Cross country skiing

I’ve only been cross country skiing one other time before, about 12-15 years ago.  Yeah … time goes by fast.

I love the snow.  As much or maybe more than my kids.  In Chile, I didn’t grow up with snow.  We’d go to the volcano once in a while and play, and went skiing a handful of times.  But it was like it is now.  Go up there for a few hours when the day was nice, and leave the snow behind and come back.

I’d never driven in the snow or icy roads, and don’t really want to either.  But oh… what I would give to live in a place where it’d snow every year.  A place where I knew I’d wake up most winter mornings to a white carpet on the ground and covering the trees.  My dream, really.  OK I know I can just move back East, but that’s a big step.  Even if I move to the other Portland, still!  It’s a big move.  Not sure I’m ready for that. Maybe some day.  But for now, I’ll leave my snowy dreams just be that.

But how beautiful it would be a place where this is what I see from the window in my house.  Every window I’d want!

As long as I didn’t have to drive anywhere, or be in a place where icy storms where a norm.  I want it to be a safe place (this is where the never have lived in a place where it snows scares me, right?)  I guess I’d just want us to be safely indoors, while the outside is just whitely beautiful.  Aaaahhhh…  for what I hear (from Mark mostly), my dream is very nice in just my dream.  Whitely beautiful is not as sweet as I always think.  But that’s what dreams are for, right?  (If I knew and took in consideration all the harsh and logistics details, I wouldn’t be dreaming it…)

So to help my little dream, we went to play in the snow with some friends.

They know what they are doing, so they helped us get started and we tried our hardest to stay on our feet!

Siena and Lucas did great.  They learned it quick and for being the first time on cross country skis, I’d say they were awesome  (OK, I know I’m their mom, but really! They were.)

There was so much snow!

And it’s a beautiful, amazing place.

(He was going pretty fast… it’s not just his face.  In the picture you can’t really see the speed.)

We all agreed that we had fun and would love to go back cross country skiing.

I didn’t do too bad either, for being my second time.

And it is much more fun to go with friends… for sure!

Native Americans Unit: Plateau + Great Basin

After the California Tribes, we went east a little and studied the Plateau and Great Basin Tribes.   We mostly focused in the Nez Perce and Shoshone tribes.

This book about the Plateau Indians (First Nations of North America), as with all the other regions we’ve studied, is the one we read from cover to cover and have enjoyed all the information they share there.  It has this map in the front of each book in the series, and it’s a clear map, and great reminder of what we are studying.

It also shows very visually how the US gained the territories.  I like it when it’s clear and so visual like this map.  I’m a visual learner.

We read about Sacagawea, Lewis and Clark, Chief Joseph and lots more.  But our first project was about the Nez Perce tribe and their known Apaloosas horses, so we made this decoration that was ready to use from the History Pockets books about Native Americans.

With little math included. 

We also studied and devoted quite a few hours to Chief Joseph and his life.

After we were done with the Nez Perce Indians, I found this great resources online, the Nez Perce National Historic Trail by the Forest Service.  I emailed them to ask them for any information they had to share besides what I found online from their website and I communicated with one of their staff in few emails over a day or two.  Two days later, we got this large package full, full! of great coloring books, postcards, maps, and great maps!

Now we are thinking maybe we want to go see parts of the trail when we head to Idaho this summer.  Wouldn’t it be fun?

Then we found this Nez Perce War Bonnet instructions, from another book that I can’t remember right now… (we returned all these books back to the library already.)

I found this great resource online and used it myself to learn more about the tribes of this cultural region. With great photos too!

We made a Shoshone leather pouch (more on this on a later post) and studied about Sacagawea too.

We are enjoying this book called Draw Write Now about Native Americans.

As with all the tribes and cultural regions we’ve been studying, we are keeping track of words and things we want to remember later, in a small book like dictionary, also from that History Pockets book, but we are adding a lot more information than what it was meant to be.  But it’s been a great activity for us.

We are also making a chart with the same information for each tribe we study.  As a review at the end of the block, and fun to look back at.

We don’t have masks from this area, but Siena and Lucas have been wanting to do some coloring instead.

And because we love stories, we read as many native american stories as we can find.  About creation and told by the different tribes, about Coyote, about the Sky and the Earth.  All of them are fun to read about.

Other books we read for this block of study:

• Sacajawea of the Shonshone.
• Kaya Shows the Way.
• Sacagawea.
• Sacagawea.
• Sacajawea of the Shoshone by by Natasha Yim.
• The Nez Perce.
• The Nez Perce.
• Chief Joseph : Nez Perce Peacekeeper.
• Chief Joseph : The Voice for Peace.
• The Nez Perce.
• Beaver Steals Fire.
• Meet Kaya and others in the same collection.
• Welcome to Kaya’s World 1764.
• Great Basin Indians (First Nations of North America.)
• Plateau Indians (First Nations of North America.) I love the books in this series.  I’m thinking maybe we’ll get them if we find them on sale or used ones.  They are so good, clear, short, with great photos, short enough to be able to read in few sittings but with enough fun details.  We all liked these books.
• The Shoshone (True Books, American Indians) by Christin Ditchfield.
• The Shoshone (First Americans series) by Sarah DeCapua.
• Tribal Fires : Contemporary Native American Music.

At the end of the book we like to read, as with all the other books from that series we’ve seen, comes a map of where the Tribes live today.  It’s a great topic of conversation for us.  Every time, we talk more about the history of the country, the reasons of why the Native Americans were forced to leave their land for smaller areas, and how it feels and must have felt to them one hundred, two hundred years ago, and what it means today.

I have my opinion. A completely outsider, and new to this topic, one.  Lucas and Siena are creating and developing their thoughts and their opinions about what we are studying, and about life in general.  I try to bring up this topic of conversation with other friends when we can, so we can all hear different points of view, different ideas.

These units about Native Americans, have brought so much learning and so much fun to all of us, in my family.  It’s exciting.

We’ve completed another region, The Plateau and Great Basin Native American Tribes.  And we’ve learned so much.  I love it when the kids say “Can we keep studying this?”

A year after our first swim meet and I see more coming

Remember this post I did last March? Well? It’s been a year since we first started our visits to the pool on very early mornings on a weekend.  Well, I should say, we’ve been at the pool many times, and we’ve gotten up early enough times, but it’s the watching of swimming that makes the difference.  Putting all of this together.

A year ago, when we first came back from our trip to India, Siena decided to participate in the homeschool non-competitive swim team.  She wasn’t sure about her decision.  It was new, and she didn’t know anybody and she wasn’t sure.  Something new.

The first words that came out of her mouth, as we introduced ourselves to the coach was “I don’t know if I should be here, because I can’t swim butterfly…” He said: “that’s why you are here then, you’ll be fine.”

And yes, she’d been fine.  She’s been fine even from that first day.  Today, a year later, not only she’s fine, but Siena’s favorite stroke is, you guessed it, butterfly.  And this 20- something teacher, coach has been awesome.  He’s patient, nice, funny, into what he’s doing, so dedicated really and very supportive of the kids.  All the kids really like him, and the parents do too.

And for us, he’s been the reason why Siena has learned so much in swimming, all the strokes, including butterfly. He is the reason why Siena went to the first meet, even though she was nervous and wasn’t sure about the competition.  He is the reason why now, we don’t only do these classes, but are switching to a competitive swim team, practicing 3 times a week instead of one, with 3 1/2 more hours of swimming. He is the reason, Siena felt that she could do this move and be part of this bigger team, because he’s there too.  We are all excited to what’s to come next.

But this past weekend, we celebrated Siena’s fourth swim meet.

As always, she’s smiling all the time.  I don’t know if she’s smiling also while she swims, and she’s underwater.  But she is when she’s in line waiting.  She finishes her races and she’s smiling.  She looks up at us in the bleachers and she’s smiling. She’s talking to her coach and friends, and she’s smiling.

Photo by Lucas

Swimming is still her thing and we are getting started into something new, and we are all excited for her.  We feel her excitement every time she walks into that pool.  She’s always ready for her practice, and ready to do her best, every single day.

When she asks us not to skip any of her four (yes four!) practices. When she comes down from her room in the morning, with her swim bag ready for the evening practice.  When she comes back home from playdates so she can make it on time, almost every day of the week, we know, we truly know this is her thing.  For now at least.  And it’s fun.

We are there with her and for her.  Cheering, whistling and clapping, for her, for her friends and all the other kids that also got up early that morning giving their best after hours of practice.  Maybe it’s their first meet, maybe their third or fourth or tenth.  It doesn’t matter. We are all there to celebrate our kids and see them swim.

Sometimes it just gets too hot and we need a break and go outside for few minutes.  But it’s not long.  We are ready for more watching.  Lucas is always ready.  He takes things to do while we are in Siena’s practices and for the meets.  But he always ends up watching her and learning from her.

He’s excited he’s learned to swim across the pool, too.  He’s excited he’s learning to turn by watching his sister.  He has a swim cap.  He practices whenever he can, and loves to swim laps.  He’s looking forward to the next few months when he can join this swim team too.  He’s a great brother and her biggest fan.

We are there to cheer for Siena and see her smile.  Because we know, as she says, is in the water where she feels great!

Thank you for the fun!  Here’s Siena’s individual medley for those who want more swimming today!

:: right now ::

Right now I am:

:: excited to have made these napkins with an old sheet and Mark’s old shirt.  It feels funny to be cleaning my hands with what looks like his shirt!

:: still laughing at my kids’ silliness.  I guess it’s always better to be safe!

:: feeling busy.  I need to catch in some letter writing and mailing few things out of the house. Life seems to be busy these days.

:: excited to start a new quilt with Siena’s old clothes.

:: wanting to find Lucas’s clothes from when he was a baby to make a quilt too.

:: feeling the same way than our kitty sometimes  when I see this huge mess on our crafting and studying table.  But I guess I should stay and clean it up instead!

:: knitting something with these old t-shirts of mine, that I made into yarn.  I hope it works out (and I’ll share more then!)

:: feeling a little low tech, but really, do we really need these?

:: loving that their learning turns into play, and it all seems the same.  That’s what homeschooling is about, right?

:: always surprised to see how much Siena is growing.  She seems so big here, when not long ago she could barely open the gate.

:: so very happy and thankful for a friend who came to help us (actually, she did all the work while we watched her and kept her company.)  We’ve had this light in the basement, you know those with a string you pull to turn it on?  Well, that string broke about 15 years ago, and we turned the light by turning the bulb on and off.  Until a couple of weeks ago, our friend came and re-wired that space and made some electrician magic and now we can use it like most people use the lights.  With a little string (that our kids can reach too!) to turn it on and off.  Incredible thankful! Oh thank you Dolores!

:: happy we celebrated with dear friends on a special occasion this past weekend.  I made my first batch of cupcakes and we all had a fun playdate.

:: loving the colors of spring appearing suddenly.

:: so very excited I’m going to see a friend from Chile, from my college years, and I haven’t seen in 10 years… can’t wait!

:: thinking, we really need to clean up a bit…

:: seeing all the panda love and the love of having your own space.

:: laughing at some of the new sounds our kitty is making these days… I think it might be because his hearing is not good anymore, or he’s needing attention, but it’s funny to hear his howling so loud (we need to get a video of it one day.)  We love him.

:: enjoying all of the coloring Siena and Lucas have been doing.  And seeing how much fun they have, and want to color the drawings about Native Americans we are finding.

:: excited to see Siena’s and Lucas’s creations.

:: so very proud of Siena’s great swim meet yesterday.  She was smiling every time she out there getting ready to swim, or afterwards, giving all her best in the water, and we could see she was just having lots of fun with her friends, and being in the water.  I think she might turn into a fish here soon…

Photo by Lucas.

The Art Museum :: the moccasins

Right now we are studying the tribes of the Plains and we are thinking we’ll make some leather moccasins as part of our current unit.

So when we saw these in our trip to the museum, it was so much fun to see real Native American ones.

Cheyenne from 1900.  Made out of leather, rawhide and glass beads.

From the Prairie Tribe from 1890, made  made of leather and glass beads.

Moccasins from the Lakota Tribe from 1900.  Made of leather, rawhide, glass beads, tin cones and horse hair.

Moccasins from the Kiowa Tribe, from 1890.  Made of leather, rawhide, paint, glass beads.

Kids Moccasins from Gros Ventre or Assiniboine from 1890.  Made out of leather and glass beads. 

Blackfeet moccasins from 1890. Made of leather, rawhide and glass beads. 

Gros Ventre or Assiniboine Moccasins from 1890.  Made out of leather, rawhide and glass beads. 

Moccasins from the Mandan tribe from 1850-1870.  Made of leather, rawhide, and porcupine quills.

Moccasins from Yankton Tribe from 1890. Made of leather, rawhide, cloth, porcupine quills and glass beads.

(About the tall boots.) Woman’s Boots from the Kiowa Tribe from 1890. Made of leather, rawhide, paint, glass beads and metal tacks. 

The beading work together with the leather is just beautiful.  I’m so amazed at all the details they looked and took care of.  Such a treat to be able to see them in person.

A beautiful view from top

A beautiful view on a gorgeous winter day.

:: this moment ::

A beautiful and fun Friday ritual. Inspired by SouleMama.

{this moment} – A Friday ritual.  A single photo (or more!) – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. – Amanda Soule

 

 

If you’d like to leave a comment and a link to your moment, we would love to see it. Have a beautiful day.  Thank you for coming to see us!

 

 

The Art Museum : the baskets

If you know me, baskets are my weakness.

I have brought baskets from everywhere I’ve been, I think. Different sizes, different shapes. You never know when you are going to need one!  Right?

While at the Museum I was attracted to the baskets too, and just seeing the different colors, designs and sizes… oh my!  They are so beautifully made… I think I’d like to learn to weave baskets some day soon.

On our tour we learned that baskets from the Western part of Oregon are made out of twined grasses.

Handled gathering basket from 1900 from Cowlitz.  Made out of cedar wood and beargrass with natural dyes. 

Lidded pouch from Chehalis, from 1910.  Made out of cedar root, beargrass and leather and cotton lining. 

That the baskets from Tillamook area are similar to those from Chehalis and are finely woven and have geometric forms.

That the baskets from the Western side of Oregon and very different from those from Eastern Oregon.

We also learned that the baskets from the Plateau, the Eastern side of Oregon, are mostly made out cedar root and are not twined but coiled.

And that they were mostly made for gathering berries.

These are gift baskets.

Gift Baskets from 1900-1920 from the Pomo Tribe. Made out of willow, sedge root, bulrush root, quail feathers and clam shell beads.

Beautiful, beautiful all of them.  I wonder if the Museum wouldn’t mind if I display them here at my house some day… wouldn’t that be nice?

A weekend of fun + snow

Last weekend we went to Washington to the snow with some friends. We haven’t been up to ski or play in the snow, in over two years.  We were excited, to say the least.

On our way there we saw elk.  There were so many elk.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many!  We didn’t count, but I’d guess there were more than 50, in different small groups. Which especially in the dark, makes it a little bit of a scary drive.  But just seeing them standing on the side of the road, so big, majestic.  Something we don’t see often.

We did lots of playing and catching up with friends we don’t see often enough.

And we stayed in the most beautiful place… I love going there every time, there’s something magic about it.  There’s beauty every where you look.

The day we arrived we headed to the mountains right after eating lunch and spent the afternoon up there.  And the next morning, we woke to this beautiful sunny, clear day.

I think it’s because it reminds me of the lake where I went with my parents growing up (and that they still have.)

Everything was crisp.  There was a thin layer of frost that morning that didn’t last long but made everything look so sparkly and beautiful.

On our last day, we woke up to rain and clouds covering the hills and the lake. 

Still a beautiful place.

We had so much fun.  We are thankful for our friends and their family, opening their home to more kids and more running and playing around over a weekend. Thank you dear friends, we had a blast!

A Visit to the Art Museum

After studying the Native Americans for the past few months, I’ve been looking into what places we could go visit here in town to give us a more hands-on, more visual of the real artifacts and clothing from the tribes we’ve been reading and watching about.

So I scheduled a tour to the Portland Art Museum, to see their Native American Permanent Exhibit guided by a docent.  We went with a couple other homeschool family friends.

So we went a couple of weeks ago. 

Anthropomorphic Figure before 1750 – Largest known example of a Columbia River stone sculpture.  A more modern anthropomorphic sculpture.Columbia River Anthropomorphic Figure, pre-contact.

We saw many real Native American possessions and artifacts that we’ve seen only on pictures until now.  Every time we’d see something we’ve talked about, or we had drawn or looked for a picture online… Siena and Lucas would look at each other, or look at me, like saying wow, they are real!

Like this Nez Perce horse saddle.

Or this Chilkat blanket (not a great photo, but will remind us of the real deal.)

And this Tlingit Patlatch hat.

Oh! And these snow goggles from the Inuits.

Different from the ones we made (I’ll get more details of our Arctic and Inuit block in the future.)  These are made out wood, rawhide and paint.

Seeing these paintings, these drawings in person, they are so much more amazing than when you look at them on the computer screen or on a book.  I find the designs so beautiful!  The colors so deep.  I would love to put these on my living room.

Tlingit dish made out of sheep horn and abalone shell.

Tlingit Dance Headdress.  Made out of wood, flicker feathers, sea lion whiskers, cloth and abalone shell, paint and ermine skin.

I was reading in the sign in the museum, that in the Northwest Coast Tribes, there are these headdresses that are worn as part of ceremonies clothing.  Usually they are a circular piece made out of ermine or swan skin and they usually have a trailer.  On top they have feathers or whiskers (like the second to the last photo here above), and they are usually adorned with abalone shells that sparkle with the fire that it’s the center of these ceremonies.

That morning there were not that many people from the public viewing this exhibit.  I enjoyed our tour so much, that I have more pictures to share but will do that in other posts, because there’s just too many!  Enjoy!