Yahtzee!

This is the Chicago skyline participating in Earth Hour last night. It still looks pretty bright to me, but it is darker than normal.

Our family was very excited to participate in Earth Hour, going all out and shutting off the breakers in the basement to lose all electricity for the event. We had our camping lantern, some candles, some led puck lights and flashlights. But we didn't use them all. Roomba cleaned the dining room and kitchen on his battery, but got confused when he had no place to dock at the end of his cycle.

Three of us played Yahtzee and the other two played Uncle Wiggly. I was only able to participate in the Yahtzee game because my friend Lori taught me how to play on Friday. What a great game it is. We had a really peaceful time, talked about conservation a bit and glanced out the windows, disappointed that more of our neighbors weren't participating. Actually, it didn't look like any of our neighbors participated. We'll have to pass out fliers next year. Maybe hold a lights out party here or something.

Earth Hour helped us to reconnect. The kids asked why we couldn't do it more often. Maybe we will. The Tribune article this morning said that ComEd registered a 5% reduction in energy consumption in that one hour. That's pretty impressive.

Old-Timey Learning

Yesterday we went on a field trip to the Naper Settlement with CAHFT and had a great time. We had been there once before as a family last summer, wandered around all the buildings, watched the living history guides doing their tasks and learned a lot. Being there as part of a guided tour group was even better!

We visited the blacksmith shop and learned all about that craft. We learned why our letters are called uppercase and lowercase at the printing shop. We went to a one room schoolhouse, which was amusing for the parents. The guide was pointing out differences between one room schools of the 1860 and school rooms of today to a bunch of kids who had never been in school! While many of her references were lost on them, we parents got them. And the children learned about schooling. From there we went to a frontier log cabin, also one room and the children participated in chores that were typical for children their age.

My older two chattered the whole way home about what they had experienced. All the kids were split along an age line to accommodate the size of the buildings, so they were separated. They eagerly told each other what they had seen and learned. When we arrived home we heard the wonderful call of migrating sandhill cranes overhead. After searching the sky, we found them flying right above our house! It was the perfect end to our field trip.

And when Mark got home in the evening, my little man kept saying "I went to 'chool!" I highly recommend the trip. You can join the CAHFT (Chicago Area Homeschool Field Trip) group here:

alt="Click here to join CAHFT">
Click to join CAHFT

Do It

My family and our Roots&Shoots group is participating in Earth Hour this Saturday from 8 to 9 p.m. Click on the link on the upper left to sign up, watch this clip. It's a good thing.

Our Brush with Greatness

Dr. Jane Goodall spoke to Roots&Shoots groups last night at the Chicago Botanic Garden. We were the only family in our Westside R&S group that were able to attend, but we had a great time. All the groups had displays of their projects set up so we could share information and resources. Our display consisted of a DVD I made playing in an endless loop on my laptop. We didn't have the sound on, as it was loud in the room, but it was a good representation of what we've done.

Dr. Jane worked her way along the tables, causing great excitement among the young people and old folks alike. When she stopped by us, my kids explained breathlessly the work our group has done in the Forest Preserves. Dr. Jane is such an intense presence, she listened quietly, focused in a loud, noisy room. She smiled and asked if the kids also had fun doing their projects, showing them that work and pleasure don't have to be mutually exclusive. Little Missy was being perhaps a bit too serious.

Later, after presentations from the Great Lakes Region Roots&Shoots office and from four school-based groups, Dr. Jane spoke about her commitment to youth involvement and community action, her dedication to the youth movement as one of the remaining hopes for our planet's future. She told stories of her own childhood and of her life with the chimps at Gombe. It's amazing how such a larger than life, awe-inspiring person can be housed in such a small frame. The children clearly were overjoyed at meeting her, impressed by her life's work and yet felt comfortable enough to consider her one of their own. She has a gift.

We stayed for the book signing, which really must be an exhausting thing for an author to go through. We were very tired, but the kids were filled with wonderful fresh fruit put out for dessert and had eaten an unbelievably safe buffet before her talk. We were tired, but mostly happy as we headed to the car. Only the little man suffered from too much sitting in an auditorium and too little patience on his mother's part. I don't enjoy driving at night, my vision is affected, so we were exhausted by the time we got home.

The Chicago Botanic Garden is really a great place, we were reminded in this brief visit. A bit snow covered now, but we'll try to make the trip up this spring when things are in bloom. If only it weren't all the way up in Glencoe! The Chicago metro area is just too big.

World Water Day

It can be difficult for those of us who live near Lake Michigan to think of water supply as a problem. We have a huge body of water to swim in, drink from, shower with, do laundry, dishes and water our plants. And now we have a fresh dump of snow, low lying areas deep in water and mud and flooding to look forward to when this all melts. Water is a global problem we tend to think of locally.

Watch this video, it's nicely done. We've vowed to time showers, soak instead of let the water run continuously, save for a front loading washing machine. We already catch more than a five gallon bucket a day from our humidifyer in the winter and the air conditioner in the summer. We have a rain barrel. We need to do more.