Corps of Discovery

Photo: Astoria column

WESTWARD HO: I'll admit, I didn't have a Big Plan when we upped this a.m. (all 4 of us before 6 a.m., might I add). But after a pre-dawn breakfast, the kids were rarin' to go, so I thought we'd go ahead and tackle a big book/subject I'd been sitting on for awhile. ... It was time to cover the Lewis & Clark expedition. We pretty much spent our whole day on the topic.

We had a wonderful book, "How We Crossed the West - the Adventures of Lewis & Clark" to get us started. Written by Rosalyn Schanzer and published by the National Geographic Society, it's a colorful, engaging introduction to the Corps of Discovery, their journey and important place in U.S. history.

The book starts off with a map, and we spent some time studying it. Where did their journey start. Where did they end? Why did the make the trip? We asked lots of questions and got many of them answered as we read the story.

One of the things I made sure to point out with the kids was that without Thomas Jefferson's vision, there would not have been a Corps of Discovery. He's the one who asked his private secretary Meriwether Lewis to conduct a passage to the western ocean. Lewis, in turn, contacted his friend William Clark who jumped at the opportunity.

Clark's diaries were the basis for most of the book, which added to its authenticity. We read our way from Missouri up through Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota and then westward across Montana, Idaho and Washington and Oregon.

One of the things we talked about was how important map making was to this venture. We studied Clark's famous map of the expedition closely, following every bend of the Missouri River.

We talked about how this famous map of William Clark's showed the whole journey, but it's certainly NOT the map they started with. Rather, this map made subsequent expeditions feasible.

ONWARD: To augment our experience reading the book, we hopped online. We found a super cute, very low tech stop animation production of the Lewis and Clark expedition produced by a young girl named Sarah. I hope by watching stuff like this, lightbulbs go off in CJ and Annabelle's heads (that they, too, could take on such a project).

We also played a game based on the book we read. The goal was to make friends with natives, open the West to trade, and look for a Northwest Passage. We made some good decisions - and some not so good decisions. Fortunately, we eventually had "Ocian in view!" just like Lewis and Clark.

TURNING A NEW LEAF?: Tonight at dinnertime, CJ colored his menu (a novelty) and painstakingly so (also a novelty). Coloring has never been his favorite thing, but after the dragon yesterday and Mr. Krabs today, I'm wondering if a lightbulb has gone off in his head - that effort in = satisfaction out.LETTERS: Tonight, before and after dinner, we played with a deck of Scrabble cards. It was really fun!