Wrapping Up the School Year

One final hike for the school year. This was my first hike for a private group--it's kind of nice to just show up to a group that someone else arranged and get to hike with some fun kids!

And I'm so glad that I opted to not teach my normal classes this May so this was the only work thing I had on my calendar. With prepping to move and getting our property ready, it has been really nice to take something off my plate.

But it was also fun to get outside for a hike which I haven't had time for this month.

The kids were great and, thanks to a random rainstorm last night, we saw more banana slugs and other wet-loving species than I would have expected at the end of May.

It was also Peanut's last day of his freshman year! Time just flies, but it has been a great year for him and now we're looking forward to a fun, if crazy, summer.

Wrapping Up the Science Year

All my classes have wrapped up the last couple of weeks.

My middle school classes did a group project on soil conservation/preventing erosion and built models to demonstrate the techniques they'd use for the scenario they were given.

I love how they got into this--model building is always a big hit.

My elementary classes finished the semester with several games and activities about conservation in honor of Earth Day and our study of the earth.

My nature study class went to visit the local heron rookery for our last hike. We got lucky and the three babies were active and the parents were coming and going with food and nesting materials. It was a fantastic morning, and we got lucky and ran into a really nice guy who had a good camera to capture pictures of the birds and offered to share a couple of images with us. (Have I mentioned how much I love this part of my job--getting to hike with families and share all of these cool nature experiences in our area is so much fun!)

And finally, I did a nature and art class with my friend, E, who makes beautiful mandalas with the bones from bird pellets that she collects and sterilizes. 

She's learned all about bone identification and has found this amazing way to use art to bring attention to science. 

And now, I just have to plan for fall, but I'm officially done with my 8th year of teaching!

Science Fair 2026

My Science Explorations classes participated in a science fair this spring. It seemed extra challenging this year for people to get their projects done and we only ended up with about 1/2 of the kids coming in the end, but the ones who showed up had a great time.

We had several community members come representing different science agencies and projects in our area which was really fun for everyone.

And the kids had some fun interactive projects for us to see.

Volcanoes were very popular, which went great with our earth science study this year.

I'm so grateful for all of the support from everyone who helped make it an enjoyable evening. The kids worked really hard and deserved to be able to celebrate their learning. I love having an event where the parents can come and interact. I see their kids every week, but I have 5 different classes and they don't usually get to see each other and I often don't see the parents after the first class, so a night like this is nice to finish off the year. Only two weeks of classes left!

Lots of Random Goings On

After such a dry Jan/Feb, we finally got some rain halfway through this month, and it was lovely to see everything wet and fresh.

The almond blossoms have been beautiful. It's fun that we have a park so close to us with a lot of trees to enjoy this time of year. Our homeschool park group has been there this month and I went a couple of times without any kids, just to catch up with friends.

Peanut had a fun 4-H meeting. We haven't made it to any of the project groups he was hoping to do this year, but at least he can go to the club meetings once a month and have fun seeing friends.

And now, in an effort to be a lifelong learner, my fun find this month:

UV flourescence! I watched a lunchtime zoom seminar one day on bioluminescence and UV fluorescence that we can find all around the Bay Area and was so excited to go out and see what we could find, so I got a new UV light (I have a couple of cheap ones I've used in my science classes, but turns out the better ones have a different wave length, and it makes a huge difference.)

And we took the light out to explore one of the redwood parks in Oakland at dusk. We only found the one group of mushrooms (Sulfur tufts) and these little flowers, but a lot of mushrooms and flowers will do this.

The moss on the redwood bark was pretty cool. Redwoods are a lot redder under UV light.

And a lot of plants will glow red--it's the chlorophyll in the leaves. I have no idea what the blue parts are--I still have a lot to learn about this.

Redwood sorrel, which looks very green during the day, is a deep red under UV light. It was so much fun looking for things and realizing how different the world looks if you change the lens you're seeing it through. I've been reading a book--An Immense World, by Ed Yong that explores this concept, too. Living things have very different umwelts, specific ways that an organism experiences the world based on the capabilities of their sensory organs. It's fun when we can get a glimpse into another species umwelt.

All that rain finally got the creek going again. It's already slowed and largely dried up, but it had a few days with a lot of water.

Peanut and I went to the Science Odessey night at one of the local K-8th schools so I could see which community groups had booths there (getting ideas of who to reach out to for my science fair I'm doing in April), and one company had a couple of snakes there. They do research and analysis for a lot of organizations, including East Bay Regional Parks, working with endangered and threatened species.

And then, the next day, I had a nature hike scheduled at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. It's fun that we have an extinct volcano right in the Bay Area, even if the area has been crumpled so the volcano is lying on it's side now and doesn't look anything like a volcano. But there are some cool volcanic rocks to see in the area.

And there were a lot of these butterflies--California Tortoiseshells, I think.

And the real find of the day was about a dozen newts in a small pond on the hike. They were actively mating and laying eggs. We found this one that looks like it's curled around several large clusters of eggs. I've only seen eggs one other time and they were just attached on the side of a rock, but I'm guessing these were laid very recently.

This was by far the favorite stop for everyone on the hike. The kids also found a couple of young bull frogs, and had fun exploring the labyrinth that was right by the pond. I seriously love my job.

Our weather has been unseasonably warm this past week after the rain storms, so while we were working in the backyard on Saturday, I got the animals out for a bit. Our sweet girl, Charkie, just turned 6 years old this past week. Never would have guessed that she'd outlast the other guinea pigs, but here she is, the oldest one we've ever raised.

Luckily she's still around to keep Poppy company. Not sure what we'll do when the bunny is the only one left--I think she's going to be lonely.

We got to finish the day off with an evening in Palo Alto, getting pizza as a snack before watching San Francisco, a 1940's musical, at the Stanford Theater. I'd seen the movie back in college, but it was fun to watch again. And then we got crepes afterwards. 5:30 movie times are awkward for dinner, haha, so we kind of did a split meal with popcorn in between. It had been a few months since we'd been to this theater--it's seriously my favorite.

Holidays are Coming

We kicked off the Christmas season with our church dinner which had a Dickens theme. 

Daddy-o dressed up and sang with the carolers. 

He can rock a top hat for sure!

Decorating at home has been a slow process. We came home from Thanksgiving a little under the weather (Daddy-o was still feeling pretty badly, Peanut and I were on the mend) and so we didn't get much done the first few days. And then, Peanut and I got hit with a SECOND cold before I was 100%, so it's been a sluggish couple of weeks getting things done. But we finally have the tree done and our village set up. It makes it feel a little more Christmasy. Now to finish shopping!

Other winter going-ons: The winter birds are back in Springtown. I went for a cold walk one afternoon--it's been colder than normal which makes it hard to find a good time of day to get outside, especially since I've had a cough. 

But I'm glad I made it out because along with some of the usual suspects (like egrets and mallards), I found a few other birds, including a goose I've never seen before (the Greater White-fronted Goose).

And there were a couple of these American Wigeons there, too, which I haven't seen in that location. I love how there are different birds from week to week, year to year.

And this week was my science escape room for my Chemistry classes. The kids LOVE these challenges and always surprise me with what things they figure out so quickly, and what things seem to stump them. They showed some recollection of the things we've learned this semester which always makes me happy--I like to know that at least some of them are picking up on some it!

And now, I've got one more hike and then I'm on winter break for 4 weeks! Good thing because I'm feeling a little behind after being under the weather for so long.

In Other Happenings

Warning: These first couple of pictures are disturbing--no blood and gore, but still hard to look at if you don't like that sort of thing. So scroll past if you don't want to see!

This summer/fall has felt like it largely revolved around Bug leaving us, but we have had other things going on. Starting with the biggest thing--

Daddy-o took a nasty fall off a ladder at work and ended up spending a day in the ER. It ended up not being broken, just a severe dislocation which they had to put him under in order to reset.

The doctor told him he was lucky that he didn't die since a lot of ladder incidents end up much worse. He was about 8 feet off the ground when the ladder slipped down the wall it was balanced on so he had about 1 second to try to figure out how to land to inflict the least damage (and have the smallest chance of hitting his head), and he did fall pretty well, just got his left leg tangled up with the ladder.

Orthorpedic surgeon decided he didn't need surgery, just a boot and physical therapy. Swelling was so bad at his first PT appointment that they couldn't really do anything. Over a month later, it's still swollen, but not nearly as bad. His orthopedist is really happy with his progress (he's walking in normal shoes already!) and has hopes that he'll recover full range of motion, but he's got a lot of work to get there. We're just glad it wasn't his right ankle so he's been able to drive the whole time.

Peanut had an awesome swim meet where he got three PRs, which finally broke through a plateau he'd had for a while. He's got a new coach, and is swimming 3-4 times a week now and it seems to be making a difference.

Property news has been frustrating. There should be a house in this picture on the right, but this is still what it looks like (but at least there was a nice sunrise!) We are waiting on the final permits and they have been sending us back with something to change over and over. We've submitted the final change they asked for, so we *should* have our permits any day now, but I'm not holding my breath.

I couldn't get a great picture, but all three animals were snuggling together the other day and it was just so sweet. We kind of can't believe that the guinea pigs are still holding on. They're both about 5.5 years old which is about as old as they get. We've already started talking about what we're going to have to do for Poppy when that day comes--she'll miss her piggy friends.

Pool time ended with some weird days--Bug's last day of lessons was totally raining. I showed up to swim laps during his break, but there was thunder and lightning, which is really weird for us.

Science classes have been going pretty well. Chemistry is a fun topic with some good labs we get to do this year and a lot of the kids are pretty into it. (and shh. . . don't tell anyone, but I have a couple favorite classes for sure--it's just so nice when they can follow directions and really seem interested in what we're doing.)

Nature hikes have also been fun. We've got a smaller core group this year, but the families are a lot of fun.

We're revisiting some of my favorite topics since none of my current families were around when I first started. So we learned about woodpeckers and returned to the redwoods.

The banana slugs there were a hit. And I had to laugh, but also felt really legit when a random hiker stopped to listed to me when I was talking about the redwood root networks with my group.

I went to see the movie release of the new Taylor Swift album. After missing out on the Eras tour and regretting it, I decided I wasn't going to take any chances. I'm loving the new album, and it was fun to see the making of the music video.

And in other music news, Peanut and I went to the symphony at Temple Hill in Oakland for the Star Wars night.

The music was great and we got to watch a friend from church in her inaugural night as the conductor. 

It was fun meeting up with homeschool friends and pretending that we're still living that life. I think that once you're a homeschooler, you're always a homeschooler.

And finally, I got out for a hike after dropping Peanut off for his Ranger Explorers day today. 

It was a gorgeous morning and I did the new trail which has some incredible views. Also got to hike with deer, watch a white-tailed kite hovering and diving for food, and a red-shouldered hawk take off with a gopher in its talons! All in all, it was a really great hike and I still had time to spend the rest of the day with gimpy Daddy-o ;)