Adventures in Letterboxing

I understand that geocaching is the big thing now, but my kiddos and I are pretty old-school.

We like letterboxing.

It's like searching for pirate's treasure, this following of clues to find the letterbox cache. And it's really kid-friendly! The girls each have their own hand-carved stamp--

Willow's stamp

Syd's stamp

 --and once I get them to the correct starting location, they can follow all the clues independently.

Of course, since letterboxing is old and somewhat out of style by now, not all the letterboxes are current. The girls were REALLY disappointed, for instance, when the letterbox for The Bridge behind the Child simply wasn't there anymore, and they kept coming back to the spot over and over, searching again and again just in case they'd missed it the last time. Fortunately, all our local letterboxes are in pretty great spots, and often in places where we've never been before, so even though they didn't get to find a letterbox here, they did get to stalk deer--

This is Willow, stalking a deer.

--and do some creek stomping--

--and play on a playground:

It's even more exciting, though, when the letterbox pans out, and after following all the clues and a bit of searching--

--you find one!

You have to carry your own ink pad for the stamps, and a pen or pencil to write the date and a short message in the logbook:

The girls stamp the letterbox's stamp into their nature journals, and add a few sentences about the adventure while I look through the logbook and check out everyone else's stamps--

the founder of this letterbox

--and then we sneakily hide the letterbox again in the same spot, and surreptitiously make our way back to the well-trodden path.

I considered letterboxing on our recent road trip, but a friend who also tends to take long road trips said that she and her kids used to geocache on their trips, and it turned into a huge time suck for them--they'd think they were stopping for fifteen minutes to check out a quick geocache, but then that would turn into forty minutes, and then there'd be another cool-looking geocache just right near by that they might as well check out since they were in the area, and all of a sudden that fifteen-minute break to stretch their legs while finding a geocache had turned into half the day, and there was no way they were making it to their camping site that night.

That sounds SO like something that I would do, especially considering that one of our fifteen-minute local letterboxes can easily take half the day, what with climbing trees, following interesting-looking ants, playing on a strange playground, eating a snack on the grass, drawing dragons in the nature journals, grubbing in the dirt, etc.

That's a productive day for a couple of homeschooling kids, but a letterboxing road trip is probably out of the question.

For now...

Butterfly Unit Study: Planting Milkweed

Interested in studying monarchs?

We are!

Unfortunately, we don't have, in our neighborhood, a good source for the milkweed that we'd need to raise monarch caterpillars (a tragedy, since monarchs migrate through Indiana), so we mustn't make the attempt. We CAN, however, buy baby milkweed plants and put them into a sunny spot in our garden so that we can raise monarchs NEXT year!

Also popular in our yard this summer:

books

books in boxes

more butterflies!!!

blackberries from the most neglected blackberry bramble in the state

painting the driveway, just because they can 

I'm really treasuring these outdoors at home times, because somehow this late summer has spiraled out of control. An adult friend who was homeschooled as a child said to me a few years ago, "Oh, summers are the worst! Not only do you have regular summer stuff, but you've also got all the camps and classes that you can only get in summer, and you've got all the stuff with your schooled friends who only have all this extra time to see you in the summer."

And this is true. We've had swim classes almost every day, playdates with schooled kids, pool meet-ups, park days that last all day, day camps, Parks and Rec hikes, plus all the regular stuff. And I think the over-abundance is showing. Syd, who asked to take an aerial silks class, acted up during it last night, of course right after our long talk about good sportsmanship on the way there. This morning she acted up during the diving class that she had also really wanted to take (fortunately, it was the last class of the season. I don't know what I'm going to do about those three additional sessions of aerial silks, except have more long, apparently unhelpful talks). Meanwhile, Will managed to finish her own swim class in tears (Can a child hate Sharks vs. Minnows more than Willow does? I doubt it). 

And so I think that answers my question to myself about how many outside activities my children should be engaged in. Willow does well with bi-monthly chess club, weekly horseback riding lessons, our weekly volunteer gig, and weekly ice skating classes in season, and she may try out junior roller derby when their season begins. I also may let her take another session of aerial silks after this one, if she wants to, and if I can negotiate logistics around Sydney, whom I do not think I'll permit to take another session right away, unless she has some sort of internal revelation about perfectionism versus long-term effort. Syd did well with weekly ballet classes, although she says she doesn't want to take them this coming semester, and she does well with our volunteer gig, and well enough with ice skating and horseback riding that I'll sign her up again if she wants to. 

Daily structured activities, however, and more than one structured activity a day, have got to go. Summer is over for our local schoolchildren next week, and I think that our own outside, structured activities will naturally settle back down then. We'll have more days revolving around our own homeschool structure and our own wide swaths of unstructured free time. 

Of course, Syd does have day camp all next week, the Humane Society camp that she's been looking forward to all summer. I really, really, REALLY hope that stays fun for her the whole week through.

And just in case it doesn't, maybe I'll give the camp Matt's cell number, not mine...

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Hooded Towels and Painted Rocks

a tutorial for kid-painted rocks

and a tutorial for Syd's new monogrammed hooded towel

It's just the thing for swim class and goofing around in the YMCA pool; it's easy for her to get around herself, it's easy to keep from falling off her as she walks, and it covers more of her body than a beach towel would, so that drying off is at least a possibility (what is with kids refusing to actually DRY themselves with a towel, instead huddling, soaking wet, underneath it while griping a lot?).

Unfortunately, the hooded towel is not quite a match for the morning diving lessons that Syd's been taking this week--what is also up with this late July being so COLD?!? The other, good parents have taken to bringing multiple towels and robes, etc., for their kids, but my kids, who know full well what they *ought* to pack for themselves for the pool... well, this morning Sydney brought a bath towel, still damp from yesterday because she left it crumpled in a heap in the car, and Willow didn't bring anything, because her crumpled towel had actually been underneath Syd's crumpled towel in the car, and thus was still dripping wet.

Air-drying at 70 degrees on an overcast morning is probably good for one's immune system, yes?

Painted Ladies

Our painted lady caterpillars molted, molted again and formed chrysalides, hung out for a few days, didn't seem to notice our ham-handed transfer of them to our butterfly barn, and then hatched!

We only managed to witness one butterfly actually in the process of emerging, but we somehow saw all the others immediately afterwards, wings all little and wrinkled and cramped. We watched their wings unwrinkle and spread out as blood filled them, watched them poop meconium all down the nice, white mesh of our bug barn (it's in the laundry queue now!), watched them gradually stop looking dazed and listless and sleepy and start looking fluttery and alert and quite interested in their sugar water treat.

And when that happened, they were ready to fly away:

Well, maybe they could stop for a visit, first:

While this experience wasn't quite as nice as with our wild-caught black swallowtail chrysalides (I know that the painted lady caterpillars truly didn't care that they were locked into a plastic cup with their nummies for the caterpillar portion of their little lives, it bothered ME. I wanted to give them leaves and stems and caterpillar enrichment activities, but I was also afraid of corrupting their sterile environment and killing them off somehow), it was nevertheless pretty great. This summer animal biology study has been a precious experience for all of us, and based on the great questions that Syd, in particular, has been asking, and the things that she's curious about (yep, I now own this whole set of children's sex-ed books, and the big events that have been happening to her body (Finally, a loose tooth! Finally, riding her pedal bicycle!), I think that the human biology study that we're going to dial down to when we finish up with all our animal friends is going to be pretty popular, too.

Will's going to be doing this study with us too, of course, but I've been trying to encourage her to self-direct more of her learning, and so it appears that along with math, and biology, and Latin, and Story of the World, and drawing, and the 50 states, we'll soon be starting a study on the history of video games.

How epic is that going to be, right?!?

From a Friend's Farm

When we have our own hobby farm/house on five acres one day, I want it, too, to have a creek within walking distance:

I might not want dwarf goats, but I'm not going to rule it out, either:

This is why:

Cute baby goats (+1). Milking their mamas twice a day (-1). Drinking fresh, free milk (+1). Keeping goats fed and watered and housed and clean (-many more than 1). Free lawn care and weed control (+1). Wethering the boy goat using that rubber band speculum thingy that my friend showed me (-1).

I've got some time to think of more plusses before we finally get our hobby farm one day, fortunately.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Dragons and Dragons!

This week's tutorials continued the theme of Willow's birthday week, with a tutorial for the cardboard shields that the kids painted and played with at her dragon-themed birthday party--

--and another tutorial for the giant organic flannel pillowcase that we all helped make for the giant pillow that she sleeps on every night (her grandmother made her a gorgeous, fuzzy and fluffy pillowcase for this pillow, correctly thinking that it would be just the thing for leaning against while reading, but fluffies get in one's mouth while sleeping):

I've got another luxurious swath of terrycloth that I also need to write up a project for, so I'm thinking some sort of hooded bath towel or capelet or robe for Syd. I do have a bit of that nice flannel left, though, and a girl who worked SO hard on her sister's dragon pillow without a single peep about what she might get for herself, so I'm thinking that whatever I make for Syd, it needs to have a decorated flannel piece appliqued onto the back of it.

A unicorn, perhaps?

Black Swallowtail Butterfly

A few weeks ago, a good friend gave the girls a few black swallowtail chrysalides (in our social circle, summers are made of homeschooling families offering, swapping, and bartering small critters to each other, as we all apparently conduct our own little Charlotte Mason-style studies). As often as we've raised tadpoles, and fostered kittens, and tried our hands at chickens and praying mantises, and kept the odd spider, lightening bug, and lizard under captive observation, these were our first butterflies.

Chrysalides are a good intro to butterflies, since all you have to do to keep them is pop them into the butterfly barn, then walk by them every now and then, thinking, "Nope... nope... nope... nope... BUTTERFLY!!!"

Fortunately, each chrysalis hatched open upon its own timetable, giving us plenty of time to identify, research the order of classification, and sketch each butterfly--


--and then set each one free:

We really like this good-sized butterfly barn.

 I'm hoping to use those last two photos for the girls' butterfly anatomy work, since I haven't found any good, Montessori-style three-part cards with scientific anatomical terms.

We're still working on butterfly anatomy, and the butterfly life cycle, and we've got some painted lady butterfly chrysalides in the butterfly barn right now, but here are the butterfly and caterpillar resources that we've been enjoying so far:



I'm also using several ideas from my Homeschool Unit Study: Butterflies pinboard and several videos from the free Discovery Education Streaming promotion over at

Homeschooling's #1 Way to Save

I'm going to be SUPER sad when that promotion ends, by the way.