European History & Culture Sampler: An Epic Homeschool Field Trip

After talking about it for several years, last fall we finally followed through on one of our parenting goals: international travel with Caitlyn at an age when she’d be old enough to understand and appreciate what she would see and experience but young enough that she’s not too cool to hang around with her parents.   It’s a big world out there (and we only managed to see a small portion of it this time) and getting to see some of it firsthand is good for building empathy, experiencing diversity, and appreciating your own privileges.  It’s harder to “other” people …

Recent Field Trip Revue

A few years ago, I stopped keeping up with the blog, especially when it came to writing up all the various homeschool outings. Now that I’m trying to resume writing on a more regular basis, the backlog of happenings is so enormous it’s tempting to say never mind. But here’s a tossed salad of recent outings in an attempt to get back on ye olde bloggin’ horse. (Yes, metaphor mixing is a specialty around here.) Our triad of science students followed up a lesson on bacteria, fungus and the role of both in the Great Cycle of Resources with a …

May’s report

It’s official: individual detailed reports of what I’ve been doing are completely beyond my capacity at the moment. So, here’s the overview of what we did in May: We joined some friends at LUCO‘s Chamber Music Cabaret. There was a piccolo trio, and Caitlyn got pulled from the audience to read raffle ticket winning numbers. Caitlyn and I joined some of our homeschool friends for another field trip to a farm. This time we drove across the mountains to Little Wing Farm where we spent the day touring the orchards and generally traipsing around. Caitlyn has been having a digression …

Field Trip: Snow at Mt. Rainier

Caitlyn loves snow. That’s a horribly brief and to the point sentence that doesn’t convey the degree to which Caitlyn loves snow. Of course, we live in a place that gets only occasional snow. When it snows here, it’s pretty and it’s fun, (usually) not enough to seriously snarl things up, although to an eight year old, I think the snarling is part of the fun. I’ve explained how more snow in Seattle wouldn’t be a good thing, but I guess I’ve not been terribly convincing. I’ve made some effort to explain how months of snow might not be fun, …

Field Trip: Rockridge Orchards

Farmer Wade of Rockridge Orchards has been a fixture at the Columbia City Farmers’ Market ever since we started being market regulars; he likes to say he’s known Caitlyn since before she was born (which could be true since he appears at other markets in Seattle which we might have visited prior to Caitlyn’s arrival – I don’t remember). Caitlyn calls him “my favorite farmer”. Back before the economy declined and budgets were cut indiscriminately, there was a King County Harvest Festival. We meant to visit other farms, but we spent the whole day at Rockridge. Caitlyn was about 2. …

Summer Journal: Wandering in Canada

Back in July, we took a two week road trip to break in Caitlyn’s passport. I mean, Canada is right there. How is it that we hadn’t gone yet??? So we raided the library, mixed up some gorp/trail mix, loaded the car and embarked on a trip that turned out to be mostly about boats, trees, and swimming in everything possible. Here are a few highlights: Caitlyn sights Canada. We enjoyed an afternoon tea at Butchart Gardens. Food and setting were lovely. I felt underdressed (but then anything short of Lady Grantham would have left me feeling underdressed). Our smallest …