Rainforest We Built in Our Front Entry

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Ecuador and the Rainforest in the Entryway

When I graduated from high school then left college, I was starving in many ways. After 15 years of school, I was starving for a real education. I tell people that my real education finally began when I married Allen, and it’s true. Finally, I could learn what I wanted to learn and educate myself the way I could actually learn—by going and doing—not sitting and listening. So, I educated myself from 1981 to today. I started a home-based education course for myself and my kids which I call—Creation Education.

Our home-based Creation Education, where we learn then go and do, began with me and continued with our kids, beginning with our oldest, Carl all the way through Ben, our last child. Our family read dozens of books from the library and watched many documentaries studying the many types of animals from pole to pole and continent to continent.  We studied ecosystems from the arctic to the tropics, including dinosaurs, and flora and fauna from the tops of mountain glaciers to the bottom of the ocean floor. We learned about deep sea vents, the Galapagos Islands and the unique famous Galapagos tortoises and other indigenous animals and plants. The older children created a watershed diorama using homemade salt clay to simulate the summits of mountain glaciers to glacial streams to river tributaries, ponds, lakes, fjords, estuaries, saltwater lagoons and mangroves and on to the oceans. We studied the ocean, the whales, and the ecosystem around deep-sea vents, and more, using the Jason Project as our curriculum. Jason is an ROV, an underwater remotely operated vehicle which was sponsored by Allen’s employer, at the time, EDS Electronic Data Systems owned by Ross Perot. We studied library books about how volcanoes were formed, the different types of volcanoes and where they were in the world. We studied about the Ring of Fire, which is the hundreds of volcanos that circle the Pacific Ocean. We studied rocks and minerals and all sorts of insects. I loved learning what I wanted to learn.

Besides our family studies, I felt like my part as a homeschool mom was to wait for my kids to tell me what they wanted to study, then help them.  It’s called self-directed learning.  I was getting frustrated because no one was telling me anything. But I had an insatiable desire to experience a rainforest. I craved learning and knowing about tropical rainforests, then to go visit them. In Idaho, on the farm, I got this crazy idea to build a “rainforest” somewhere in our house, something like a walk-in diorama, maybe even in the front room. Making a rainforest in my house seemed ridiculous. Who would do that?  “Just leave the front room alone,” is what I always told myself, as I let the thought pass.

But then, I wanted to do what I wanted to do, because I wanted to do it. It seemed foolish and exciting to finally succumb. I locked the rarely used front door and started to build a rainforest in the entryway.

The Rainforest Project began in 1999, just before the turn of the century. Carl, our oldest, was in high school, the other five kids were home. I bought a rainforest picture book and studied books from the library, of course. The kids were invested in Mom’s idea. We worked two days a week for four months creating an Amazon rainforest full of plants and animals. The rainforest was made of paper rocks, and dirt, paper waterfalls, sky, and plants, animals made from fake fur, birds from feathers and anything else that reminded me of anything that might be in a rainforest. We listened to stories and musicals of that day while we created. It was fun and engaging for all. We worked filling the entryway with all things jungle until I was satisfied.

By the time we finished, we ALL wanted to go to a rainforest. Even Carl and Allen wanted to go to a rainforest. “How am I going to get eight people to a rainforest?” I asked the universe. “How could we possibly all get there—-for cheap?”

People who came to our house loved standing or sitting in the rainforest gazing around at all the interesting flora and fauna. Our rainforest, where it never rained, sat there for two years without us adding another thing. The green paper leaves, yarn spider web where the giant bead spider sat, and the fake fur animals all sat gathering dust waiting for the time to be taken down.

We took our rainforest down just days before we left for Ecuador to go to a REAL rainforest to live there for a year—FOR CHEAP, real cheap. Ecuador is the most ecologically diverse country in the word because it includes the Galapagos Islands. We had studied those ecosystems from the mountain glaciers to the ocean floor. We learned and then we went. It was a gift from God. God sent us to Ecuador because we were ready to go, ready to finish our Creation Education. God’s like that.

You can read about our adventure in the Ecuador blog.