This morning, my mom and I dressed up as two mad scientists, called ourselves Professor Plot (Cora) and Professor Page (me), and got to talk about the Literacy Lab with 75 third-graders at a school in Los Altos, California. Before the trip began, we developed a geography Literacy Lab lesson that we’ve been using with schools. We talk about our mission, get the students physically involved in a United States geography activity, read the book The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman by Darcy Pattison or LaRue Across America by Mark Teague, and then do a couple of fun activities. Both activities are super fun because it’s about connecting to kids in other states. First, as a group, we create a scrapbook page about their school, city, and state.  Students brainstorm ideas about what they think other students should know about their state. In this case, California. At the end of our journey, we’ll make a copy of the scrapbook for every school so that students will get to see a picture of the different school classes we visited and hear what other students say about their own city and state. The second fun activity is that we are having students write postcards in every school we visit. The postcards include information about their hobbies, what other people should do if they visit the state, or any other information they think other students should know.  Then, in the next classroom or state, students get to pick a postcard and hear directly from another kid. Promoting writing for a personal purpose! (It’s so fun to read them afterwards…elementary school writing is the best. One of my favorites from Seattle read, “I live in Seattle, WA. I like to make people laugh. I am going to make you laugh right now. There is something on the pig’s nose.” Then on the picture side of the postcard, he had colored in the pig’s nose from Pike Place Market. True to his word, it did make me laugh). Literacy and fun – how can you get any better than that? 🙂

(My multiple attempts to upload photos on this hotel’s slow wi-fi failed. I will try to post the pictures tomorrow. Just picture my mom dressed up as a mad scientist with a green wig, bright pink earrings, a white lab coat, and bright pink shoes. I had a rainbow wig this time).

After the event, we had lunch with a good friend, and then headed out on the road. It’s cool to be talking about our journey in the morning and then be riding the journey in the afternoon. Today’s drive was particularly enlightening in terms of getting to know the country. We started in the highly populated Bay Area and just a few hours later, were out in wide open spaces. Going from a city through mountain passes and ending in the vastness that we’ve discovered is Nevada is a pretty wild experience. At about 8pm, we started getting a little tired and ready to settle down for the night. I had randomly picked a town on the map that seemed possibly big, but as it turns out, that town had nothing in it–no gas, restaurants, and definitely no hotels! So we had to keep going until we ended up in Winnemucca, where we stopped at a local and quite delicious barbecue restaurant before settling into the Shady Court Motel. Tomorrow, our goal is to get about an hour past Salt Lake City.