It's almost the end of Earth month! Oh no! Help celebrate while you can. Here's three things you can do to help the environment:
One: clean up right. Most light bulbs contain mercury. Because of that fact, we must properly clean up our light bulbs. If we don't, the mercury will get in the air and the water. Lots of fish have mercury in them, in fact, fish, out of all animals, have the most amount of mercury in their bodies. Mercury gets in their water and their food from toxic waste. The larger the fish, the more mercury the fish contains in its body. This is because a larger fish eats more than a smaller fish so it takes in more mercury. At our Earth Day celebration, I learned how to properly clean up a broken CFL light bulb you must:
1) Keep people and pets away from the breakage area - do not step on the area when leaving.
2) Open windows and leave the area for 15 minutes before returning to begin cleanup.
3) Wear rubber gloves and dust mask - put in glass container when finished.
4) Carefully remove large pieces and place them in glass container.
5) Using duct tape pick up all the remaining fine particles and put in glass container.
6) Wipe the area with a damp micro fiber cloth, then put the cloth in glass container but, do not rinse the cloth between uses.
7) Put all waste and cleanup materials in the glass container, seal and label it Toxic Waste Broken Light.
8) Wash your hands and face carefully with soap.
9) Remove glass container from the home.
10) Continue ventilating the room for several hours.
11) Take the glass container with the waste material to a facility that accepts toxic waste.
12) Check http://earth911.com/ for a toxic waste facility near you.
13) If you have throw rugs, remove them and bring them to the toxic waste facility.
14) If the break happened on carpeting, cut the area of carpet were the breakage occurred particularly if the area is requested by infants, small children, pregnant woman, the elderly, pets, or people with compromised immune systems
Never:
Use a vacuum even one with a HEPA filter.
Use a broom.
Pour mercury down a drain in your yard or sewer.
Wash clothing or other items that have come in direct contact with mercury.
Walk around your house or yard if your shoes might be contaminated with mercury.
Two: think before you throw. Our front yard has been totally trashed by litter. We live on the end of our street and people throw everything on our yard. One time we found a bike behind one of our really big bushes. The sad part was at that time we had a rabbit living in another one of our bushes. About a month later he left. All this litter is killing our plants and animals. Throwing our trash away is no better. It's just being put in landfills which also hurt the environment. The best we can do is recycle so we can reuse what we already have. I have a poster on my closet door showing endangered animals of Arizona. There are 18 types of fish, 17 types of plants, six types of birds, six types of mammals, and one type of reptile on this poster. That's 48 types of almost extinct animals! I would think before I throw.
Three: no more oil(!) Recently, there was a large oil spill near the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, it's losing a few thousand gallons a day! Oil spills kill lots of animals and coat their fur in oil. The oil spills are more dangerous than you probably think. The oil pollutes the water that fish breathe, and it kills the fish. Once all the fish are dead, then the animals that eat the fish die. Then all the animals that eat those animals die out and so on until there's nothing else on this planet. It's definitely worse than you think. No more oil!
That's just some of the things you can do to help the planet. There's also one other thing you can do to help the planet without doing labor at all. Start a writing campaign or a series of shows on YouTube or another website that you can show to the public to help the environment. One last thing: remember, every day is Earth Day.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Journey of Stuff
Since my mom is getting out of the girl scout business, we spent last Thursday with all the girl scout families cleaning out and moving all the girl scout stuff out of our garage. My mom decided that since it was also Earth Day on Thursday, April 22nd, we could also show them a short documentary called The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard. It is about where our stuff comes from, what happens when we throw it away, how it is affecting the environment, and how we are on a dangerous path which is using up all our resources. If you haven't seen this film, and you also have a lot of stuff, you can watch it free on the Internet at : http://www.storyofstuff.com/. We also have her new book, The Story of Stuff, which includes all her research on the subject for 10 years.
The first problem with our ways of making stuff, is the fact that we are running out of natural resources to make the stuff with. Almost one third of the worlds natural resources have already been consumed and thrown away. I would really like to know how long it will take to consume the rest of the world's resources at this rate. It is obvious that our way of making stuff needs to stop. It is even more vital that we stop putting so many chemicals in our stuff.
Some products have been known to have up to one hundred thousand synthetic chemicals in them of which none have been tested with other chemicals we use in day to day life. Pillows, some blankets, and mattresses are good examples of this. They are doused in B.F.Rs (Brominated Flame Retardants), otherwise known as a Neurotoxin, otherwise know as a toxin that kills brain cells. A pleasant thing to rest your head on for eight to ten hours a night! Adding chemicals to products also ruins the environment. Although a lot of the chemicals leave the factories in the form of products, even more chemicals leave as pollution. The United States alone admits to releasing more than 4,000,000,000 lbs. of pollution each year.
The next part of the journey of stuff, is actually buying the stuff. This is often no problem for the average American as they buy stuff all the time, but who said we were really buying the stuff. Part of the documentary was about how we don't really pay for the stuff we buy. One day she was walking to work and wanted to listen to the radio so she went to Radio Shack and bought a radio, for five dollars. As she listened to it, she began to wonder how the radio could cost her five dollars. She learned that the metals were likely mined in South Africa, The Plutonium was drilled in Iraq, the plastics were probably made in China, and the whole thing was probably put together by some fifteen year old in Mexico. Either way, it made me think that I can't even get a bus ticket that would take me to the next city with five dollars let alone across several countries! I wonder how they have enough money to pay the workers.
The final problem with the journey of stuff is how we are getting rid of it. Corporations have long ago mastered the art of scamming customers. Two of their most useful ones are planned obsolescence, and perceived obsolescence. Planned obsolescence is when the corporations try to make an object break, become archaic, or useless as fast as they can. The sad part is, it works. Ninety-nine percent of all the stuff we throw away was purchased less than six weeks ago. Perceived obsolescence is when the corporation tries to convince you to throw away perfectly good stuff by making it look out of fashion. In other words both planned and perceived obsolescence means "designed for the dump." After the corporations have convinced you to throw away an item, it is then dragged out to the curb where it spends the night with all the other junk awaiting its fate. Our unfortunate can of garbage is then taken to a landfill that is just a big hole in the ground. The junk then gets either buried in the landfill, or burned in an incinerator and then buried in the landfill. Although both methods are extremely dangerous to the environment because of the possibility of any water in the landfill becoming leachate (an extremely toxic material made as water trapped in the landfill is blended into the toxic chemicals) and flowing into ground water supplies and poisoning them. Incinerating trash before burial is even more dangerous to the environment. Do you remember all those toxic chemicals that were in all that stuff that was just thrown out: the Neurotoxins and the B.F.Rs in the pillows, mattresses, and blankets? Well, they were just incinerated and the chemicals were changed into the super toxin called Dioxin (deadliest toxin known to science) under the high heat. So just throwing away stuff is not as simple as it seems.
In her new book about the story of stuff, an example of one of the things she does for school presentations is she takes a soda can, places it on the table, and asks the students, "What is it?" If the can is on the table, they say, "It is a soda can." Next, she throws the soda can in the trash can and asks the students, "What is it now?" If the same can is now in the trash can, they say, "It is trash." She pulls it out...it's a can. She puts it back in...its trash. So trash isn't the condition of an object, it is whether or not it is in the trash can. Another way of explaining this theory is that what one person thinks is trash, may not be considered trash by another person. Also in her book, she talks about being in Bangladesh and seeing an old shampoo bottle she threw in the trash later the next day pulled out of the trash and with the addition of wheels it was now a child's toy car. When my mom looks in my room, all she sees is "trash." My favorite Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows poster = trash to her. My dad's slightly battered acoustic guitar = goodwill item or garage sale item or dumpster contents. Plans for a hydraulic engine system that I plan to earn a million dollars with = fire place food. Kirby pinata I made out of paper mache = art box, garage or any other place on earth (or not) where she will never have to look at it again. These are only a few examples. If I were to list all of the stuff she has an urge to give away, throw away, or light fire to, I would have to start a whole other blog.
However, this blog is about what our family is doing in our homeschool "mystery." So what we are doing this month is trying to figure out how we can stop environmental problems. We also went to Earth Day at the Chandler Environmental Education Center and International Migratory Bird Day at the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area. I think it would be nice if people would celebrate Earth Day past April 22nd.
The first problem with our ways of making stuff, is the fact that we are running out of natural resources to make the stuff with. Almost one third of the worlds natural resources have already been consumed and thrown away. I would really like to know how long it will take to consume the rest of the world's resources at this rate. It is obvious that our way of making stuff needs to stop. It is even more vital that we stop putting so many chemicals in our stuff.
Some products have been known to have up to one hundred thousand synthetic chemicals in them of which none have been tested with other chemicals we use in day to day life. Pillows, some blankets, and mattresses are good examples of this. They are doused in B.F.Rs (Brominated Flame Retardants), otherwise known as a Neurotoxin, otherwise know as a toxin that kills brain cells. A pleasant thing to rest your head on for eight to ten hours a night! Adding chemicals to products also ruins the environment. Although a lot of the chemicals leave the factories in the form of products, even more chemicals leave as pollution. The United States alone admits to releasing more than 4,000,000,000 lbs. of pollution each year.
The next part of the journey of stuff, is actually buying the stuff. This is often no problem for the average American as they buy stuff all the time, but who said we were really buying the stuff. Part of the documentary was about how we don't really pay for the stuff we buy. One day she was walking to work and wanted to listen to the radio so she went to Radio Shack and bought a radio, for five dollars. As she listened to it, she began to wonder how the radio could cost her five dollars. She learned that the metals were likely mined in South Africa, The Plutonium was drilled in Iraq, the plastics were probably made in China, and the whole thing was probably put together by some fifteen year old in Mexico. Either way, it made me think that I can't even get a bus ticket that would take me to the next city with five dollars let alone across several countries! I wonder how they have enough money to pay the workers.
The final problem with the journey of stuff is how we are getting rid of it. Corporations have long ago mastered the art of scamming customers. Two of their most useful ones are planned obsolescence, and perceived obsolescence. Planned obsolescence is when the corporations try to make an object break, become archaic, or useless as fast as they can. The sad part is, it works. Ninety-nine percent of all the stuff we throw away was purchased less than six weeks ago. Perceived obsolescence is when the corporation tries to convince you to throw away perfectly good stuff by making it look out of fashion. In other words both planned and perceived obsolescence means "designed for the dump." After the corporations have convinced you to throw away an item, it is then dragged out to the curb where it spends the night with all the other junk awaiting its fate. Our unfortunate can of garbage is then taken to a landfill that is just a big hole in the ground. The junk then gets either buried in the landfill, or burned in an incinerator and then buried in the landfill. Although both methods are extremely dangerous to the environment because of the possibility of any water in the landfill becoming leachate (an extremely toxic material made as water trapped in the landfill is blended into the toxic chemicals) and flowing into ground water supplies and poisoning them. Incinerating trash before burial is even more dangerous to the environment. Do you remember all those toxic chemicals that were in all that stuff that was just thrown out: the Neurotoxins and the B.F.Rs in the pillows, mattresses, and blankets? Well, they were just incinerated and the chemicals were changed into the super toxin called Dioxin (deadliest toxin known to science) under the high heat. So just throwing away stuff is not as simple as it seems.
In her new book about the story of stuff, an example of one of the things she does for school presentations is she takes a soda can, places it on the table, and asks the students, "What is it?" If the can is on the table, they say, "It is a soda can." Next, she throws the soda can in the trash can and asks the students, "What is it now?" If the same can is now in the trash can, they say, "It is trash." She pulls it out...it's a can. She puts it back in...its trash. So trash isn't the condition of an object, it is whether or not it is in the trash can. Another way of explaining this theory is that what one person thinks is trash, may not be considered trash by another person. Also in her book, she talks about being in Bangladesh and seeing an old shampoo bottle she threw in the trash later the next day pulled out of the trash and with the addition of wheels it was now a child's toy car. When my mom looks in my room, all she sees is "trash." My favorite Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows poster = trash to her. My dad's slightly battered acoustic guitar = goodwill item or garage sale item or dumpster contents. Plans for a hydraulic engine system that I plan to earn a million dollars with = fire place food. Kirby pinata I made out of paper mache = art box, garage or any other place on earth (or not) where she will never have to look at it again. These are only a few examples. If I were to list all of the stuff she has an urge to give away, throw away, or light fire to, I would have to start a whole other blog.
However, this blog is about what our family is doing in our homeschool "mystery." So what we are doing this month is trying to figure out how we can stop environmental problems. We also went to Earth Day at the Chandler Environmental Education Center and International Migratory Bird Day at the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area. I think it would be nice if people would celebrate Earth Day past April 22nd.
Friday, April 23, 2010
A Bad Week for Homeschooling PR
My uphill battle to educate the world about homeschooling has just become steeper this week due to our lovely media. In case you missed the Good Morning America piece on Monday, April 19th, and then their follow up piece on Tuesday, April 20th, here's a story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that includes video footage from both days on one page: http://blogs.ajc.com/momania/2010/04/23/should-we-be-unschooling-our-kids/. The firestorm of articles and blog posts has continued all week to the point where I am now being labeled a "child abuser" because I homeschool my kids! Thank you to The Huffington Post for again providing another perspective on a mainstream media topic with Lee Stranahan's article "Unschooling: How Good Morning America Got It All Wrong" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-stranahan/unschooling-how-igood-mor_b_543880.html. Things are going to get even worse for homeschoolers with the new E! show Pretty Wild which features the antics of three "homeschooled" girls and their many problems. I feel I must watch to see what our "poster children" are up to! I recently saw a list of 10 celebrities that homeschool their children: http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2010/04/10-celebs-who-homeschool-their-kids/, and I'm not sure how I feel about my company!
So where does that leave our family? Like most homeschoolers, we attempt to resist any labels about how we homeschool since we take from a variety of different philosophies (as I've mentioned in previous blog posts.) However, I really feel the need to defend the unschooling movement right now because it seems so wrongly portrayed. In 2008, I had the good fortune to hear Sandra Dodd speak at a conference. Here is a link to her website: http://www.sandradodd.com/unschooling. For me, she was really the first one to put into words the many thoughts I already had about education. I really recommend her book, Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling. She has great ideas about homeschooling, but equally great ideas about how to be a loving parent.
From Sandra Dodd, I moved onto learning about John Holt (1923-1985), a former teacher who is often referred to as the "father of the unschooling movement." He wrote many books on the subject over the years, including publishing a homeschooling newsletter for 24 years, Growing Without Schooling. His book, Teach Your Own, is pretty much the homeschooling bible. These are just a few references about unschooling, and I personally feel that if you have kids, you are "teaching" them
so you may be interested in these books regardless of whether or not you're a homeschooling family. HOWEVER, if you are commenting about unschooling (and I'm talking to you George Stephanopoulos) then PLEASE do your research and find out what the basic principles are first. Really, who can argue with this concept: "We learn from everyday life experiences, and we learn what we learn when we need to learn it." It's really that simple. Think of times in your own life when this has proved true. There are endless examples. My friend homeschooled her son his entire life -- no formal schooling at all -- he is now 15 and at a public high school earning an A in his algebra class -- no prior formal math instruction -- and he's being recommended by his algebra teacher to go to math competitions representing his school. There's even talk of his wanting to become a math teacher in the future. So yes, it is true that homeschoolers can move in and out of the school system without difficulty. If you have ever voiced some sort of doubt about whether a homeschooled kid can go to college later on or hold down a job as an adult, I urge you to look at the evidence supporting these kids and open your minds to homeschooling.
So where does that leave our family? Like most homeschoolers, we attempt to resist any labels about how we homeschool since we take from a variety of different philosophies (as I've mentioned in previous blog posts.) However, I really feel the need to defend the unschooling movement right now because it seems so wrongly portrayed. In 2008, I had the good fortune to hear Sandra Dodd speak at a conference. Here is a link to her website: http://www.sandradodd.com/unschooling. For me, she was really the first one to put into words the many thoughts I already had about education. I really recommend her book, Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling. She has great ideas about homeschooling, but equally great ideas about how to be a loving parent.
From Sandra Dodd, I moved onto learning about John Holt (1923-1985), a former teacher who is often referred to as the "father of the unschooling movement." He wrote many books on the subject over the years, including publishing a homeschooling newsletter for 24 years, Growing Without Schooling. His book, Teach Your Own, is pretty much the homeschooling bible. These are just a few references about unschooling, and I personally feel that if you have kids, you are "teaching" them
so you may be interested in these books regardless of whether or not you're a homeschooling family. HOWEVER, if you are commenting about unschooling (and I'm talking to you George Stephanopoulos) then PLEASE do your research and find out what the basic principles are first. Really, who can argue with this concept: "We learn from everyday life experiences, and we learn what we learn when we need to learn it." It's really that simple. Think of times in your own life when this has proved true. There are endless examples. My friend homeschooled her son his entire life -- no formal schooling at all -- he is now 15 and at a public high school earning an A in his algebra class -- no prior formal math instruction -- and he's being recommended by his algebra teacher to go to math competitions representing his school. There's even talk of his wanting to become a math teacher in the future. So yes, it is true that homeschoolers can move in and out of the school system without difficulty. If you have ever voiced some sort of doubt about whether a homeschooled kid can go to college later on or hold down a job as an adult, I urge you to look at the evidence supporting these kids and open your minds to homeschooling.
Leif Ericson and The Great Golden Age
Think back to your family history. A long time ago, did one of your ancestors live in a different country? Or maybe a whole other continent? If so, how did you get here? This is a question that's been running on from generation to generation. Now we have the answer thanks to the explorers: people who dedicate themselves to finding the answer and discovering new places, finding new civilizations and food, and making a new, livable place for people out of their over-crowded cities.
Many people have heard of explorers. I know I learned about my first explorer in Kindergarten. It was Christopher Columbus. However, we're going farther back, to the time of the Vikings. In fact, the explorer we'll be focusing on was a Viking. His name was Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red.
I had never heard about Leif Ericson until I got into this class at Eagleridge called The Golden Age of Exploration. In this class, we play games and do group projects to help us learn about the explorers. The project I am working on presently is were you create a report on one of the early explorers. We were told to make a group of two so I grouped up with my friend Katie who I did my last project with, mapping out were Ferdinand Magellan and his crew would stop to get food and what food they got there. We chose to learn about Leif Ericson. Since the class is only an hour long, and we were going nowhere from reading a book, we agreed to search our facts at home and combine our facts together the next time we met.
Over the past few days, I have collected lots of facts on Leif Ericson. I took my collected facts and turned them into a four-paged fact paper. Some of the things I've learned are:
I also learned many other things, but then this blog would become a book if I added them all and I don't want sore fingers. This is one of the great things about homeschooling is that if you find an interesting subject, you have plenty of time to research it. If you would like to learn more about Leif Ericson go to: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Leif_Ericson
I got all my facts on Leif Ericson on this website.
Many people have heard of explorers. I know I learned about my first explorer in Kindergarten. It was Christopher Columbus. However, we're going farther back, to the time of the Vikings. In fact, the explorer we'll be focusing on was a Viking. His name was Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red.
I had never heard about Leif Ericson until I got into this class at Eagleridge called The Golden Age of Exploration. In this class, we play games and do group projects to help us learn about the explorers. The project I am working on presently is were you create a report on one of the early explorers. We were told to make a group of two so I grouped up with my friend Katie who I did my last project with, mapping out were Ferdinand Magellan and his crew would stop to get food and what food they got there. We chose to learn about Leif Ericson. Since the class is only an hour long, and we were going nowhere from reading a book, we agreed to search our facts at home and combine our facts together the next time we met.
Over the past few days, I have collected lots of facts on Leif Ericson. I took my collected facts and turned them into a four-paged fact paper. Some of the things I've learned are:
- Leif Ericson was a Norse explorer thought to be the first to land in North America
- He was born around 970 C.E. in Iceland, son of Eric the Red
- Leif's mother, Thjodhild, had three sons, Leif, Thorvald, and Thorstein, and a daughter, Freydis
- The main sources of Icelandic legends are the Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of Greenlanders
- Leif Ericson died in about 1020 C.E.
I also learned many other things, but then this blog would become a book if I added them all and I don't want sore fingers. This is one of the great things about homeschooling is that if you find an interesting subject, you have plenty of time to research it. If you would like to learn more about Leif Ericson go to: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Leif_Ericson
I got all my facts on Leif Ericson on this website.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Happy April Fools' Day
Click on the article below for The Onion on school-homing:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/increasing-number-of-parents-opting-to-have-childr,17159/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/increasing-number-of-parents-opting-to-have-childr,17159/
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