyser (got to practice those STEM skills, don't you know?), was unsuccessful:
Well, at least we now know a good half-dozen ways NOT to make a stovetop geyser, so that's something!
Will was interested in the difference between a fountain geyser and a cone geyser, so we found videos that illustrate each one. Here's a fountain geyser:
And here's a cone geyser!
RECIPE FOR A GEYSER
The kids and I had a LOT of fun with this lesson. Geysers are a great subject for a YouTube rabbit trail!
We started off simply trying to find a YouTube video that had a model or demonstration of how a geyser works, but got interested in this video about Yellowstone's largest and just about most sporadic geyser, Steamboat:
This got us looking for other videos of Steamboat Geyser erupting, and we found this great video from a YouTuber named David Schwartz, with lots of angles and good captions:
It was such an interesting video that we checked out his profile to see if he had filmed any other geysers.
He had!
Clearly, someone who has filmed several geyser eruptions must be interesting, so we Google stalked him.
And that's how we learned the term GEYSER GAZER! That's what you call people who've made watching/studying geysers into a hobby!
You know what else we found while cyberstalking this random person?
It was not great. The kids were beside themselves with how hokey and unfunny it was, in the many lulls I read out loud to them all about Garrison Keillor's history as a workplace sex criminal, and as if we didn't already loathe our listening experience enough, when it came time for David Schwartz's big moment, he got to speak approximately half a line, then Keillor cut him off, made a joke that felt like it was at least partially at his expense (I don't totally remember, and I am NOT going back to listen to it again), and then moved on to something else!
We were livid. Syd had to be talked down from violence. She loves David Schwartz the MOST, and did NOT appreciate some hokey sex criminal denying our favorite geyser gazer his public radio glory.
I did tell you that we make our own fun, right? Ahem.
Since the kids loved studying geysers so much, I gave them the assignment to draw one. They had to find a good geyser eruption video on YouTube, pause it at an appropriate point, and then create a piece of art showing their geyser mid-eruption, making sure to include elements of background and foreground, realistic or creative. And, of course, they had to credit the video's creator, because we don't deny people their glory in our homeschool!
Here's Syd's creation:
LIVING COLORS
This lesson was a great place to add a little more academic rigor for my older students. Yellowstone has an absolutely terrific lesson on thermophiles, and learning about chemosynthesis means that you get a chance both to review photosynthesis AND compare it to a completely different metabolic process!
For a little bit more challenge, I had the kids research and label the possible name of each thermophile represented in the thermophile coloring page in their Junior Ranger books. Everybody likes to color!
I had only intended our Yellowstone study to take up our afternoon project time for one week, and we spent soooooo long on geysers that we skimped quite a bit on the rest of the unit. Here's what we did:
We watched BBC's Yellowstone: Episode 1 and discussed how the presence or absence of wolves would change Yellowstone's ecosystem.
BEAR COUNTRY
We watched Grizzly Cauldron: The Giant Bears of Yellowstone. If you've got older kids who love animals, there's an interesting jumping off point here for another rabbit trail. You can find amateur YouTube videos of people inappropriately reacting to bear encounters in national parks, or read accounts of bear encounters (remember that time that I told you ALL ABOUT all the ways people get killed by bears in Yellowstone?), or watch additional documentaries, like Grizzly Man. There's a lot to study on the topic of animal encounters, especially through the lens of environmental science, psychology, outdoor survival, or animal welfare.
Is your library opened back up again? Ours has curbside check-out of online holds! If/when your library is back in business, here are our favorite library resources on Yellowstone:
I immediately checked up on this, and it's true!!! Yellowstone National Park IS offering its Junior Ranger badge program by mail, only during the pandemic!
And if one national park site is doing this, maybe there are others!
Maybe I have too much time on my hands, or maybe it was simply time that I go through my map and list of Junior Ranger programs and make sure they're all up-to-date, anyway, because I spent practically the entire day yesterday--you know, in between giving Will constructive criticism on her APES and AP Psych FRQs, being the only person in the house to actually sort of clean it, making and mailing a couple of Pumpkin+Bear etsy orders, doing just enough of an online kickboxing workout to convince myself that I'd definitely worked out that day and should absolutely eat an entire sleeve of Thin Mints that evening, and trying to convince Syd that wouldn't it be fun if she for once and for all finished this Silver Award project that she's been working steadily on for over a year--going through every site on my map, adding lots of new Junior Ranger by mail programs to my list (yay!), taking some programs that no longer offer Junior Ranger badges by mail off my list (many national park sites are now moving to a "virtual Junior Ranger" program, for which a kid does some work on their website, self-corrects it, and then prints off an image of the Junior Ranger badge), and at the same time noting the national park sites that don't usually offer Junior Ranger badges by mail, but are now doing so ONLY during the duration of the pandemic.
Guilford Courthouse National Military Park (North Carolina). It's unclear if submitting this completed badge book will earn a kid a "real" Junior Ranger badge, or an image of a badge. Make sure your kid is comfortable with a bit of a gamble before they work on this one!
Historic Preservation Junior Ranger (national). You can complete this badge book at home anytime, but I'm including it in this list because when Syd and Will did it, we found that finding a national park site to submit it to was tricky! I ended up setting the books aside, completed, until we one day simply happened to travel to a national park that accepted them--I want to say that maybe it was Mammoth Cave? Anyway, at least during the pandemic the James A. Garfield National Historic Site will accept the scanned completed pages!
Yellowstone National Park (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming). Will is SUPER excited about this one, because even though we were there in 2014 and the kids earned Junior Ranger badges, they were the middle-level bear badges. We're going to make a whole unit study of this badge book from home so that it's new and different, and when the kids send it in this time, they can earn the BISON badges!!!
I am SO excited about these, and Will is, too. We homeschool year-round, but after Will's AP exams are finished and she takes a bit of a break, we'll begin having more fun, project-filled days than we've been able to indulge in for quite a while, with those two big standardized tests looming. I am absolutely thrilled that we can now spend some of these days learning about and doing fun hands-on activities related to these special, limited-time-only Junior Ranger books--what a great way to sneak some engagement, enrichment, and education into what's starting to look like a long, long, long quarantined summer.
P.S. Want to follow along with our projects when we begin our studies for these Junior Ranger books? Keep in touch via my Craft Knife Facebook page!
I didn't photograph every single Joshua tree, but not for lack of trying.
Here's our first day in California--at the beach! Here's our second day in California--in San Diego! After leaving the dog beach in San Diego, we took the long drive to Joshua Tree National Park. On the way, we managed to eat at the grossest roadside restaurant that I have ever tasted--seriously, two of us couldn't even eat our meals, they were so gross--and we managed to see the grossest tourist site that I have ever seen. Salton Sea is foul, smells like death, and the children legitimately thought that we were going to die there, so that was pretty fun. Oh, and this happened:
This is actually just a photo that I accidentally took as I was turning off the video feature on my camera as we were leaving a border patrol checkpoint. I'm just going to come out and say it: I am filled with righteous anger at the border patrol. I think they overstep their authority and contribute to the nationalistic, xenophobic mindset that's just a baby step away from Nazis in the streets. Back before the kids and I went to Canada we figured out (thanks to the ACLU) a strategy of noncompliance if we encountered them--no, I will not show you my driver's license. Am I free to go? No, I do not consent to a search of my car. Am I free to go?, etc.--but we thankfully didn't happen upon any during our trip, even though they were, indeed, blocking entire highways for hours at a time up in Maine where we were traveling. But of course southern California is practically the axis mundi of Trump's nationalistic, xenophobic bullying, so of course the entire highway that we were on was shut down, cars at a standstill, for a border patrol checkpoint.
Friends, I was loaded for bear. I was ready for noncompliance. Honestly, I was probably going to lose my temper, call the border patrol agent a baby jailer, and go to jail, myself, but whatever. If we can easily pass, it's our job to make big old donkeys of ourselves in order to inconvenience the baby jailers. The fact is, though, that we pass too easily. We're, like, the whitest Americans in America, practically. I'm the only one of us who isn't blonde! So the car hadn't even rolled to a complete stop when the border patrol agent peeked through the driver's side window and simply waved us on. The car just in front of us, though? The drug sniffing dog started barking its head off at THAT car, it pulled off to the side, and the kids practically glued themselves to the windows to see what was going down as we passed. Having accomplished practically every headache to be found in Southern California, we booked it towards Joshua Tree with the goal of stargazing that night. Unfortunately, as with the other National Dark Sky Preserve that the kids and I visited just a few months ago, it was too cloudy to see much, and we couldn't quite manage to navigate to a good stargazing spot. Still, we gave it plenty of effort, didn't completely freeze our buns off, I took this one photo that I actually like quite a lot:
That's me, without a tripod, using my car as a stationary object and failing to photograph Orion. Fortunately, the next day was absolutely perfect. Just beautiful.
The bigger kid had been longing to see the desert. I think that an entire landscape of cacti will suit nicely!
Matt is only pretending to touch the cactus... I think:
There's for sure nothing blossoming back in Indiana in November!
My bigger kid is the worst person to hike with. As soon as you hit the trail, she takes off as far ahead as she can get:
Probably so she can sneak off and TOUCH THE CACTI!!!
Our first desert critter!
There are tons of short hikes to take and places to explore along the main roads through Joshua Tree. We hopped out several times to explore:
The kids' favorite activity by far was scrambling around the giant boulders and hills:
And, of course, I photographed NEARLY every single Joshua tree in the park, or at least I did my best to!
All that climbing wore the kids out so badly that they were decidedly unenthusiastic about the mill hike that the adults wanted to go on (and to be fair, hiking through sand SUCKS!), but they slogged along with us anyway:
There are all these abandoned artifacts off the trail, just left where they are to weather and look picturesque:
We didn't actually die on the trail, although it kind of felt like we would at times, but instead we made it safely back to the ranger station, where the kids took their oaths and earned their Junior Ranger badges AND their Junior Paleontologist badges!
From Joshua Tree National Park, it was essentially a straight shot to Anaheim. But what's that off in the distance?
Shockingly True Story: the dinosaurs are now owned by Young Earth Creationists, of all people, and you can go into the gift shop, look up and around, and see where they've tried to paint over the plaques displaying the succession of human evolution that the original owner created. We did that, but otherwise tried to ignore the rhetoric, and we certainly didn't give them any money! You can take all the photos that you want of these sweet babies for free!
I LOVE DINOSAURS SO MUCH!!!!!!! Anyway, after we finally tore ourselves away from our sweet, sweet dinosaurs, we continued on our straight shot to Anaheim. We checked into our hotel, just a mile and a half walk from the entrance to Disneyland, and we went to bed early. Because it was the night before Thanksgiving, and the next day, Thanksgiving Day, we were going to celebrate the holiday in the most American way possible: We were going to spend 16 hours in the happiest place on Earth!
