What happens when Papa has the kids for a Saturday afternoon while Mama's off at bellydance workshops? They make a papier machê volcano, of course!
3...2...1...
Lava!
Doodle's totally got a leg up on the grade school science fairs in her future. "Make a volcano? Sure. Piece of cake. I did that when I was four!"
If that wasn't awesome enough, our friend Liv just posted a link to this amazing photo journey to the Nyiragongo Crater in Africa. So now Doodle's really REALLY excited about volcanoes and lava. and lava lakes. Really, check out the photos. Very cool.
We may make the eruptions a regular thing; stage our own reliably-timed lava flows. Y'know, like Old Faithful, only with molten lava. Ohhhh yeah. Parenthood is pretty awesome.
One of our last days in Hawaii J and I took a daytrip with the kiddos up to Haleakala National Park, the big crater in the middle of Maui. We wanted to see a wild Sandalwood tree (J's Master's thesis study organism), some Silverswords (plants native to Hawaii, some of which are endangered), and some Nene (Hawaiian Geese). We struck out on the Nene, but found some introduced Chukar near the top of the crater. I grumbled a little about the chukar, as a guy had pointed us to the trail saying "There's some Nene right over there!" Oh well.
The sandalwood was everything J had hoped, and even had some bracken fern (his PhD study organism) growing up and out of it. We stopped and botanized in the subalpine zone, where I would definitely spend more time given the opportunity. We saw some Vaccinium (Hawaiian huckleberries), a bunch of neat leguminous shrubs, and even found a cute yellow-faced solitary bee!
cute little male solitary bee!
The silverswords were beautiful, especially in the near-barren alpine zone where they grow. The visitor center at the top is just short of 10,000 feet elevation, and you can see everything from up there. We could see the ocean all around the island, and some of the nearby islands. It was beautiful. I'm glad we decided to head up country because we got to see some beautiful areas and explore some ecosystems that are very different from the beach.
On the long, winding drive up the mountain we saw some hitchhikers with longboards and helmet-cams, and realized they had just done something like this:
We totally would have picked up the guys just to hear their story, but with the carseats and kiddos we didn't have room for them. Bummer.
A little farther up the mountain we saw another pair of guys coming down on their longboards. Looked a little scary, but definitely a rush. The road is perfect for this; it's nice and smooth, long, well maintained, and low traffic. I'm under orders from my mom to not tell my brother about this.
September 20th is International Rock Flipping Day. This is a fun way to explore a part of the outdoors that's often overlooked, and to share what we find. Homeschoolers, this would be a fun project for your kiddos to participate in.
If you're joining in for the first time, here's a quick rundown of the procedure:
On or about September 20th, find your rock and flip it over.
Record what you find. "Any and all forms of documentation are welcome: still photos, video, sketches, prose, or poetry."
Replace the rock as you found it; it's someone's home.*
Post on your blog, or load your photos to the Flickr group.
Send Wanderin' Weeta a link (she's coordinating IRFD this year). Her e-mail address is in her blog profile, or you can add a comment to any IRFD post.
She will collect the links, e-mail participants the list, and post it for any and all to copy to your own blogs. (Maybe we can Tweet it, too, this year. Use the hashtag #rockflip.)
There is a handy badge available for your blog, here.
* A reminder to all rock flippers that rocks should be flipped back into place. If there are critters underneath, don't place the rock back on top of them, move the animals to the side, replace the rock and let them scurry back.
Thanks to Bug Girl for alerting me to this fun exercise in nerdery.
What happens when Papa has the kids for a Saturday afternoon while Mama's off at bellydance workshops?
They make a papier machê volcano, of course!
3...2...1...
Lava!
