Living Treasures Animal Park: The Weirest Petting Zoo Ever

In the old days, anyone with a mangy bear, a mostly tame raccoon, a donkey, and an exotic chicken could set up a zoo and charge a penny to see the animals. If the bear could dance, so much the better. Anybody with a camel could give camel rides, and anybody with a hyena could put it on display. The line between circus and zoo was thin and frail.



Then we started getting advanced and complicated notions about animal comfort and safety. Zoos expanded their exhibit spaces, started calling them "habitats," and invested in elaborate water features and native flora. Degreed scientists were put in charge of food and medicine, and words like "respect" and "natural" and "healthy" were bandied about.

The bad thing about the old-fashioned zoos was that you can't help thinking the animals were miserable. The bad thing about the new zoos is that you can't see the animals half the time. They're so safe and comfortable in their nice healthy habitats that you end up saying, "Look, Suzy! There's a tuft of the sloth's left elbow! See? See it? Way back there behind the fourth tree from the left!"

Last week we went to the Living Treasures Animal Park in Moraine, PA. Well, there were certainly a lot of things there that were living.

In the space of a few acres, the owners managed to display monkeys, bears (two kinds!), lions, tigers, kangaroos, timber wolves, lemurs, hyenas, camels, alligators, a musk ox, ostriches, as well as goats, ponies, llamas, and the occasional chicken. There was a camel ride. There was a horse-drawn carriage safari through a few more acres of free range pasture where Indian deer, ostriches, oxen, and other denizens flocked to the carriage as the driver enthusiastically hurled out scoops of pellets.



Pellets. When you come in to Living Treasures, you purchase a bucket of pellets for $3, and almost everything in the park eats this generic food item. Except for the bears and timber wolves, which eat dog food. And the monkeys and lemurs, which eat cheerios. Wait a minute! You can feed BEARS? Live, actual, adult bears? Yes. Standing behind the low wooden fence, you can poke pieces of dog food into a PVC pipe that slants down into the bear's area, behind a slightly sturdier fence. The bears lie there, waiting for the dog food to roll down, and then the slurp it up.



This is how all the animals are. They wait for the food to come, and then they eat it, and then they wait for more food. Until they are so completely sated and gorged that they lie down, bursting at the seams, and try to digest some of it. This kangaroo was so stuffed she is pushing out the joey inside her pouch. She can't even fit in one more carrot:



Besides the lions, bears, tigers, leopards, and a whole slew of other animals that would have really worried me if they hadn't been so fat and happy, there was the petting zoo. Including camels, llamas, goats, rabbits, and a ZEBRA:



A nice cute, fat, happy little baby zebra that was as tame as your mother. Plus camels you could hug:



And ride:



So, while I was shaken to the core by the close proximity with bears, and while I expect that my PETA neighbors would have a lot to say about the lack of habitat for each animal, the children loved it. It was an interesting place for another redheaded homeschooling convention.

Stone Skipping Tournament in Franklin, PA 2009

Is there, no kidding, a professional stone skipping tour? Yes.

You mean that grown-up people throw rocks at a river and count how many times the rock jumps and compete against each other to see who can skip the most times? Yes.

Does this alleged "pro tour" include several former Guinness World Record holders, including the current one? Yes.

Can kids play too? Yes.

Last Saturday, Benny dragged us to the International Stone Skipping Pro Tour (stops include Mackinac Island, MI and Franklin, PA and... well, that's it) down at the river side in nearby Franklin. Benny is a big fan of the Guinness Book of World Records. Franklin is hometown to Russ Byars, current world record holder (51 skips!) and a man who carries his own signable cardstock pictures, and isn't afraid to get his feet wet helping a kid with his technique. Benny brought a rock from our creek for him to sign, which he did. He told Benny that skipping stones is all about spin and speed. Sounds logical. Easier said than done, though! Benny's top score was 3.

ESPN was there. Those white little legs under the green shirt are Benny's, partially blocked by the guy with the boom mike. Maybe he was leaning in to catch the THWACK of the rock as it hit the water? Or would that be the gerplunk:



A crowd gathers to see a man dressed as Edwin Drake (who discovered oil in this region, 150 years ago) throw out the ceremonial first stone:

Here's Benny studying his rock carefully:



Here's running from the camera crew:

I didn't take enough pictures of the crowd, or the festival that surrounded it, nor did I take video of the goofy announcer entertaining us, or the pro competitors taunting each other, the enthusiastic cheers when someone made it over 30 skips, or the polite golf claps when someone "gerplunked."

One of the competitors was an anchorperson from CBS Sunday Morning. Between that camera crew and the ESPN people, it felt almost surreal. Franklin, PA is not accustomed to such scrutiny, of late.

This one had a good time:



This one is still practicing:



For more of my pictures, click here: the unlikely but entertaining Franklin PA Stone Skipping Tournament.

Here's a page of official pictures, to give you a better idea of the scene, the crowd, the pros, and the river madness in general: Pa Stone Skipping Tournament

Snow Tubing with Phi Bensa Zoe

We went up to visit our friends the Porterfields who had the shocking audacity to move North without us. So, this must have been Phi Bensa Zoe gym class? Indeed. Veronica had the awesome idea that we should drive up to Pennsylvania and go snow tubing at Liberty Mountain. There are not a lot of children for whom driving 3 hours only to drive another 2 hours to spend 2 hours tubing and then another 2 hours in the car would be worth it. For these children, it was TOTALLY worth it. Here they are waiting for the shuttle:



When we arrived at the tubing hill, my heart sank. It looked huge, fast, and we were immediately told that we couldn't go with our younger ones -- they had to go on their own. I was so proud and amazed that *all* the kids tried the hill, no one freaked out or hung back, and while Phillip declined to repeat his run after bravely giving it a shot, the rest of them went up and down the hill about a million times.



Benny, having looked over the situation, asked for "self responsibility," which I gave him with the understanding that he and Zoe (both now nine years old) would stick together. They did, and they did great having self responsibility. That alone was worth the effort of getting up there. But then there was Sadie Grace. She was a MANIAC. She loved tubing -- here's a video of one of her runs:



Did you hear her report that she said, "Woo hoo!" I can attest that she did. She said "Woo hoo!" Crammed into that tube with only her little head and her Dora boots sticking out, she woo-hooed her way down that big old hill. And Veronica and I had our moments too -- me going down face first and her circumspectly sitting upright in her tube, hair flying in the wind.



The children definitely experienced total happiness.



In Sadie's words, it was "super fun."

Homeschool Camp-In at the Virginia Air and Space Center

What a fantastic program. Seriously, if you get a chance to do this, do it. It was so much fun.

This was the program, for the 4th and 5th grade class that Benny was in:

1. Stomp rockets. They made stomp rockets with foam tubes, plastic eggs, paper and tape. Their teacher gave them freedom to do whatever they liked with the fins. Then they went out in the big part of the museum and did many many launches, trying to stomp their rockets, trying to get them into the pickle buckets that had been set up as "planets." Very cool! Here they are working on the rockets:



2. Mars Colony. The teacher talked about how a Mars Colony would need different parts to survive and support itself -- a science and research center, a recreation center, a food and shelter center, and... I can't remember the other one! But the kids were divided into teams and given boxes with different cool materials to create their section of the colony. Then they each gave a little presentation about their creations.

3. Robots. The kids got to build cool robots with Robotix parts, giant beautiful bins of all kinds of parts and motors. After they'd built their robots and figured out how to make them go forward, backward, and turn, they had robot wars where they played a type of soccer with the robots -- trying to push a little block off a table through a goal before their opponent did. This was FUN!

Practicing:



Robot war:



4. Space Freeze. The children went out of their classroom to see a cool demonstration with liquid nitrogen. Everyone loves liquid nitrogen! Here's Benny getting to freeze a carnation and then crush it up. Very enjoyable.



5. Rockets. After the demo, we went back to the classroom and built real actual model rockets with real actual parts. This was very exciting! There was feverish measuring, gluing, and decorating. Then we left the rockets there, to be fueled and launched in the morning.

6. Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream. At 10 pm, the longsuffering and wonderful ladies in charge of this event made ice cream in the cafe using liquid nitrogen in huge buckets of cream and sugar. The kids LOVED this. Here's a picture of the concoction being made:



Finally it was time to bed down for the night. I had brought the air mattress, at great cost to my convenience in dragging all our stuff in from the car. I had also remembered the air pump, amazingly enough. However, I did not remember to *charge* the lousy, pea-pickin' air pump, and so it immediately died when I turned it on. I did experience a moment of sadness, yea in the midst of this very exciting and valuable educational event, when I realized I would be sleeping on the cement floor of the museum, protected only by my great grandmother's quilt.

Fortunately, my socially adept son procured a pump for us by asking other people with air mattresses, and we were in business. Benny pumped it up himself, with his foot. The children were allowed to pick anywhere in the museum to sleep, including under airplane wings, next to space capsules, and all kinds of exotic locales. Benny chose to set up next to the Christmas tree that was decorating the museum. Nice and bright, all night. Okay, so here is our campsite:



Here was my view, looking up, when I woke up in the morning. This bank of windows probably had something to do with the fact that I was cold all night:



Apart from my anti-camping whining, the experience was quite wonderful. And the best part of all was the next morning when we launched the rockets. I have a video, but it's still on my camera. Here's the picture I took with my phone:



Thank you, huge and amazed thank you to Louise Schaeffler and the Virginia Air and Space Center for a program that went far above and beyond my expectations. There were families that had come from as far as Lynchburg, and it was totally worth it! A brilliant job by the teachers and organizers, and a wonderful experience for the children. Please do this again -- we will be back!

How to Avoid the Lines at Busch Gardens

To avoid waiting in a line, choose a day for your visit that meets these criteria:

1. A school day. First Friday after Labor Day for example.
2. A rainy day. A light sprinkle won't kill ya. You're getting wet on all those splashy rides anyway.

And don't forget the most important one:

3. A day in which a hurricane is bearing down on the park like an angry Assyrian and all his gleaming cohorts.

Sure, everyone else is headed to the grocery store to stock up on bottled water and food you don't have to keep cold. They're checking their generators and weather.com, speculating on whether tropical storm means losing power for eight minutes or eight hours. But you don't *care* about these things. You only care about getting straight onto any ride you decide to try, and riding as long as you want without getting off, because there is *no one in the park but you.* You may now cackle loudly, twirl your mustaches, and if you really want to, ball your fists and raise them to the sky in triumph. I mean, you probably have batteries somewhere, right? You have children after all. You can raid their toys.

There are three big roller coasters at Busch Gardens that Benny can ride: Big Bad Wolf, Apollo Chariot, and Loch Ness Monster. He rode none of them less than 4 times. Apollo Chariot he rode four times in a row without getting off. On Escape from Pompeii, we sat there debating whether we wanted to ride a fourth time or whether we were done. What a divine, excellent, blissful experience. Benny and Dad in the front row on the Big Bad Wolf:





Benny's analysis of the roller coasters:

Benny: "I like these non-fiction rides."
Me: "Non-fiction?"
Benny: "Yes, you know, the Walt Disney World rides are fiction and these are non-fiction."

Very astute, I think. I prefer the fictional ones, but that's predictable.

Sadie and I entertained ourselves while Benny and Dad were riding the big dangerous rides:







Here's Benny on the chair swing:



Here's Sadie on the chair swing junior:



Yes, the junior version was much less thrilling, but then again, someone had spectacularly hurled in a giant, radiating arc on the big one just before we were ready to get on it, so I decided... you know... to skip it.

Here's the ride that I puked on when I was a little kid at Boblo Island:



That's an actual picture of the actual ride -- the park is closed now but you can find anything on the internet, right? I puked in one of those red-flowered bushes, back in the 70s. Here's the Busch Gardens version of the pirate/viking ship, called the Battering Ram:



Dan and Benny were riding a 42" and up ride in the DaVinci area, and Sadie asked earnestly to ride the battering ram again, so I went on it with her. Fortunately she elected to sit in the middle and there were no eruptions. It was a little awful. Sadie told Dan, when they were riding it together, sitting at the rear seat, that the ride made her feel homesick. She also refers to it now, looking back, as having given her a homesick feeling -- I guess that's how she identifies the sinking stomach feeling you get. She loved that ride -- it was her favorite.

Here are the kids on some of the other DaVinci themed rides:





We had a solid four hours of happy sunny weather. The wind picked up while we were having lunch, and then the rain started misting down after 2:00. It got progressively stronger, and we retreated to the train and the Skyride... here we are in one of these little chairlifty buckets that go sailing around the park way up high on ropes. That lump in Sadie's hand is cotton candy made of garbanzo beans and agave nectar, with no artificial colors and flavors *WINK*:



The Skyride is a VERY cool way to see and understand the roller coasters from a different perspective. It even goes through the loops and very close to the speeding cars at one point.

By five it was too rainy to be cheery. Here's Ireland, empty, in the rain:



We went home happy, tired, having roller coastered the children into a state of complete exhaustion:





As for the "tropical storm," it was practically nothing. Hanna Shmanna Bobanna. A bit of wind, a bit of rain, the lights flickered once, and it was over. We didn't miss much by not frantically preparing on Friday. I'm glad we decided to live on the wild side and ride roller coasters all day.

One down side: While Dan was upside down over the lake, Dan's wallet plummeted to its death. While going past Loch Ness Monster in the Skyride bucket, we peered over and searched all the scaffolding -- we couldn't see it, so I'm pretty sure it's in the Loch. Of course, being Dan, he's already replaced all his cards and identifications. Without that one glitch it would have been a perfect day. A wet, heart-racing, laughing, rushing, upside down day.

Quest for the Falls

The little bubbly creek at the bottom of our valley winds on down through the woods, joining up with other creeks, getting wider, deeper, and eventually meets the Allegheny River, seven miles from here. When I was a kid, my Nana and I used to walk down about halfway, to a beautiful waterfall. This waterfall is accessible via the creek and also via logging trail. My friend Lori and I went there, with Nana, multiple times every summer. With a deep, curving channel leading up to the falls, a drippy cave behind the waterfall itself, and a huge flat collection basin like a giant wading pool, it's a natural waterpark. We would hike down the creek, hopping rocks and dipping into any swimmable spots, and then walk back out the logging trail which you could reach by cutting up the side of the hill.

A few years ago, Lori and I and all of our little redheaded children (Sadie in utero) hiked down that logging trail to where we thought the falls must be. We looked up and down and all around, ranging over what we thought was a vast stretch of creek and valley, and could not find the falls anywhere. A lot had changed in the 20 years or so since we had been down there. We gave up. That year Sadie was born and my mother died, and we didn't come back here to Pennsylvania for a while. When we did come back, I had little Sadie, and didn't think about trying to make the hike.

This year, we have been hanging out with our neighbors who have little children. They are also homeschoolers -- surprise! The other day we were watching the kids play and she asked me if I knew where there was a waterfall down the valley. As I was recounting my trip with Lori to look for the falls, it occurred to me that Sadie could stay with Ahno while Benny and I walked down to the falls the old fashioned way -- down the creek. Then there would be no question about which branch of the logging trail to take, or when to cut down to the water, or anything like that.

So today, we went out in search of the falls.

After two hours of hiking down the valley, we found them:



Benny was so excited, he was exploding out the top of his little red head. All the way down, he had been identifying smaller, less glamorous waterfalls and saying, "Is that it? Is that the falls?" And I would say, "Well, I don't know, maybe, maybe an earthquake came and changed up the falls and now I don't recognize them." So he had no idea how big it was actually going to be. He was very surprised.

Here we are just starting out:



Little old red bridge at the bottom of our valley. This was our old swimming hole when I was a kid. A local farmer would dredge it out yearly and move some of the huge rocks, so you could actually swim and the water was over my head in spots.

Benny on the way down the creek:



An old stone foundation:



My Nana and I used to spend hours sitting here talking on this "look-out" spot, high above the creek. The ridge is kind of bounded by one giant root of the tree, like a railing. Now it's all overgrown and the tree has been cut down. She is someone who can talk to a child in a way that makes the child feel like a real person.



Here's Benny getting his first look at the falls. I let him go on ahead a little bit when I knew we were almost there, so he could "discover" it. He was whooping and hollering like he'd been stung by a rhino. It made a big impact.



For some reason I can't embed the videos, but if you go here, you can see Benny narrating his sliding out from under the falls, and if you go here, you can see the falls from on top.

So, after we were done goofing around at the falls, we headed up the hill to find the logging trail. After two hours of rock hopping Benny was still full of energy and leaping and running ahead of me as I clambered up. We got to the trail and Benny took off, while I marked the way at each fork with a lavender ribbon so we can find our way again coming in via the trail. We had been hiking out for about ten minutes when Leroy started looking weird and sniffing at something up the hill. I stopped, looked up, and I could see, silhouetted against the sunlight, the shape of a bear's head. Two big round ears, big round heead, a bear. Looking at me. My heart stood still. In that moment, I thought, no, it's too still, it's a rock formation, but it's so symmetrical! I actually thought for a second that someone had put a bear statue out in the woods. That was just the beginning of my irrational reaction. As I watched, paralyzed, the bear turned its head slowly around to look at something else and I saw its nose, unmistakable, real.

Let me digress for a moment and tell you that when I was very small, I mean very very small, I read an article in Reader's Digest about a man who had been attacked by two bears. The account was very graphic and included a description of him being disastrously mauled, having to pretend to be dead as he bled out like a fountain, and then crawling away, clasping his scalp to the top of his head to keep it on. Ever since I read that, at the wise, rational age of four or something, I have been super-freaked about bears. When I went walking in the woods by myself as a kid, I used to carry a big stirring spoon and a sauce pot and bang them at intervals to ward off the herds of slavering bears with their red-rimmed eyes, their trumpeting, lip-quivering yells, and their knife-like claws. When I started taking walks with the kids as an adult, bears remained in the forefront of my mind.

Now, here was a bear. Probably twenty feet up the hill from me. Yes, I should have let Benny look at it. Yes, I should have taken a picture. How I wish I had taken a picture, to silence my sarcastic husband who keeps chortling about "pickanick baskets." But I did not take a picture. I walked briskly forward, grabbed Benny by the hand, whistled briskly for Leroy, and we marched along the path. "Sing," I said to Benny. "Loudly." Benny, who spends much of his time being told *not* to sing, was happy to oblige. When I felt that we had briskly walked far enough, I told Benny, "RUN." And we ran as far as I could run. Then we walked until I could run. Then we ran. Like that, back to the van. What had taken us two hours by creek, hopping rocks and chatting, took us less than 30 minutes by logging trail, running like there was a bear snapping at our heels.

The bear was probably fine. Benny was never worried. When he finally was convinced that I wasn't kidding, he pleaded to be allowed to go back and LOOK AT IT. Madness. When we got back to the van, I realized I had been inhaling one long inhale ever since I saw the thing. I had so much adrenaline in my blood I probably could have torn it limb from limb, given the need. But we made it back to the van. We marked the trail for future use. And when Dan gets here next week, HE can take us back to the falls. I will be carrying my sauce pot and spoon, thank you. And Benny will be singing.

Tractor Pull and Opening Ceremonies

Today we went to the Venango County Fair to see our friends who do 4H here. This is the fair where I showed my horse, way way back before the dawn of time when I was a kid in 4H here in rural PA. Today we saw the 4H dog show, the West Texas Rattlesnake Show, a magic show, and the Pedal Tractor Pull. The dog show was amusing, the snake show interested Benny, the magic show delighted Sadie, and the Pedal Tractor Pull was like nothing I've ever seen.

I will tell you right now that I forgot all cameras and did not document this at all. I could be making it up. You will never know.

Interspersed throughout the more serious and competitive fair events are "Barnyard Olympics" events which include pie-eating, skillet-throwing, milk-drinking, and other contests. The pedal tractor pull is one such event, in which children attempt to pull weighted sledges across an arena strewn with sawdust, dirt, and the detritus of a week of animal showing, using a toy pedal tractor. If you google-image-search "pedal tractor pull" you will see pictures of children pulling weights across pavement, tile, cement, even boards laid across the ground. Not in Venango County. Here you pedal over bump and lumps, pig leavings and cow footprints, and you make the best of it. While other pedal tractor pulls involve liability waivers, rules, and registration, the Venango County one involves only telling them you want to pull, getting your name on hand-written list before the thing starts, and then pedalling like a maniac. There is one rule: If your feet touch the ground, you're out.

So. First up are the three year olds. None of them manage to move the sledge at all. Next, the four year olds completely fail to move the sledge, including Sadie, who was the only child in any age division to do the pull in a frilly dress. How I wish I had a picture. Curse this messy mind! The five year olds couldn't move the sledge. The six year olds tried valiantly -- they really tried and a few of them moved it a few feet. A strategy began to emerge -- it wasn't about pedalling hard but pedalling and then scooting, pedalling, scooting, pedalling, scooting, etc. Scooting was critical. I don't mean scooting with your feet on the floor, because that's against the rules, but scooting where you're not braced against anything, but you're just scootching, scooting, hootching it along by throwing your weight forward. And willing it to go.

So I said to Benny, Son, you've got to scoot that tractor along. If you can't pedal, then scoot.

When it was time for the eight year olds, several kids managed to move it several feet along. Benny, during all this time, was alternating between "warming up" by running around wildly all over the place, and trying to MC the show by shouting at the audience things like, "He's done it! Let's give that kid a great big round of applause!" about random contestants. I was beginning to think that between his hysterical behavior and his unfamiliarity with the whole tractor situation, we'd be lucky if he managed to move it at all.

Finally the first true contender stomped into the arena. We'll call her Susie. Now, I'm not going to sit here and speak ill of a child, but this girl had not missed any breakfasts, if you catch me. I'm sure she was solid muscle, spending her mornings wrestling steers and her evenings felling trees with her bare hands, but she had fifty pounds on Benny, easy. She got on that tractor and drove it like a mule train right down the course to the end of the measuring tape. The crowd went wild.

Then a couple more skinny kids mounted up and attempted to move the thing, to no avail. Faces were made, arteries were popped, howls were howled but the sledge was too heavy.

Then another child of ponderous size, apparently a cousin or sparring partner of Susie, took his seat. He rode valiantly, but only got the thing about two thirds of the way down before he stalled out. He seemed horrified at having been beaten by a girl, especially a girl of his immediate acquaintance, but really I think that under the circumstances it hardly counts, you know? The definition of girl being at this point inarguably broad.

Benny's turn. Ahno and I, sitting in the bleachers, prepared to cheer and then console. Because obviously, none of the scrawnier variety of child had scored well at all. He took his spot on the tractor, started to pedal, and LO AND BEHOLD, the thing started moving. AND MOVED QUITE FAR.

Oh the straining at the pedals. Oh the frantic and almost seizure-like scooting. Oh the grim intensity in the face. I'm telling you, it cannot be described. Here was a skinny kid, a skinny CITY kid, no less, powering that pedal tractor along like the big beefy kids had done. We screamed ourselves hoarse. Ahno kept shouting, "Benny, you're DOING IT!" I think I might have ululated. It was an exciting time! As he got closer to the end of the course, everyone in the place was shouting him on. At one point, he looked at me across the arena, a bit desperately. I think he was getting tired. Between every massive push at the pedals he had to rock that thing forward -- an exercise of will and aerobic scooting. Then he put his feet down to push and it was all over.

At the end of the experience, when the kids were eating ice cream, fondling their "participant" ribbons, and all tired out, we reflected on the sight of Benny doing what I had felt sure was impossible. I was reminded that Benny is always surprising me. Whatever you expect, he is bound to do something completely different. While often frustrating and mystifying, Benny has a deep core of awesomeness that is undeniable. It comes out at the strangest times. Today was one of those times, when I look at my son and think, "Who is he?" But in a good way. It was very moving.

I watched the opening ceremonies tonight. The display was incredibly impressive. The technology, the originality of ideas, the art, were all so interesting. I loved the picture of the mountains and sea, and how it developed throughout the ceremony. I loved the globe with the people running around it. But the recurring sight of all of those human beings moving in perfect unison, so practiced, so precise, was both exquisitely beautiful and very hard to watch. Watching other opening and closing ceremonies, I have cried. Tonight, I was not feeling that way. It was almost scary to me, in a very base, primal place in my brain, to see the people behaving that way, the thousands of people. I get upset when I'm in a big crowd all clapping politely. That's the way I felt watching those dancers tonight. Alarmed by the sameness of them all. Maybe I will never see anything like that again -- so synchronous and planned and perfectly executed. I'm almost relieved. It's not something I want to see. The nervousness I felt started with the drumming at the beginning and went on through the parade of athletes past those cheerleaders, all in lines, moving together.

I don't know enough about China to say this, and maybe I'm completely wrong, but I don't think such a display would have been possible in the United States, and maybe that's not a bad thing.

Homeschool Open House at Mariner's Museum

On May 15th, the Mariner's Museum will open its doors to homeschoolers with amazing programs and learning opportunities for adults and children alike.

Check out these programs:

Discover the Possibilities: Complementing Your Education @ The Mariners’ Museum: Learn how your family can utilize the artifacts, galleries, programs, and other resources at The Mariners’ Museum to complement your students’ historical and scientific studies. These 20-minute presentations are limited to 40 adults per session.

Pirates! The Love & Lore: This sample program introduces young students to the lives and adventures of pirates. Typical pirate weapons and examples of the money in use during that time are presented, as well as slides of the pirates and their signature flags. This program is offered every hour, on the half-hour from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and is limited to 30 students each. Appropriate for K-4th graders.

Fact or Fiction? Hollywood’s Take on Historical Piracy: Educators examine the ways in which film producers interpret piracy, as well as compare and contrast their inaccuracies to the lives of historical pirates. Older students will examine some of the reasons for piracy and the myths surrounding their lives. This sample program is offered every hour, on the half-hour from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and is limited to 30 students per program. Appropriate for 5th-12th graders.

Are these awesome offerings or what? I hope all my little pirates from my pirate class are going to be able to make it. Bless their little deck-swabbing hearts. The Mariner's Museum has shown remarkable interest and commitment to developing value for the homeschooling community, in providing history enrichment, science enrichment, and of course pirate lore! Here's just one example of the museum going an extra mile to facilitate curriculum integration:

The Age of Exploration exhibit comes with a complete online curriculum guide. There's a vocab list, biographies of important players, and check out this activity list with lesson plans and student guides:

Activity One: Create a Compassteachers students
Activity Two: Create an Astrolabe teachers students
Activity Three: Create a Quadrantteachers students
Activity Four: Identify Navigational Instruments teachers students
Activity Five: Identify the Parts of a Shipteachers students
Activity Six: What Would You Take to Sea? teachers students
Activity Seven: Biography Crossword Puzzle teachers students
Activity Eight: Vocabulary Word Searchteachers students
Activity Nine: Create a Globe teachers students
Activity Ten: Latitude and Longitudeteachers students
Activity Eleven: Starving Sailors teachers students
Activity Twelve: Sores, Scabs, and Scurvy teachers students

This is insane! Who does this kind of thing!? I'm just blown away by the materials available to make connections between the schoolwork the child is doing and the exhibits at the museum. Amazing, intelligent, thoughtful work. Thank you so much, Mariner's Museum, and we'll see you at the homeschool open house!

Sadie and Benny Protest the War

Move On hosted almost 900 "New Priorities" anti-war demonstrations around the country today. One of them was right down the street from my house. As we were driving home from our science fair prep class and International Homeschool Fun Bee at Ben and Shira's house, we noticed this protest going on, with people holding up signs that proclaimed, "Honk if you love peace" and other more extreme sentiments.

Well of course I was joyfully honking away, and went around the block unnecessarily so the kids could get a good look. I was rattling off a bunch of stuff about how in this country we can disagree with the government, and we can express our thoughts publicly, and it is a good thing when you see people protesting peacefully. As I was driving away trying to fit in all my lessonating, I realized I could just park, unload the groceries and walk back. Let them get a good look at it and have their first experiences holding up signs.

So that's what we did.

Here's Benny with his sign:

And Sadie with hers:

Just warms the little red cockles of my heart. Heh heh. Here's a video I took with my phone. It's a bit blurry but you can see that Sadie is using her protest sign to demonstrate that M is W upside down. See, it was educational!



There were actually a lot of children participating, and we ran into some friends of course. Here's Benny with Nicholas:

With people shouting from all four corners of the intersection and lots of honks from cars going by, it was intense for the kids, and for the dog. :) We left after probably 30 minutes, and I was glad we had a good experience. It's not the safest thing to do, protesting the war in this military town. I have to admit it was a little nerve-wracking. A very different feeling from when I was in college, that's for sure. However, I think it was a good experience for the children, and as long as it was within walking distance from my house, how could I pass it up?

Other pictures on the mobile blog and one other video on the YouTube channel, if you just haven't had enough political action for one day.