Climate Change

At the Global Warming Alert Conference in Harrisburg, there were messages of hope, accompanied by speakers typically talking about climate change dangers predicted to take place in the future. That future is not only getting closer, but according to Donald Brown of Widener University, we only have about 5 years to drastically change our behavior to stop a ecological switch from flipping that would trigger runaway global warming.

He also spoke about a campaign of disinformation and named perpetrators. Disinformation gets my dander up, especially about such an important topic and for so self serving an end. This inspired me to poll readers about their understanding and feelings about climate change. Please take the poll on the side bar to the left.

Guest Essayist - A Nine Year Old on Dragons

This is my last blog in my dragon/ serpent people series. This is an essay written a few years ago by my nine year old. He did research and drew diagrams, but since the source was mostly Wikipedia and the diagrams weren't terribly clear I won't include them. I am including this essay here to demonstrate how deeply rooted dragons are embedded into the imagination of humans. He was so excited to try to "prove" that dragons could be real, it was the easiest writing assignment to get him to complete up to that point. [Hint to teachers : kids have am easier time writing if they are excited about their subject matter.]

Magic School Bus - Plant Lesson - part 3

This hasn't been a popular series of posts lately, but I want to finish what I started for the few that did
like it.

Since there were an odd number of weeks due to a few snow days this last week I didn't have a second week to cut the video in half. So we watched the video of Magic School Bus Inside A Beehive in its entirety. I just choose to build on the plant-bee interactions part of that video to connect it to the previous plant lessons.

Magic School Bus - Plant Lesson for K-Gr.2- Part 2 of 3

First I had to catch up the two students that had been absent on the first lesson. Then I asked kids to report on what homework they tried. Some of the students already had roots on their seedlings and their cuttings. [I asked them to bring them back for the family night, but no one did.]

Pope on Ecology - Latest Encyclical on Ecology Fits Within my Mission Statement

I try not to get too religious or political here, since this is an author's blog about nature and mythology, but this is too apropos to ignore. If you want to read Pope Francis Encyclical on Ecology yourself, I'll warn you, like all philosophical, theological, historical and scientific writing there is a bit of staging and wordiness to it. [I generally leave the seriously factual stuff to my husband and let my inner teenager yawn. But I am forcing myself to digest this because I really wanted to read first hand Pope Francis's view.]

Science Lesson – Magic School Bus - Flight

Day 1 – Air Foils and Lift

Using Magic School Bus Episode # - Flight, I taught the K- 2^nd graders about lift and air foils. I tied it into the weather lessons by reviewing the facts about updrafts and wind. Then I reminded them of our discussion about updrafts from hot spots helping raptors like turkey vultures, common in our area, get up into the stronger wind currents higher in the sky. That is why they circle. Then I equated wind discussed in the weather lessons with the moving air needed and the updrafts from hot air up drafts with the lift needed for flight.

Weather lessons for young children

Since I've been writing about Djinn, desert weather spirits, I thought I'd take a little break from mythical peoples and contribute to my science lessons areas.

This will seem like a drastic shift for many readers but since this blog is about nature, the mythical, scientific, emotional and moral aspects of nature, in other words, the impact nature has on humans, this topic fits right in.

I've been doing some easy lessons on weather for a home school co-op class as a short notice replacement teacher. The class is based around the Magic School Bus animated TV series produced by Scholastic Productions Inc. (recommended for ages 4 - 10.) My class has 8 students from kindergarten through second grade. This is a much younger level than I'm used to teaching, but the topic of weather dovetails nicely with my latest posts and appeals to my muse.