Classical Charlotte

Saturday we took a trip to Santa Barbara.  We wanted to see the low and high tide plus Doo was going to try mussels for the first time.  In Very Last First Time, Eva collected mussels for her dinner at the bottom of the sea.

First we hit the beach and explored along the sand during low tide.

Stearns Wharf.

We found many mussel shells along the beach.

Proudly showing off a mussel shell.

She enjoyed climbing on this mini “cliff”.  She would stomp near the edge and watch the sand cave under her foot.  One time she even fell with it!

Climbing the rocks.

We then went to the Moby Dick Restaurant on Stearns Wharf for lunch.  We got mussels for an appetizer along with drawn butter.  Doo pretended she was Eva and I was Eva’s mom.

I am happy to say that Doo loved the mussels dipped in the butter.  Me too!

We then met up with Doo’s friend Loco and his family at the Ty Warner Sea Center which is also on the wharf.  The center had a couple pet tanks, a tide pool, aquariums, puppets, books and even a preserved bottlenose dolphin with its innards on display!

Mussels!

I forgot to ask what kind of shark she touched.  After some research, my best guess is that it was a leopard shark.

Delicious!

After the sea center we headed up along the coast to a little playground by the sea.  We then checked out high tide from up above.  Doo enjoyed watching the waves come crashing onto the rocks below.

Loco's mama showing Doo the high tide.

After a week of rain it was a wonderful sunny day.  Doo had a great time exploring, learning and playing with her friend.

In Very Last First Time, Eva and her mother wear fur-hooded parkas, boots and mittens when going out to gather mussels.  We compared how they dressed to how we need to dress in the winter (Southern California here, so no fur-hooded anything!) and then discussed how we need to dress depending on the weather.

Doo then played several dressing for the weather games online:

Let’s Dress The Bear

Bobinogs Weather Dressing Game

Lecky Goes Outdoors

Dress Caillou

Dress Elmo For Fall

Doo then helped me list what clothes would be best for different types of weather and then circled clothes for Lecky the alien (see above game) as well.

Then we had to decide what to wear for today’s weather.  Southern California has had rain all week long (4 storms!) so Doo decided that rain boots, a rain jacket and warm clothes would be best.  We then headed down the street to the park and she had a blast getting EVERYTHING wet.

Doo did some of the buttoning herself.

We were the only ones at the park.

Checking out her soaked pants.

Emptying her boots.

Eva, in Very Last First Time, is an Inuk girl who lives in Northern Canada.  We read a little bit online about the Inuit culture and also discussed the singular and plural forms of the word (plus that meant discussing what singular and plural even meant).

We also filled out a little info booklet about the Inuit and used Google to find most of the answers.

Today we started rowing Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews and Ian Wallace.  The story takes place in Canada and is about a young Inuk girl who walks on the bottom of the sea for her very first time.  She lived on the tundra and the people of her village would go to the ocean, wait for the tide to go out and then cut a hole through the ice to go underneath where the tide pools were.  There they would collect mussels to eat.  The story chronicles her experience with collecting mussels on her own (without her mother) for her “very last first time”.

Our social studies lesson was about Canada.  We reviewed some facts about the country and then found it on Doo’s world map (she knew exactly where it was from looking at her map in the past).

She colored a map plus the flag, national animal and national symbol (maple leaf). And then we read the lyrics to the Canadian national anthem and watched/listened to the English and French versions.

We topped off the lesson watching a little video full of Canadian imagery. Doo was very excited about the horses and swings.