Exploring Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Before going on our trip to Big Island, the boys and I read several books on volcanoes in general, and Hawaii specifically. It was a great learning opportunity, since Rylan was excited about going to see the real thing, and I wanted to make sure that our time there was a real learning experience for him, and he could appreciate and understand what he was seeing. At the end of the post I have shared our reading selection.

{current active volcano in the foreground as we hiked}

During our week on Big Island, we spent two days in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. On our first day we did the popular Kilauea Iki hike, a 4 mile hike which starts with a steep descent through a fern filled rain forest, then crosses a lava-paved crater floor, then back up through a rain forest again.

{volcano crater that we hiked across}

This hike was quite amazing. To go from lush green to a solid black volcanic surface that covered a huge expanse of land. You cross large fissures in the lava rock, and go through an area filled with steam vents (where I stopped to get a natural steam facial, of course ;) ).

{climbing down onto the crater floor} {Damian exploring the rock}{Rylan reading to us at each fact marker on the trail} {stopping to study lava rock formations}

During our time in the park we also went through the famous Thurston lava tube, drove down the Chain of Craters road, a large section of which has been destroyed by lava flow, and visited the Jagger museum.

{Thurston lava tube} {trail of new lava flow over the old} {watching the seismic activity, the really blue one is the currently active crater}

In the evening we went down to the area being manned by civil defense (because it is outside of the boundary of the National Park) to see the current surface lava flow.

{the doomed town, already largely destroyed by flowing lava} {interesting lava formations}

We walked a mile to the look out area, by which time it was dark and we could see the red, hot glow of the lava as it flowed down towards the ocean (unfortunately, I have no good photos of our lava watching to share, because all I have is a point and shoot camera, and did not think to bring a tripod. In the dark night sky, my camera picked up nothing but blurred images :( ). As the lava flowed past trees and bushes, they would burn, the flames flaring into the dark sky. There was also one poor home (fully vacated already) that was surrounded by lava with its fate uncertain. Some homes in the area have survived, the lava somehow flowed around them, mercifully. It is an odd sight seeing literally miles of black lava rock with the odd home still standing amongst it. Some of the residents still manage to have a sense of humor despite the obvious slump in their property values! :)

{2 lots, oceanview}

That day my Rylan walked 6 miles, on his own two feet over some rough terrain, without complaint. I have to say we were pretty proud of him after that and the park was an experience we will never forget!

An amazing vacation

We are back from an incredible week. We spent the week on the island of Hawaii, Hawaii (more affectionately known as “Big Island”). I cannot even begin to explain how amazing all the experiences were that we had during our time there.

It is a fantastic place to visit, the diversity is quite something to behold, you can go from pristine tropical beaches to lava fields.From snow capped mountains to dessert like terrain, to fern filled rain forests, white sand beaches to black volcanic sand beaches, and waterfalls galore.

I am going to be sharing more details on certain aspects of our trip in future posts, because they were most certainly field trip worthy for our home learning, even if they were in the guise of a holiday! But I will tell you this – we kayaked in the open ocean, swam with wild/free dolphins (they were all around us in the kayak, so we jumped in the water with them), we snorkeled and saw the most beautiful coral and fish, we swam with green sea turtles, hiked through tropical forest, across a volcano crater and through a lava tube, and we witnessed new land being formed while watching the flow of surface lava after dark.

It was a wonderful week that will definitely go down as one of my fondest memories.

And now as an aside…if any of you are planning (or ever plan to) travel to Hawaii the BEST travel guides you can invest in, and they are worth every penny, are Andrew Doughty's ultimate guidebooks.

Taking a short break

I am going to be taking a short break from this space…just a few days to spend some much needed relaxed time with my three (two of them rather little) men. I will be back on Monday with much to share! Can’t wait! :)

A summer schedule of sorts

Alright, so, we planned to keep going with school straight through the summer, but the first week of summer break we had so many fun plans, we took that week off because we were hardly going to be home between breakfast and dinner time each day. And we got the vacation bug…well, probably me more than Rylan, but it made me stop and realize that we needed to take a break. For Rylan school is fun and he doesn’t quite see the reason for a break from it, but I actually think he is enjoying the freedom to do whatever he wants and just play for hours without having to stop to do sit down work or run off to some lesson (be it swimming, piano, music, etc). For me, I realized that I had reached a point of complete exhaustion and really needed to slow down a little and shift my focus for a bit. I have been so engrossed in homeschooling, that I have let my “to do” list for our home get a little too long.

So, we are officially taking a break! The length of which is to be determined. We will be flexible and see how it goes, and when we are both ready to dive back into school work we will. With all that said, however, there are a few things we are going to be working on over the summer.

This week we attend a presentation on the Hawaiian coral reef by the author of The Complete Hawaiian Reef Fish Coloring Book which was hosted by our local library. Now Rylan’s interest in Hawaiian reef fish has been growing with all the snorkeling he has been doing, but this really did it for him. So, we decided then that our special summer project would be to work through her entire book. If you look inside the book through the above link, you will see it is much more than a coloring book, it is loaded with information to be learnt and built on with further research. We are going to color in the fish looking at our own snorkeling pictures and other reference books. As we work through the book we are also going to build a coral reef of our own (one made out of construction paper and crayons) and we are going to spend a Sunday morning exploring a coral reef with an expert in the field. Rylan is very excited about this summer project, and you can be sure as we go along you will be getting little reports from me too! :) We will, of course, do other learning here and there, but this will be our main focus, and most of the other school stuff will be put on hold for a bit.

As for me, I will be tackling that “to do” list. One of the items is to give the boy’s room a makeover. They needed new bedding, and so I felt it was time for an overall change, and a big clean out. Funny thing is this ties in with Rylan’s summer project…you see just a couple of days before we went to this presentation, we had decided to do their bedroom in a ocean theme, so another part of our summer project will be putting their room together. I cannot wait to share with you all the ideas twirling around in my head for that project!

On a less exciting note there is the craft cupboard that needs a serious overhaul, some belated spring cleaning that needs to be done, and about six months of photos that I need to sort through and back up (how did I leave it for so long??).

I will also be coming up with an outline for the next school year and choosing curriculums. And you can be sure you will be hearing more about that too!

What we've been up to...

Enjoying "the aunties" visit!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year to all of you!! Here in Hawaii, we still have a few more hours before it is actually 2010, but most of you are already there! Wishing you all a wonderfully happy and creative year!

Tonight we will be watching a fireworks display over the ocean, from our lanai (porch), it will be our first New Year in Hawaii, and I have heard the fireworks over the ocean are beautiful...we are also celebrating a special someone's birthday (on the 1st)...happy birthday, my hubby love!
(This photo is from Haifa, Israel where both my boys were born. That is the Shrine of the Báb, a Bahá’í Shrine which is visually the focal point of the city).

Wishing you

Wishing all of you who celebrate Christmas a very merry one! I hope you are having a wonderfully memorable time with family, friends, and loved ones.

As Bahá’ís we do not celebrate Christmas, although we most certainly recognize the significance of the birth of Jesus Christ…I was going to write a long explanation about all of this, but then came across this post by another Bahá’í homeschooler which I think covers everything I would have said and more, so I am referring you to that!

Happy holidays all, from our family to yours!

Thanksgiving weekend

A weekend filled with way too much eating (thankfully no cooking, though, since we spent every evening with friends!)

Please note this delicious dessert ended up next to my name tag, but alas, no one else agreed with my claim to ownership! ;)

Swimming with turtles (photo taken by my friend Sarah).

And lots of playing with friends.

All in all a good weekend, that went by way too quickly. Hope you all had a lovely weekend spent with those who are special to you...

Introducing

Super Rylan and Super Damian – two new superheroes coming your way to save the day! Or at least to make mine, because they look super cute (no mama bias here, of course ;) ).
This is also the unveiling of that little sewing project I mentioned a few days ago.

I haven’t sewed in about ten years, and I have never made my own patterns from scratch, but this was a super easy project, so I decided to give it a try – initialed capes complete with masks and wristbands (Rylan chose the fabric - orange is his favourite colour - and he loved the flame print for the letters. I added the black ribbon for the neck ties. It was never intended for outfits to be Halloween colours, but it kind of worked out that way!).

They may not be perfect, but all that matters is that my boys LOVE their new costumes, and I love that they are their own superheroes.

Halloween time

So, despite the hot weather we are having here (October has been unpleasant, unlike the beautiful summer we had), and the fact that we are surrounded by brilliant green instead of fall colours, we decided it was time to get ready for Halloween! We started by taking down the remainder of the birthday stuff from last week’s celebration.
Today we made some bats to hang from our windows and Rylan wanted some across the door of his bedroom too. Rylan tracing the shape:

Adding the eyes.

He also drew some bats of his own.

We hung them with some orange thread, here is one window.

Afterwards I got a little crafty myself and started my first sewing project (something for Halloween…watch this spot to see the results!) in oh, maybe, ten years! Made possible by my fantastic parents who bought me a lovely new sewing machine for my birthday a few weeks ago. I am so excited to get my hands back into crafting, with all our moving and upheavals I have had a long break from it, and I MISS it! So, hopefully these little surprises for my boys will turn out! Let’s see….

In the meantime, I leave you with our little friend who is practicing for next weekend’s trick or treat-ers.