Tide Pools

Last week the kids and I packed up the van, brought the dogs along for the ride, and headed up the coast. Specifically to Davenport Landing, and intentionally at low tide. I was eager to go on an outing, go exploring, lose ourselves to the wondrous beauty of nature and not worry about time. (Unless of course the tide started coming back in.) It was a beautiful day, during the week, the beach was all ours. Give or take a surfer or five.

Homeschooling/ unschooling/ no schooling, whatever you want to call it, I call it noschooling, because let's be honest here.Well, I'll be honest at another post, anyhow, this schooling of ours can get pretty tricky. Mostly, it is the meeting of everyone's needs, including the dogs......
I figured we would snap some photos of what we saw, head to the library during the week and learn about what we saw and touched. We saw quite a lot, unfortunately no sea stars, but many urchins, anemones, crabs of all kinds, and other inhabitants of the tide pools.

We had a wonderful time exploring, splashing and discovering. We have been to the tide pools many times before, however this time was a bit different. As we headed back to the van, satisfied with our outing, we decided to let the dogs have one last swim before heading home. We dropped our bags, grabbed the ball, headed to the shoreline, only to stop and stare. There above the shoreline was a beached baby sea lion. Two people were looking at it and of course our one dog Rascal decides to zoom in for a closer look. Thankfully, Ella was on top of it and called him and had him on leash before any damage was done to the sea lion or Rascal. With the help of a surfer, a local and myself, we eased the sea lion onto a blanket and helped it back into the shore break, which then it proceeded to swim away. Connor and Phoebe were at my side, Ella standing a ways off with the dogs. Hurray! We all felt so good! Phoebe and Connor excited to be so close to a sea lion, seeing everyone come together to help nature.

We headed back up to Ella, she told us she spoke with a surfer. He commented that many sea lions are washing up, the climate is changing, there is no fish. Our hearts sank. " We'll look it up", I said.
With that, we headed home, still full of excitement with all that had happened.

The funny thing for me is this. I have quite an amount of curriculum sitting at home, waiting to be opened and taught. All the "important information" children "need to know" by the time they are in such n such grade. Well, that curriculum kind of just sits there because when a day like this happens, it really hits home to me that, life is what teaches us. You just have to be open to letting it.