Blackhawk Museum Thursday

Thank you volunteer drivers! We need two more to make the trip go, so please sign up here if you can join us from 11:30 to 3:30 on Thursday.

We head to Sacramento via train next Tuesday, so prepare to meet us at the Berkeley Amtrak Station on Fourth Street a little earlier than usual.

Cohen-Bray

Fruitvale was awesome! The house and our hosts made history come alive. The tacos were delicious: we ate 100, to be exact, along with a vat of beans and a mountain of rice. Oakland is so diverse, and what a treasure the Fruitvale is.

Oregon Trail Design Challenge

Why just talk about what you would do on the trail? Why not model a river crossing by building a mini contraption to cross the creek in the park? That’s what students got up to at the end of the week last week, then took another stab at today. Alas, three groups lost their youngest family members. See the homework section for more news on that.

What is air?

The students explored the properties of air last week through discussion, exploration, reading, and video. Do you know which gas is most prevalent in the air we breathe? Stop by Cerrito and tell me what you think. No Googling alowed.

This is what great math looks like. Way to organize your calculations!

 

Homework

Write about your final FATES! Most of you had some trouble…see below for the full description of the canoe trip and Barlow Toll.

Math

• 4th grade and 5th grade have double-sided worksheets due Wednesday

Word Study

• study your spelling words
• Ch 14 Wordly Wise

Reading

• reading group assignments

Canoe Route

Gorge Cascades of the Columbia

Hood River County, Oregon

Mile 1860

You make good time from the Whitman Mission to Hood River, Oregon. Unlike the climate on the top side of Mount Hood, this protected valley in the mountain’s shadow is warm and moist. The Indians whom you hire as guides are very friendly and very generous. They
prepare a delicious meal of venison, corn, and wild tree fruit for you on the eve of your departure. The next morning a warm Indian Summer sun reflects brightly off the glistening Columbia Gorge as you prepare to leave. In fact, The Gorge, with it’s carpet of red and gold Indian Paintbrush (a wildflower) along its banks is one of the most breathtaking rivers you’ve ever seen.

The first day is fun. You’ve never traveled so fast on anything in your life! And the children are beside themselves with glee! You port your canoes at a riverside camp safely that evening and snack on the left-over venison that your guides have packed for you.

The second day you have to portage (climbing over huge boulders along the riverbank carrying everything!) for over three miles to avoid crashing over a 300-foot waterfall. Your feet are sore. Your muscles are aching. And the children whine incessantly. You arrive at camp in the dark and the rain, too exhausted even to eat.

On the third day the rapids become more furious. One of your canoes crashes against the rocks spilling its passengers into the cold, churning waters and splintering the canoe into thousands of pieces. Unfortunately, your guides hadn’t prepared for such an accident and you now have two too many people to cram into the remaining canoes. You must choose two from your party who will set up temporary camp and stay behind. Once the rest of you reach your destination, one of the Indians will portage back and escort the two who’ve been left. You pick a prominent point along the river to set up this camp so that the Indians will have no trouble finding the two. According to the Indians,
the two of you who stay shouldn’t have to wait more than a week.

Fate: Although the broiling river gobbled most of the few possessions you weren’t carrying on your back, you arrive at the end of the canoe trip tired, hungry and relieved to be alive. As soon as you port, one of your guides immediately heads back up river with their best canoe to collect the two who were left behind. The last you heard, the guide did find the campsite, where the embers in the stone-built fireplace were still warm. But the two emigrants themselves had completely disappeared. Some say there was talk of bear tracks in the sand around the campsite. But stories often get tangled when translated.

 

Barlow Toll Road

The day you reach the Barlow Toll Gate, everything is perfect. A welcoming late Indian Summer sun beckons you into the beautiful pass. You kill a few deer which provide fine fixins for over a week. You even find the last of an acre of wild berries ripening behind a sheltered ridge where the ground still thinks it’s summer. The trail is wide, dry and well maintained. For a while it seems as if nothing could go wrong.

Until one day the sky suddenly turns black, heavy and close. Within hours you experience something you haven’t seen in many months -snow. At first it’s fun. The horses perk up. The children frolic in it. And the mother’s dig out the woolly wraps. But the snowfall gets heavier and heavier by the hour. It becomes so thick you can barely see the wagon in front of you. And then so thick you can barely see the animal pulling your wagon. This is when you all decide to huddle you wagons and wait out the storm. You wait. And wait. And wait. A fire in the center of the circle keeps provides enough warmth to keep you all from freezing to death. But your animals aren’t close enough to it. You hear a giant roar in the middle of the night which you assume is an avalanche. The next morning, when the storm clears some, you send two scouts (pick two from your group) on ahead to assess whether the road is passable.

Fate: You had to burn one of your wagons for firewood so you’re forced to double up with other families. You lost half your animals. The ones huddled in the middle were saved, but those on the outsides froze to death (unless you bought those expensive fox and beaver coats!). And
those two scouts you sent on ahead? Well you heard another one of those roars about two hours after they left the camp. And they never returned… Even when the storm cleared completely and the road became passable again, you never saw a trace of them.