A resource of information gathered from years of homeschool lists, websites, and personal observations. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/ en-us Homeschool Blogger Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:32:00 -0500 Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:32:00 -0500 Cross-posted excerpt: As autumn grows cooler, I find myself looking to curl up with a cup of green tea and a good story. The Seattle Public Library has several reading lists for children, teens and adults that have helped me choose in the past. Children Books for Pre-School Age Children Books to Build On: Preschool & KindergartenBooks to Build On: Toddlers Books for Elementary School Age Children Books to Build On: Grades 1 & 2Books to Build On: Grades 3 & 4Books to Build On: Grades 5 & 6Doorways to African American Culture & TraditionDoorways to Arab American Culture & TraditionDoorways to Chinese American Culture and TraditionDoorways to Japanese American Culture & TraditionDoorways to Jewish American Culture & TraditionDoorways to Latino Culture & Tradition [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38133/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:32:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38133/ Cross-posted excerpt: David Horsey explains: Because the Lewis & Clark expedition 200 years ago was so central to our own history, my editors sent me on a much more modest mission: to cover in nine days the ground it took Lewis and Clark three months to cross. Along the way, I contemplated what the bicentennial observance means to us who now live in this place that Lewis and Clark first introduced into the American story. I also became conscious of one hard and inescapable reality that underlies the celebration of Lewis and Clark’s great journey: Though they are true American heroes, Lewis and Clark were also heralds of doom for a Native American way of life that had lasted for 10,000 years. Resources for the Into the Northwest Series [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38132/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:30:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38132/ Cross-posted excerpt: Children of both emigrants and Indians are heirs of a sacred land By DAVID HORSEY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST Editor’s note: This is the last of a seven-part series. DISPATCH FROM CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT, Sept. 26 — The fog stirs out on the Pacific Ocean, but the late afternoon sun still shines above. Here on this breezy bluff where a lighthouse stands to guide ships into the mouth of the Columbia River, I have come to the end of the road. This little peninsula is the southwestern tip of Washington. It is as far west as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark could go. After this, it was just a matter of waiting 3 1/2 rainy, tedious months inside Fort Clatsop until they could start their long trek home. My homeward trek is not nearly as far because the Northwest is my home. I grew up with these rocky beaches and dark forests, with the rain and the sea. As I have driven the long road from Lemhi Pass, I’ve thought about how that came to be, how my family’s history fits into the saga of the great migration that followed after Lewis and Clark. Since legend so often precedes history, I’ve concocted a legend of my own: It is late September 1803. A young man named Nathaniel Horsey looks up from chopping wood near the Kentucky shore of the Ohio River. He sees a group of soldiers in a big keelboat and a smaller pirogue moving downriver. Such a sight is a welcome interruption in the solitude of the sparsely settled frontier. A man near Nathaniel’s age waves from the back of the keelboat. Nathaniel raises his hand in response. He watches the boats until they disappear around the river’s bend, all the time wishing that it were he heading West to new places. How much greater might Nathaniel’s longing be if he knew that the young man on the boat is Meriwether Lewis, an emissary of the president of the United States on his way to begin a momentous expedition to the far Northwest. This story is just a highway daydream, [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38129/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:22:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38129/ Cross-posted excerpt: Historical sleuth tracks explorers’ path By DAVID HORSEY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST Editor’s note: This is the sixth in a seven-part series. DISPATCH FROM DISMAL NITCH, Sept. 25 — I just parked my Jeep in a rest area on the north shore of the Columbia River a quarter-mile east of the Astoria Bridge. It was near here that Lewis and Clark’s moment of triumph turned into a week of dismal, storm- ravaged misery. And it was here that a local man named Rex Ziak solved a riddle that professional historians had bypassed for 100 years. I go over to meet Ziak as he climbs out of his truck and he picks up the conversation pretty much where we left off after dinner last night. Actually, it’s less a conversation than it is Ziak’s monologue, but I do not mind a bit because the story he tells is fascinating. Ziak (pronounced “zeek”) was born across the river in Astoria and raised in the little town of Naselle here in Washington’s logging country. Growing up, he heard the usual simplified version of the Lewis and Clark tale — how they came down the Columbia and set up camp at Fort Clatsop over in Oregon — and he didn’t think much more about it. Then, in 1991, Ziak got interested in this riddle: Two months elapsed between the time Lewis and Clark left Canoe Camp on the Clearwater River in present-day Idaho and the time they began to build Fort Clatsop. During the first month, they traveled nearly 500 miles. During the second month they traveled less than 20. What in the world were they doing during that second month? [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38128/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:19:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38128/ Cross-posted excerpt: Rafting with Rooster and Knife Man in search of the long-gone Columbia By DAVID HORSEY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a seven-part series. DISPATCH FROM THE WHITE SALMON RIVER, Sept. 24 — I’ve joined a crew of five strangers in a raft steered by a guy with a knife sheathed over his heart. We’ve passed several rapids and now are first in line to go over the falls. Knife man orders us to paddle forward as he maneuvers from the stern. The drop-off approaches. Adrenaline kicks in. “Hang on! Get down!” Knife Man shouts. I slide to the floor of the raft, grab a strap and wedge my legs against the forward seat. Over we go. A gush of 40-degree water envelops the boat. Then, in the next moment, we are spinning away from the 14-foot falls. It all happens in seconds and I’m thinking, “Dang, that was fun. Let’s do it again!” Of course, when Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery traveled down the Columbia River, they went over falls far higher and took on rapids much wilder and did it in dugout canoes. And they wore buckskins, not the wetsuit, helmet, splash jacket and life jacket issued to me by the outfitters who are taking 30 of us thrill seekers down a tributary of the Columbia. Nevertheless, this three-hour tour is my modest attempt to get a feel for what the explorers experienced long before 20th century dams turned the Great River of the West into a series of wide, placid reservoirs. The Columbia River as it once was is almost impossible to fully appreciate today. West of here, the Bonneville Dam plugs a narrow gap where the tumbling Cascades of the Columbia once rushed through. To the east at the Dalles there were falls that William Clark called “horrid” in appearance, an “agitated gut swelling water, boiling and whorling in every direction.” Farther east was the expanse of Celilo Falls, the river’s greatest fishery where an estimated 16 million salmon passed through annually. From the Pacific Ocean, some of those fish traveled 800 miles deep into the mountains, as far as Sacagewea’s homeland near the Continental Divide. Now, where Celilo Falls once roared, there is only the sound of waves lapping at the shore of a river that looks more like a lake. The millions of salmon have been reduced to a struggling remnant of endangered runs that add up to a mere 1 percent of the numbers observed by Lewis and Clark. [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38127/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:18:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38127/ Cross-posted excerpt: Indians have a message: “We intend to be here forever” By DAVID HORSEY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth part of a seven-part series. DISPATCH FROM KAMIAH, NEZ PERCE RESERVATION, Sept. 22 — Few people can tell you where their world began, but the Ni-Mii-Puu can. A big mound rises on a grassy slope above this Idaho town. Myth says the mound covers the buried heart of a great monster that gobbled up all of the animals in the world. Coyotes killed the monster, cut up his heart and, from the blood, created the Ni-Mii-Puu, better known as the Nez Perce tribe. The Heart of the Monster site lies just across U.S. 12 from the Lewis and Clark Resort, an RV park with log cabins set back in the trees and a motel office, gift shop and restaurant built to resemble a stockade. The restaurant is the Sacajewea Café. The Lewis and Clark theme is ubiquitous in this part of the country. This morning, I check out of the resort, drive down the hill and cross the bridge over the Clearwater River. A little farther downstream is a sprawling sawmill built on the place where Lewis and Clark camped out for several weeks in the spring of 1806 on their return trip to the United States. Mountain passes were still blocked by snow, so the explorers had little choice but to stay here in what they called their Long Camp and enjoy the hospitality of the Nez Perce. Now, as I drive into town, the Corps of Discovery II is situated at the city park. I toured this traveling exhibit yesterday and heard yet again about the meetings between Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery and the native tribes who helped them on their trek to the ocean. Today, I have my own meeting with the Indians. [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38126/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:16:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38126/ Cross-posted excerpt: Rural towns claim their piece of the Lewis and Clark story DAVID HORSEY EDITORIAL CARTOONIST EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a seven-part series. DISPATCH FROM WEIPPE PRAIRIE, Sept. 20 — I’m running late for a big event as I roll into this tiny town, so I hitch a ride on a school bus and plant myself among a class of 14 kindergarteners and first-graders. Each of them is wearing a turquoise T-shirt imprinted with black letters reading, “Weippe, Idaho, where Lewis and Clark met the Nez Perce Indians.” A little girl with long blonde hair smiles from the seat across from me. “Where are we going?” I ask her, curious what she’ll say. “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s some kind of field trip.” Two miles out of town, we are almost at our destination when the kids notice Indians and teepees standing out in a cut hayfield. The sight gets them excited. “You know what?” a little boy with a crew cut says to the blonde girl, “I can kill Indians. I got a sword at home.” The girl plugs her ears. Good thing, too. Such violent sentiment is inappropriate today. For, at this place precisely 200 years ago, William Clark and his hunting party came down from the mountains, rode out on this prairie and were met in friendship and peace by the Nez Perce. [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38123/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:14:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38123/ Cross-posted excerpt: Explorers had survival skills few can match today EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a seven-part series. DAVID HORSEY EDITORIAL CARTOONIST DISPATCH FROM LOLO HOT SPRINGS, Sept. 19 — I am riding through a forest of skinny lodgepole pines and thick ponderosas on a fine black horse named Buff. We are on the daunting Lolo Trail where Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery struggled with snow and starvation as they sought a way through these endless mountains. I’m almost ashamed of myself as I think of those wet, cold, malnourished men who rode here during those September days 200 years ago. Today, the sun is bright and the sky is blue. I’m not wearing a jacket but I’m still feeling a little too warm. The three-egg omelet I had for breakfast is not giving me any sense of deprivation (nor is the memory of the rack of ribs I had for dinner last night or the Montana-sized prime rib I had the night before). [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38122/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:12:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38122/ Cross-posted excerpt: On the path of Lewis and Clark from the Continental Divide to the Pacific By DAVID HORSEY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a seven-part series. DISPATCH FROM LEMHI PASS, Sept. 18 — Depending on which side of the Continental Divide I stand, it is either 1:30 Pacific Time or 2:30 Mountain Time. I am in either Idaho or Montana. Time and place are that elastic on this mountaintop. Here, it takes very little imagination to move from the 21st century and go back 200 years — 200 years and 37 days to be precise — to the moment when Capt. Meriwether Lewis climbed up this ridge with a three-man scouting party and took a step as momentous in its way as Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. With that step, he brought the Northwest into the history of the United States. Very little has changed at Lemhi Pass since that day. The Indian track that Lewis followed was replaced by a stagecoach trail that now is a dusty forest service road. Discreet power lines run along the hills to the north. But to the east, the Rockies still stand like a snowcapped granite wall. And, to the west, the view is the same as it was: range upon range of mountains fading into the distance — a panorama that, in an instant, told Lewis he and his Corps of Discovery still had a long, long way to go before they would see the churning waves of the Pacific Ocean. [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38121/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:10:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/38121/ Cross-posted excerpt: Have you ever pondered, “Who said that?” The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations might have your answer [...read more...] http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/35924/ Thu, 20 Oct 2005 14:48:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/gaia/35924/