Journey North Mystery Class
January 24, 2011 @ 7:40 pm | Filed under: Fun Learning Stuff, Journey North
...starts next week! Are you ready?
Here’s a post I wrote three years ago about the project. We’ve done it every year since, gosh, 2006 I think? Every year it has been a blast. Always so exciting when you start figuring out where the ten mystery cities are…
We’ve done the project by ourselves as a family, with a group of online friends, with a group of local friends—all sorts of arrangements. The last couple of years have been immensely fun, each year culminating in a big feast where each group brings a dish representative of its assigned Mystery Location.
Can’t wait!
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7 Reponses | Comments Feed
Sarah (aquafortis) says:
What a fun project! Maybe I’ll have to try it out sometime. 🙂
On January 24, 2011 at 8:32 pm
Mamalion says:
Eek! Seriously? I’m so not ready! We love this project….
On January 24, 2011 at 9:27 pm
Jennifer says:
I was wondering about this yesterday. I need to print up my charts and graphs!
On January 25, 2011 at 5:50 am
Amber says:
Yay! I’ve been wanting to do this with my daughter for years, and now I think she is old enough to participate and get it! Thanks for the heads up.
On January 25, 2011 at 8:16 am
maria says:
Is it realistic for one family to do this alone? I see many join in with other families so each family is responsible for just one or two of the Mystery locations. It sounds very fun, but I must say I feel I am not quite seeing all that is involved and have this feeling it may be more than I realize. Help?
🙂 Maria
On January 25, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Melissa Wiley says:
@Maria, we have done it alone before. The weekly photoperiod calculations are quite simple, but if you are calculating for all ten mystery cities, it can take a bit of time. Of course, you don’t *have* to track all ten cities—you could pick two or three to focus on, and just chart those.
In a nutshell, here’s the workload:
1) Each week you look up your local sunrise and sunset times to determine your PHOTOPERIOD (amount of daylight). You graph this on a chart you print out from the website.
2) Each week, you check the Journey North website for the Mystery City sunrise/sunset times. You calculate photoperiods and mark these on the same chart as in step #1.
(This photoperiod graph is going to help you determine the LATITUDE of the Mystery Cities.)
3) At the spring equinox, you get a new set of data for calculating each Mystery City’s LONGITUDE.
4) In April (I think), Journey North starts posting weekly CULTURAL CLUES to help you zero in on the Mystery Cities. That is when things get really exciting!
5) By May, you have probably figured out where all the cities are. You submit your answers to Journey North (if you wish). They will post the answers and you can see if you were right!
So–not too complicated–just a lot of math at first! 🙂
On January 27, 2011 at 4:38 pm