Bike Ride Aftermath

Dad: We did our bike ride aftermath project before math (and before geography too). We printed out the map of the bike trails we rode on, and the kids traced the path that we rode on. We brainstormed on all the things we saw or stopped and did along the way, and the kids each picked out three to write about.

Sam: We saw a cement mixer pouring cement on the sidewalk. The cement was too dry, and the guys could not get the cement out. Then we went past a tree trimmer. Because it was too big for the trail , we had to get off the bikes. Then when we got on the Iron Horse trail, we saw a waterfall with a heron and two snowy egrets.

C: Tiger was a cat who loved the front tire of Dad's bike. Lunch at Trader Joe's consisted of a ham sandwich lunch kit. The water fall was a huge concrete wall that water poured over, and there were two egrets and a heron.

Dad: We spent some time on the Internet looking at the CalFire incident report website and some incredible satellite photos of the fires on a NASA website. The photos give a really good perspective of how large the fires are and how extreme the winds are. Check out: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Click on the "Natural Hazards" link and then click on the flame icon over California on the map that comes up. The most current of the photos will show first, but there are links to previous photos, so you can see how the fires have evolved over the past week. It looks like there is lots of other interesting material on the website also.

Finally, we tried watching the first episode of an older BBC series titles "Civilisation" that I checked out of the library. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This was too dry for the kids and seriously out of date. It would be an awesome example for high school or college kids of a rigidly eurocentric point of view.