You can’t visit Tuscon and miss seeing the enormous Saguaro cactus in the National Forest nearby, as well as in nearly every commercial landscaping project. I remember reading to the big boys years ago about these giant plants – how they hydrated desert animals and provided homes for them. It was interesting to see them up close.

As you can see some of us just HAD to see how sharp their needles really are.

The rest of us had spent a considerable amount of time in the van by this point, which may explain my family spilling out into the desert to pose as cacti…

The children have made some notebook pages about what they saw. Alannah’s notebook journaling of late is particularly fun to read. She has been moving into more anecdotal writing. Sometimes the composition leaves a bit to be desired but for now we aren’t bothering her about it. We have turned a corner from seeing notebooking as a necessary part of her academic life to her enjoying it for personal reasons. That is worthy of celebration, especially for this child, so I won’t quibble about paragraph indentation or words that were omitted because her thoughts were coming faster than her hands could keep up. (In fact her mother has that same problem ; ))

There is a bit of lag time when students begin to record their own narration. Narrations shorten again and the pages don’t always look like polished. What is most important for nature notebooks and biographical sketches is that they are owning the content, that they have interacted with the subject and formed some personal opinions about it. The rest will come in time as it is addressed in formal English class.

What else? We wrapped up our time in AZ at an old west recreation site. We had planned only to have dinner but just as we were leaving their wild west show began.

Great timing! Aidan declared his one goal in life (this month ; )) is to be a trick roper.

As we were leaving we passed a gypsy caravan. I couldnt resist rounding them up for a pic to send to my favorite Gypsy Caravan. <g>

Some desert links we have enjoyed:

Desert Giant by Barbara Bash – the one book I’d read them… if I read them only one book. ; )

Sing Down the Rain not to be confused with Sing Down the Moon

Desert Town This is part of the ‘small town’ series. I am going to look for Mountain Town next.

Coyote Raid in Cactus Canyon by Jim Arnosky  This was especially cool because we have some similar wildlife at home for which we had no names til now.

Sonoran Desert Kids Site Way fun! Check out the habitat crafts. The pages to color are stunning for coloring pages and would fill a lovely desert notebook.

Happy Trails to you……..