We Went to Canada and Saw the Hopewell Rocks!

Here's what we've done on our trip so far:

Here's our first stop at Steamtown National Historic Site.

Here's our second stop at Lowell National Historical Park.

Here's our third stop at Acadia National Park

And now we're finally in Canada! Hopewell Rocks is a whopping 24 hours from our hometown, so you can see what the big deal is about getting there. We spent two days in this area, in and around the Fundy National Park, and it was worth every second.

Our motel didn't have air conditioning, though--I need you to know that. Most of the independent motels that we visited in Canada did not have air conditioning, which, maybe I don't understand because I've only lived in Arkansas and Texas and Indiana, where it gets hot in the summer. If your place doesn't usually get super hot in the summer, do you just not install air conditioning? But what about when it DOES get hot? Do you just... suffer?

Side note: there was a heat wave in the Fundy National Park area while we were there. It was HOT! I sure wish we'd had air conditioning in our motel...

The evening that we arrived in Alma, New Brunswick, after driving the five hours from Acadia National Park, the weather was perfect. We walked over to the local beach and the kids played with everyone else in the town while the tide rushed in, and then we walked back to our motel via the touristy convenience store, where I'd promised the children that, after 3+ days of eating solely our packed food, we could take advantage of our motel room's kitchenette and buy MICROWAVE MEALS!!! Nom!!!

And we had to buy more sandwich stuff... but this time it was CANADIAN sandwich stuff! And here begins my absolute obsession with All-Dressed Ridgies, THE best potato chip on the planet.

I miss you, All-Dressed Ridgies! Kisses!

I also need to tell you that the parking lot of this independent motel was a weird shape and had no lines, and every time we looked at it, cars were parked all over it in a completely different pattern, all of it utterly nonsensical and inconvenient. And sometimes blocking the exit. It was very weird. 

And, AND!!! The whole time that we were there, the town had NO POTABLE WATER!!!!!! The heat wave had caused an explosion of algae, the kind that makes you sick and kills your dog. So we didn't have any ice for our cooler, and had to shower with our eyes and mouth closed, but the hotel gave us bottled water every time I sent a kid for it, so it was cool.

I mean, not *cool,* because, you know, heat wave plus no air conditioning, but we got by.

The next day, we got up intending to spend most of the day in Fundy National Park, seeing all the sites and doing all the things required for the kids to become Fundy National Park XPlorers, but it was absolutely bucketing down. I took the kids out anyway, because I am stubborn, and we did a couple of things, even though I could barely even see to drive it was raining so hard, but when we'd made two stops and for their observations at each place both the kids had both written something like, "All I see is RAIN. I smell RAIN. I am touching RAIN because it is pouring. Here is my poem about RAIN: 'Rain, rain, rainity rain," I was all, like, "Ugh, FINE!" and we went back to the motel to just hang out. Play on screens. Read some more of Anne of Ingleside. 

But after a couple of hours of that, we could clearly hear that housekeeping was creeping ever closer to our room. The kids have an inordinate fear of housekeeping--they want the room cleaned by housekeeping, sure, but they don't want to actually SEE housekeeping IN their room, if that makes sense (spoiler alert: it doesn't), so I was able to talk them off their unmade beds and into the cars with the promise that the weather report said that the rain was supposed to be spotty in the afternoon (I was lying), and we might as well go take the hour's drive over to Hopewell Rocks and see what we could see.

Hopewell Rocks is the best way to visualize what having the highest tides in the world actually looks like. The rocks started off as a mountain range, and during an Ice Age ice worked its way into vertical fissures to crack the range into blocks. After the climate warmed, the ocean rose and the world's highest tides began to work on the rocks, wearing away their bottoms until they came to resemble the famous "flowerpot" formations that you see now. Every now and then, a rock will get so worn at the bottom that the entire thing will collapse, but the tides are busy working away to make new flowerpots, so it's okay.

We arrived about halfway to low tide, and the rain that was still absolutely pouring down actually petered out to a stop while we worked our way through the museum, so afterwards we were able to hike down to the mud flats below the rocks--

--and explore!

At high tide, the water would brush the bottom edges of the wide tops of these rocks. That's a HIGH tide!

The other fun part to walking the beach at low tide is the wide expanse of mud flats that are revealed:

The ground has a very gradual slope, and combined with very high tides, that's a lot of mud!

As we were walking along the crowded area, I noticed one little kiddo squat and begin to paddle his hands in a puddle of seawater. His mother immediately tugged him up and said--and I quote!--"You can't play in the mud because I didn't bring wet wipes!"

I didn't bring wet wipes, either, lol, but fortunately we're not very fastidious:

If you're not squatting down messing around in the mud, would you even notice all the little snails, and want to be there quietly to watch them make their tracks?

At one point Will wandered away and Syd and I didn't see her for ages. Finally, after passing through yet another vertical fissure between the rocks, I spotted this:

Friends, she is COMBING the kelp:

So then, of course, her sister had to run over and do it, too:

Here's your obligatory bilingual French signage. I originally was inspired to plan a Canada road trip after wondering where I could take the kids to reinforce their French studies without going all the way to France. I realized that Canada is quite doable, although I also wouldn't mind going to Tahiti! For the children's benefit, you know...

We had a golden (well, grey and gloomy, but you know what I mean) couple of hours exploring at the bottom of Hopewell Rocks, but eventually the wind picked back up--

--and there was definitely something suspicious going on with the sky--

 --and anyway, I had to pee so badly that it was not even a joke, so back up and up and up the staircases we went, and back up the hill we hiked, and while the kids browsed yet another gift shop (fun fact: I LOATHE gift shops. Just do not have the patience for them. And the kids, of course, loooooove them, want to go in every one and look at every single thing and pick up that thing and admire it and put it down and pick up something almost exactly just like it, from now until the end of time. And that's even with knowing that they didn't even bring any money to spend, so for sure nothing is going home with them!), I found sanctuary and learned how to correctly use the toilet:

 Just between us, I don't know why that first way wouldn't work just as well. Maybe they're afraid you'll lose your balance, or put too much strain on the toilet seat?

Fall Semester Homeschool Plans for the Seventh and Ninth Grades

And in the blink of an eye, they're in middle school and high school!

I wanted to make a fuss over these transitions, so big in the public and private school worlds, but life happened instead, and the kids barely even shrugged at the change from one imaginary number to another, so, like so many other things, I let it go. Better to save my energy for the momentous occasions that THEY find important, I suppose. Like birthday parties for dogs, and Family Movie Night.

We also school year-round, so one day--the first day of public schools in our hometown, and coincidentally the day that we began our morning at 3:00 am on top of a mountain--I simply said, "It's the first day of school at home. You're seventh- and ninth-graders now!" And then we made sandwiches and went hiking.

Since we school year-round, the idea of a "fall semester" is also false; unit studies come and go, and none are defined by semesters. But our current plans for the fall align as well as not to the semester scheme, so here's what we're doing for the fall semester!

English/Language Arts

Will is currently completing weekly reviews in the Analytical Grammar Review and Reinforcement book, and will do the third season of Analytical Grammar, finishing out that curriculum, afterwards. Syd is finishing up the last unit of the first season, then will do weekly reviews in Review and Reinforcement. I'll likely wait until after Christmas to start her in the second season.

I'm well capable of teaching writing on my own, but I finally decided, just today, that I simply didn't want to devote the time to creating my own writing lesson plans for high school, and so I bought the Beyond the Book Report curriculum, also from Analytical Grammar. I like the fact that the kids can use the literature that we already have planned, so it's efficient, and it's supposed to be pretty independent for the kids to do, so that will be a time-saver for me if it pans out. I'll let you know!

We use Wordly Wise for spelling/vocabulary, and I plan to continue it through all twelve volumes. Will is near the beginning of book nine right now, while Syd gets a month-long hiatus since she just finished up book four during our road trip (because yes, I'm the mean mom who made the kids do school on our long driving days!), and then will begin book 5.

French

The kids are beginning their second year of French lessons with their tutor, an amazing, patient, brilliant woman whom I could not love more for what she does. We use italki, and again, it's the best thing ever. Their tutor uses the Adosphere series with the kids, but while we were in Quebec a couple of weeks ago I found Renaud-Bray, a French-language bookstore, and bought several children's books in French. They'll likely begin to use those in their lessons this semester, and I'm already thinking about buying more. That's why I have a homeschool budget!

Girl Scouts

One of the many advantages to homeschooling is that I can treat Girl Scouts as a school subject worth spending part of most days on, and that's just the way the kids prefer, because they LOVE Girl Scouts. Will is finishing up her Silver Award Take Action Project in September, and both girls will be finishing up the last of their Outdoor Journey and the Take Action Project for the Media Journey in the same month--that's what it ends up looking like when one kid has her heart set on earning the Summit Award!

We also work on badges weekly, although this will be complicated a little when Will bridges to Senior Girl Scout in October and the kids are no longer at the same level. I treat badges as mini unit studies, and so it sure was a golden year when they were both Cadettes and I could streamline my lesson planning! Until then, September will be VERY Girl Scout-heavy, as Will works desperately to complete the last Cadette badges that she both deeply wants to earn before she bridges and put off until the very last minute...

History

Will actually studied AP European History last year, but the local high school that had agreed to host her for the AP exam reneged on their offer, and did it too late for us to find another host school--can you BELIEVE THAT?!? So frustrating and unfair and upsetting and disappointing. Anyway, by then I'd already become dissatisfied with the way that AP courses sacrifice depth for breadth, so I just cut our losses and decided that we'd simply redo the course this year. There's certainly enough material to cover to utilize two years! So Will is back again in Palmer's A History of Europe in the Modern World, and finding the review helpful and the chance to finally explore deeper to be satisfying.

Syd is taking a casual second pass through the same history, at least this fall, by simply listening to the relevant Story of the World chapters. I tried harder last year to keep her up with Will, as well as including activities at her level, and it ended up being probably too history-heavy for her, since she's not a kid who's super into history as a subject. So far this year she joins in on much of the enrichment, listens to the lectures and conversations and watches many of the videos, so I'm content to keep her study informal for now.

At the same time that we're studying European history, we're also studying, a little more casually, other aspects of Europe. The kids are doing Draw Europe as a daily memory work exercise, so that it will take them several months to complete the entire book. We also take time some weeks to study specific works of European music or art, and both kids are reading lots of European literature. I try to key these into the time period that we're studying in history that week--if I could find a music or art appreciation curriculum or literature study that fit, I'd use it, but until then I'm compiling it piecemeal.

Mathematics

I LOVE Math Mammoth for the early grades. Syd is just about to begin Math Mammoth 7, and that should take her through the school year to finish. Will is still slugging her way through Art of Problem Solving's Introduction to Algebra, which is an Honors Algebra curriculum for the ninth grade. I supplement it with Art of Problem Solving's Volume 1: The Basics, which is a math competition manual that I use for review and reinforcement. Will does best with LOTS of problems to work through!

Physical Education

Will needs to have at least two credits of this on her high school transcript, so I've planned fall PE out a little more than I do most times. I've combined several Girl Scout Outdoor badges at the Cadette and Senior levels into one Hiking, Backpacking, and Primitive Camping curriculum, and that's what we'll be finishing up this fall. 

I'm also likely going to use Will's horseback riding lessons and enrichment as another PE credit, but I need to think that one through some more.

Syd advanced in ballet this year, and is now taking seven hours' of classes weekly, and that will ramp up even more when Nutcracker season starts!

Science

We're still working through the CK-12 Biology flexbook, using it as a spine around which I've created an entire honors biology study. It's a rigorous curriculum, very experiment-heavy, and I expect it to take the full school year to complete.

Every now and then I add in another, shorter science or STEM study. We completed a very successful three-week study of the physics of roller coasters over the summer, for instance, and right now we're in the first week of a 5-6-week study of meteorology, focusing in particular on hurricanes. For our spine we're using Air Environment, which is volume 3 of the Civil Air Patrol's Aerospace Dimensions module. Our other key materials are the guidelines to earn a Girl Scout Hurricane Relief fun patch, and this AcuRite Home Weather Station which is the coolest thing ever and Will and I, in particular, are kind of obsessed with it. We work on these other science units concurrently with honors biology, because I believe in doing lots of science!

Service Learning

Volunteering has taken a backseat for a while, unfortunately. The kids and I are volunteers at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, but we have to wait for opportunities to appear in the schedule, and then hope that they fit into OUR schedule, which oftener and oftener it's seeming like they do not, grr. Over the summer, though, Will volunteered at the public library for a program with our local hands-on science museum, and the person whom she worked with encouraged her to apply as a volunteer there. She did, so we'll see if that's something that happens this fall.

Of course, a lot of Girl Scouts is volunteering, and both kids have been very busy with various Take Action Projects for various Journeys and Higher Awards. That will calm down a little when Will bridges... until Syd starts working on earning HER Silver Award, that is!

Miscellaneous

The kids still do lots of cool and weird things every week--work on Junior Ranger badges by mail, watch CNN10 every day, do handicrafts with me, etc. Will's going to try out Police Explorers this fall, and we're all three of us going to take some art classes together. I'm continuing the four-day school week that I started over the summer, with the goal of using that fifth day to take a day trip, do something different, or otherwise mix the week up. I've also changed the work plans that I give the kids every Monday from a simple list of tasks organized by day, to a three-part list: there's a section of tasks that must be done every day (this week, for example, it includes French practice, checking the hurricane reports and the weather from our little weather station, and making progress on Will's Silver Award TAP and the TAP for their Media Journey, both of which I am SO ready for them to be done with!); a section of tasks that simply must be complete and correct by the end of the school week (Syd's math packet, which she is going to be so sad about on Friday because I haven't seen her so much as pick it up yet, and their grammar, and their biology reading, etc.), and then a much smaller list of tasks that I want them to do on a specific day. I break down Will's AP European History work by day to make it less overwhelming for her, and we do the hands-on science activities on a specific day so that we're all together and have the supplies. But the kids have a lot more responsibility on them to organize their own work schedule this way, and there might be some sucky weekends before they get the hang of it.

So that's our semester... for now. As you can tell, it's constantly evolving, and will look different in October, when ice skating begins, and even more different in November, when Nutcracker rehearsals get really crazy, and will go all to hell in December, for the obvious reasons.

January will save us, though. We get a lot of schoolwork done in January!

We Went to Canada! (But First We Stopped at Acadia National Park)

Here's our first stop at Steamtown National Historic Site.

Here's our second stop at Lowell National Historical Park.

And our next stop on our great Canadian road trip is still not Canada, on account of Canada is really far away!

After spending the morning in Lowell, Massachusetts, it was all I could do to fight New England traffic all afternoon to get us up the coast of Maine to Acadia National Park, our nation's smallest national park. At first, the kids weren't super impressed with Acadia, as all we did was drive straight to the visitor's center so I could buy our park pass and the kids could pick up their Junior Ranger books (because of course!). We browsed the gift shop, watched the intro film, and the kids were about ready to start asking when we were going to our hotel and did it have a pool and wouldn't it be nice if we ever had air conditioning and at least it would have electricity to charge one's tablet, etc., etc., blah, blah, when I headed them off by instead driving them up to the top of a mountain:

It turns out that the top of Cadillac Mountain during magic hour is just the right place to be to recuperate from a long, tedious drive through New England:

It was breezy and pleasant, and with signage assuring us that we could leave the path if we took care to step only on the bedrock, my little mountain goats were off to explore:

You are also permitted to pick and eat wild blueberries, and so Syd found us some:

Such wide-open space felt great after all those hours cramped into our seats and having to sit still!

If you look carefully in the below photo, you can spot the elusive Wild Willow:

Sun-worshipping Sydney is easier to spy:

We did, eventually, get back down the mountain and over to our little motel in Bar Harbor, but it was only for a few hours. At 3:00 the next morning my alarm rang, and up I got my sleepy-eyed girls, bundled them back into the car, and drove them in the middle of the night back to Acadia National Park and back up to the top of Cadillac Mountain to wait for the sunrise:

It seemed like we sat forever in the darkness, but then in the space of minutes suddenly the sky was this--

--and then it was this:

And these little ones went from this--

--to this--

--and this (with the littler one still unconvinced):

The big one took her energy from the sun, and as soon as she could see to put one foot in front of the other she was off to mountain goat some more:

Syd was still deeply unimpressed by the splendor of the natural world, however:

Fortunately, I know something that will always impress our Syd, so after Will was mountain goated out for a while, I piled the kids back into the car, drove down that dang mountain again, and took them over to Sand Beach.

It was maybe 6:00 am by this time, and it showed it, with the beach all to ourselves and surrounded by fog:

Would this, finally, please my girl?

It would:

I was able to lie down on our picnic blanket and doze for a while, and still get in some lovely shots of the early-morning beach:

A couple of hours later, the kids declared themselves hungry enough to part from the beach, so we packed ourselves up, made sandwiches at the car, and then hit up some more tourist spots. Thunder Hole wasn't very thundery, although we did see the hole!

We hiked the Ocean Path to Otter Cliffs--

--and sat down for a nice rest and look around:





After quite a while, we spotted something diving in and out of the water between the cliffs below:

It was a genuine otter, hunting for its breakfast right there on Otter Cliffs!

The kids told this to the park ranger who was going over their Junior Ranger books, and had asked them if they'd seen anything interesting, but he thought that it was more likely a mink, because apparently actual otters are rarely spotted at Otter Cliffs? Will took to the research guides, but we could barely see a difference between a mink and an otter IN the research guides, much less on the cliffs.

Ah, well... we saw one or the other!

Look how close we are to Canada--we're starting to see French-language signage!

Thanks to our early wake-up, we were able to spend about ten hours at Acadia National Park and still leave around lunchtime. I drove us onward through Maine forests, listening to a radio show on the topic of the dwindling lobster industry and fretting about how I was about to run out of gas (we went at least 60 miles with no gas station and no warning that there would be no gas station--I had about 5 miles of gas left in my tank by the time we re-entered civilization, as if my stress level wasn't already high enough). Finally, we found a gas station, and just a few miles beyond that I was handing over our passports and a notarized letter from Matt assuring whoever read it that he knew what on earth I was doing with our children to a Canadian border patrol agent, and a minute and a half after that I was trying to both drive and figure out how to switch my car's dashboard and my GPS over from miles to kilometers.

Finally, we're in Canada! Next stop, the highest tides in the world!