Hudson River Quadricentennial Time Capsule

A couple of weeks ago, our friends at Beczak Environmental Education Center in Yonkers forwarded us some information about the Hudson River Quadricentennial Time Capsule Project. I asked Mikro to think about it and come up with something to submit. I showed him the format, and he dictated the following (with a little prompting from mom, along the lines of, "What else did we do for the Quadricentennial?")

Here's Mikro's submission:

About Life Now:

I am six and a half years old. I'm homeschooled and I have lots of friends. We have been studying about Henry Hudson and the Hudson River -- that it starts in a fresh water area and flows to the Atlantic Ocean, and the tides mix in salt water and make the water brackish. We study about the creatures that live in the river like pipefish, American Eels, flounder, and we even saw a seahorse that was caught at Beczak. We saw the flotilla of ships sail up the Hudson for the Quadricentennial, and we saw the Old Dutch Fleet at Peekskill. We learned about the Dutch settlers who came here from Europe and started New Amsterdam which became New York City, and we learned about the Native Americans who lived here first, even thousands of years before Henry Hudson sailed up the river. I love dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures. Did you know that mammoths used to live here in the Hudson Valley? We went to the Museum of the City of New York and saw exhibits about New Amsterdam and Mannahatta. I love the Hudson River and I am glad I live near it. I like to take classes at Beczak and learn all about it. I love music about the river, especially Pete Seeger's "My Dirty Stream" and Lisa Atkinson's "Hudson River Stew" about cleaning up the pollution to make the river healthier for fish, birds and people, too.

Message for the Future:

I hope you love the river like I do and remember to take care of it and the animals too.

Something About You:

I love dinosaurs and I want to be a paleontologist when I grow up. My mom is an artist and my dad works on computers. We live in Croton and we love the river.

We also submitted a bunch of photos by email, and sent them the link to our blog. We were really happy to receive an email telling us that this blog was also included in the Time Capsule, which was buried in the park behind Beczak on October 24, 2009. It's fun to think of kids a hundred years from now reading all about Mikro's homeschool adventures, and especially the Quadricentennial stuff we've been doing lately. I wonder how education will have changed by then...