WE WON!!!

We did it! Third year in a row! We found all 10 Mystery Class locations! Our homeschool (with many other homeschool families) is part of the list of winning classes with all 10 answers correct.

Next week, we will get to meet the actual classes that participated in being the mystery locations!

Mystery Class 2010 :: Our answers

Now that the deadline for entering the answers is passed (April 30), I can share with you our answers...This year was an interesting year again, with some locations a little more tricky than others!

I can't say enough good things about this activity. We love it and look forward to it all year long! It combines math, world geography, science, researching skills (with internet and globe/atlas), and learning about world culture and history. If you are interested, please visit Journey North Mystery Class, it is a free yearly event.

I hope we are correct this time around again...this is our third year participating and if we win, it would be our third win! Each location has a link to wikipedia, so you can find out a bit more about each if you wish.


Mystery Class #1 : Winnebago, USA
Mystery Class #2: Monteverde, Costa Rica
Mystery Class #3: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica
Mystery Class #4: Christchurch, New Zealand
Mystery Class #5: Kuching, Malaysia
Mystery Class #6: Brussels, Belgium
Mystery Class #7: Princess Elisabeth Base, Antarctica
Mystery Class #8: Barneo, Arctic Ocean Ice Sheet
Mystery Class #9: Pekanbaru, Indonesia
Mystery Class #10: Onjuku, Japan

We will find out the actual locations on May 7th! Only a few days away...

Mystery Class Update!

We are getting close to the end now!

We have had a ton of fun again this week working with the interdisciplinary clues, but,

I won't be posting our guesses now until after the contest deadline of April 30th.

I had an interesting comment this past week regarding my posting our guesses here and well, to make a long story short, I wouldn't want any other school student to use my guesses (should I say "cheat") without doing the work themselves.

I also had another comment from Sarah (dstb) asking about the graphs that are making. There was no e-mail or blog attached to your blogger profile, so I am answering here! I hope you will see this :)

I didn't come up with this particular way of graphing the photoperiod. It is on the Journey North Mystery Class website here:

Graphing Photoperiod A Different Approach.

We really like seeing the decrease or increase of daylight with these graphs.

Journey North Mystery Class Update!

Now the fun begins! Adrienne and I have so much with the Interdisciplinary Clues every year. This time, Andre is joining us.
We calculated the approximate longitude for each of the mystery classes with the Longitude Clues using the time of sunrise on the equinox for each location in Universal Time from last week and it helped us make our guesses this week.

Here are our guesses so far, using the longitude clues, the weekly photoperiod collected since February, and the interdisciplinary clues. We could be wrong, this is early on still, and in the past, we were wrong with our first guesses...

Mystery Class #1: North America
Mystery Class #2: Central America
Mystery Class #3: Antarctica
Mystery Class #4: Marshall Islands or New Zealand (South Islands)
Mystery Class #5: Indonesia
Mystery Class #6: France or Spain or Belgium or Netherlands
Mystery Class #7: Queen Maud Land in Antarctica
Mystery Class #8: Arctic Ocean
Mystery Class #9: Island of Sumatra or Maylasia or Thailand
Mystery Class #10: Japan

Are you participating in Journey North Mystery Class? Leave me a comment if you are!

Journey North Mystery Class ~ Update

Journey North Mystery Class ~ Update

Here are the charts for this week for Mystery Class.

Journey North Mystery Class ~ Update

Journey North Mystery Class ~ Update # 2

This week, we were able to seperate the Northern Hemisphere locations from the Southern Hemisphere ones.

One location is still in complete darkness, while the other is only receiving daylight!

Mystery Class has started!

For more information, visit Journey North Mystery Class!

Clara is ready too!

Book Sharing Monday :: Two Books about John Harrison

Longitude and Latitude are a big part of Journey North Mystery Class, which starts today. I searched the library for books on those topics and found these two.

Both books are biographies of John Harrison (1693-1776), a very determined and persistent englishman that worked for over 40 years in designing and perfecting a clock (H1, H2, H3) and a watch (H4, H5) that would be able to keep accurate time at sea. This was very important in helping ships know their accurate position. By knowing the time at their home port, they could calculate the longitude.

The first one, our favourite, is "Sea Clocks: The Story of Longitude" by Louise Borden and illustrated by Erik Blegvad. You can read more about sea clocks here too.

"Most important, when John was a boy, he had a hunger for books and for learning, a hunger most other village folk didn't have. He learned to read and write from his father because in a river village like Barrow, there were no schools and few books."

The second one is "The Man Who Made Time Travel" by Kathryn Lasky and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. My children and I didn't enjoy the illustrations as much in this one, but the story was told in an interesting way, just like the book by Louise Borden. A few more details were added, such as the explanation of the different method people came up with to measure longitude at sea. The Time on Tiptoe Method and the one involving a dog's used bandages were quite different! Every one in that day must have been trying to come up with something in order to win the prize given by the British Parliament (equivalent to several millions of today's dollar!).

"After 147 days at sea, H4's error was only a minute and 54 seconds, a remarkable achievement for any clock in an era when even a timepiece on solid land might have errors of several minutes."

If you would like to participate in Book Sharing Monday, please leave a comment here. I would be very happy to add your blog to my list of participants and visit you!

Journey North Mystery Class..coming soon!!

This will be our 3rd year participating in this awesome project. Adrienne and I have won with 100% correct answers the past 2 years. We love it!


This project incorporates math, geography and science. We have learned so much about different places in the world, about the seasons, graphing, calculating photo periods..and more.

You can find out more by visiting the website : Journey North Mystery Class. You can also read our past Mystery Class posts here (2009)  and here (2008).