You may already know this but my husband and I met in college in the outdoors club called "Wilderness Adventures."  The club went on many backpacking, canoeing, and other outdoor trips through Buffalo State College. all of our stuff We continued to backpack and canoe even after we got married but then it took a side-seat to raising a family. However, this year we now think that it's time to take the boys (6 and 9) on their first outdoor backpacking adventure. We have taken them on many car-camping trips since they were 1 (imagine a pack-in-play in a tent and you have the right idea). So now we think that they are ready. Our first trip was to one of our favorite short loops in the southern tier of Western New York, the Minister Creek Area. According to Backpacker magazine: "This 6.4-miler loops through the lush forest surrounding Minister Creek, passing glacial boulders, wooded caves, and a plethora of streams. Follow leaf-...

Some of you may not know this but my husband and I met in the outdoor club in college. Since our family has grown (we now have 2 boys who are 9 and 6 years old) it has been challenging to continue our backpacking and canoeing trips to say the least so in the past couple years we have been family camping with our car. This past weekend we went camping at Stony Brook State Park in Central New York State. my husband and son to the left of the falls Daddy carrying Andrew back to the trail Here are some little camping tricks we have learned over the years that work well: 1) prep food at home and freeze it if you can  I made these breakfast burritos from Ninth and Bird's Blog and froze them at the campsite you can set them out so they thaw and then put them on the fire so they get indirect heat (NOT directly over the flames or coals) FYI: I made extras for mornings at home and froze those also. To heat them up in the microwave put them on 50% power for...

The Digital Wave conference is tomorrow and it is one of my favorite days of the school year. I find it exhilarating to learn about new tool and ideas and to be around people who want to learn the same. This year I am presenting at two different sessions. The first one is called "Moodle on Fire" and it consists of a panel of teachers who have figured out how powerful Moodle and online learning can be in the classroom. Even though we may run our classes differently, we want to share our experiences with others so they would be afraid to stretch their teaching style and try a new tool like Moodle. My second presentation is called "Whoa! I didn't know Google could do that!" and I will be showing others some of the neat new things that you can do with Google. Including blogging and making money, advanced searches, creating and using forms, turning forms into graded quizzes. Even though the conference is tomorrow, I am sharing my presentation now so it will be re...

This blog post was written by Madison (Mady) MacPeek, a 9th grade Living Environment student at Lancaster High School, Lancaster NY.      The students and teacher in S11 have been getting very green lately. For the 2013 Erie County Department of Environment and Planning Earth Day Rain Barrel Painting Contest they have done just that. The Coca - Cola Bottling Company of Buffalo provided the blank barrels, but the students in Mrs. Balling's Biology class gave it personality. The rain barrel was first sanded and primed with Glidden Gripper. Rain Barrel primed with Glidden Gripper.      The design concept centered around the idea that water is necessary for all life on Earth, and the students painted the barrel during 5 minute class breaks between periods.  The design sketched out on the barrel The paints that we used. The parts of the design were color coded to match paint colors that we had available. ...