Switzerland Unit: Mountains...

I'm so bad about having us do science...  But since geology has always been one of my things, we get a fair bit of it in at least...  In fact, the other day we were discussing grade level.  One of Miss A's friends is a boy who shares her exact birthday.  He is in fifth grade.  She is in fourth.  (We, B and I, decided that since it is a late August birthday, and since she has had some disruptive moves and less than ideal teachers, we would hold her back a year.  Besides, what's the rush?)  This boy really lords it over her, and tells her she must be stupid or something.  So we talked about it.  I said that since we are in homeschool, grade level doesn't matter as much.  I said yes, she's in fourth grade, and that is where she is in math and stuff.  But in other areas, like earth science, she is probably in about ninth grade level, because we learn so much about volcanoes, plate tectonics, rocks, etc.  That made her feel better.  I said that her friend is in fifth grade, but in some areas, like ornithology, he might be in college level (he's very passionate about birds).  But in other areas he may be lower than her.  Mostly I want her to learn to not care about what other people say or think about her, but that's a hard lesson for everyone to learn...

Here are the mountain books we read:


This one is a good intro, not too much on each page.  Just enough for Miss A and Miss M to read as their last thing at the end of the school day before they got released to the great outdoors.  Any more text and they would have self-destructed.


Also good, early reader level.  A small child would be able to sit through.


These two also, good background info.


This one we did not like.  Well, I didn't.  It has some basic factual errors.  ("Plants grow at the bottom of mountains."  Really?  What about all the alpine plants?)

It did lead to a good discussion of two good words, alpine, and timberline.  So that was nice.  We went back through all the photos in all the books and looked at treelines and alpine flowers.

Also, we talked about mountains in the Gospel.  I asked them where Moses went to talk to Jehovah?  Also Abraham and his vision, Nephi and his vision,  Brother of Jared took his stones to the top of a mount to ask Jesus to touch them.  Isaiah calls the temple the mountain of the Lord, etc.