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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Countdown to Mystery Class: Less Than 2 Weeks to Go

Last year, Alex and I participated in Journey North's Mystery Class. This year's class will start on February 1st. Right now, you can go to their site and download Teacher's Packets #1 ("Discovering Latitude Clues") & #2 ("Discovering Longitude Clues") so you can practice with last year's data. These packets are new this year and I think they will be a GREAT help.


(photo of our graph at week 6 from last year)

If you are not familiar with the Mystery Class, you are basically going on a hunt to find 10 "mystery" classes which are "hidden" around the globe. You will first use sunrise/sunset data to help determine the latitude of each class. In late March, you will receive a special set of "longitude clues" to help you determine the longitude of each class. Then, you will start receiving weekly clues about each mystery class. These might include special holidays they celebrate, landmarks, history, etc. At this point, you will have narrowed down the classes to a latitude & longitude and are using the clues to help you locate the precise city.

These classes are a LOT of fun... and include a LOT of learning. We are getting ready to study the Olympics and then census, so I'm not sure if we'll be participating or not. But, I do want to encourage you to check it out, and I hope we will find the time to join in the hunt!
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9 comments:

  1. live4evermom12:43 AM

    That sounds like fun.

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  2. Sybille9:56 AM

    Yeah, it sounds great!

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  3. lahbluebonnet1:11 PM

    This looks interesting. Is it time consuming? What are you looking for? Cities?
    I used your macro tip on taking pictures of my stitches from class last Sat. It worked great, except that a few of them got yellowed color for some reason.
    Blessings,
    Laurie

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  4. l7:49 PM

    I do hope you will participate! I find it fun to see fellow homeschoolers do the same as us. It does sound like you are having a busy time coming up though, so I understand..
    I like your header photo, it looks great ;)

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  5. Robin9:22 AM

    Agh!! I'm so tempted! It was so time consuming that first year that we did it, but Cade learned so much that it makes me want to do it again to reinforce what he learned. Now that we don't have the learning curve to battle we COULD just concentrate on figuring out the clues.
    Hmmm, I don't know.
    I'll think about it over the weekend, see what he wants and let you know. It would be fun to do it with you this year.

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  6. Julie6:08 AM

    Thanks for the link and heads-up in this! We have just started studying more geography and this looks like it would help. I'll look into it.
    I saw in an earlier post that you were in Oklahoma during our Christmas "blizzard." We were snowed in, couldn't even get out of the driveway for several days. It was quite an experience.
    Blessings, Julie (oldschoolmarm)

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  7. Julie6:11 AM

    Oops, "on this" instead of "in this."
    I hate typos :-)!
    Julie

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  8. Melissa4:42 PM

    I will definitely be checking this out! I've visited Journey North's awesome site a couple of times but haven't been able to participate in too much yet.

    Blessings,
    Melissa
    www.inthesparrowsnest.com

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  9. Ms Eva2:53 PM

    Okay. We've been playing a little with the sample packets and reviewing vocabulary. We've also practiced finding local sunrise / sunset data and thereby calculating photoperiods. How much more do we really need to practice or do to prepare ourselves? I assume that for the first several weeks we are just calculating photoperiods and graphing this data. Is that accurate? The directions on the site are overwhelming. Help please....

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