field trip

We took a field trip this week to Mt. St. Helens in Washington. My best friends kids were on spring break, so we took advantage of the opportunity and spent a few days with them. We don't usually travel on normal school holidays due to crowding. But we wanted to spend time with them.  We spent a day at Mt. St. Helens as planned. Unfortunately, the cloudy weather kept us from actually seeing the mountain. 
Before we went I spent some time learning about the volcano with the kids.
 
We watched a video Mt. St. helens back from the dead.  I loved this one because it describes the amazing return of life to the mountain and the lake just a few years after the explosions, instead of many many years as had been predicted by scientists.

Next some sections of our science book, God's design for Heaven and Earth, our Planet earth. We read about plate techtonics, mountain, and kinds of volcanoes, as well as Mt. St. Helens.
We also read a couple of other books, Mt. St. Helens, and Will It Blow.

The main part of our day there was spent at the 7 Wonders Museum.  The focus here is highlighting 7 kinds of formations that resulted from the explosion, mud flows and subsequent volcanic action.  It is an awesome place to study the formations because all seven can be found in other places around the country/world and have been used for decades by scientists to explain evolution and age of the earth, often citing layers as proof of millions of years. However, Mt. St. Helens layed down layers and formed all kinds of things in three hours, not millions of years. Which means there is significant evidence for Noah's world wide flood.

After looking around and after an hour long power point presentation our guide took us on a hike to the sediment dam, The weather was cool, but not terrible, a great way to end the day. Then travel back and on to OMSI the next day.

OMSI was crowded!  All of us were exhausted at the end of this day, I'd like to go back sometime off season, I think we might enjoy it a bit more!  Fun was had by all, and we got to enjoy a long slow dinner at Claim jumper, one my favorite restaurants!

Since coming home we have watched Dinosaurs, Genesis and the Gospel, with Ken Ham.  I really really like pretty much any material by Ken Ham.  He does such a fantastic job of answering the never ending questions about Noah's flood, fossils, genetics....LOVE IT!