Field Trips – Page 3 – Preparation Education

Three Seattle Museums

November 21, 2011November 10, 2011prayingmother

This is an old post, that I never got finished, until now.

You know I’m a homeschool mom, because I turn everything into a school project. I wonder sometimes if my kids get weary of my turning everything into learning opportunities, but they’re stuck with me and my ways. (Sorry guys!)
We’ve had company off and on over the last few months and we wanted to do some fun things with them, so we headed out to some local museums. The first adventure was to visit the Future of Flight museum. I didn’t get to go, because they don’t allow preschool aged children, (not that I’m a preschooler, but I have one…) so I stayed home and cooked up a big meal for everybody. Which, I thorougly enjoyed, and so did they, by the way. My older two kids along with their cousins, uncles, grandparents and dad went there though for a tour. They came back all talking at once. They had seen a 787. They had seen the largest building in the world by volume. They had seen the assembly line for the 747. They had all kinds of things to tell me. Unfortunately, they were not allowed to take pictures, but they did their best to describe everything they had seen. Then I did my homeschool mom act and made an assignment to each of my kids to write a report on their trip. They enjoyed the project enough, that they not only decided to write, but to design a page for their report. I gave them some help. They spent quite a bit of time searching online for pictures for their reports.

The next trip we went on was to the Museum of Flight. Sound like we have a theme going? It’s not because we have been studying about airplanes or anything it’s just that these are what struck our fancy, but being that I’m a homeschool mom, I’m wondering if it’s time to do a lapbook on airplanes or the Wright Brothers or something! I don’t know though. Sometimes, I realize that I can’t make a full blown unit out of everything we do. There’s just not enough time. However, since my previous writing assignment turned out so well, I definitely have a theme going on that, and assigned another writing assignment. We were allowed to take pictures on this trip, and being that JD Boy has a new camera, he had his along, so he took lots of pictures and was able to use that for his page.

The notebook pages.

Some fun pictures of the day. 1. Moon Rover replica, 2. Blue Angels, 3. WWII plane, 4. Future Astronaught

Our third museum visit was to the Pacific Science Center. We actually have made several trips to the Science Center and I have to confess that I haven’t required writing assignments every single time. I should have, because there is so much to see there, that each time, they could write about something different. But you know, even homeschool moms, slack up once in awhile. This time even my preschooler decided that he wanted to make a report. Our pass still hasn’t expired, so I’m hoping to still get in one more set of reports out of them on the Science Center in the next few weeks. They each chose their own pictures again. JD Boy took all of his pictures. The other two, hunted down pictures on Flickr that were Creative Commons license.

The notebook pages.

Some shots from the Butterfly House at the science center. Links to the full size pictures. 1. Butterfly, 2. Butterfly, 3. Butterfly, 4. Butterfly

A very important shot–one of the Space Needle from the Pacific Science Center. All photos from both museums were taken by my 8 yo son, JD Boy.

So there you have it — three museums and three reports and I was able to count three days, that would have otherwise been discounted, as school days! After all, I have written reports to prove it now.

If you are visiting the Seattle area and are planning visits to any of these museums and would like copies of these notebook pages, feel free to email and ask.

Camping on Orcas Island, part. 2

November 16, 2011November 10, 2011prayingmother

Just a bunch of people shots (well mostly people shots) from our camping trip, that I thought were fun.

Baby is happy about her first camping trip!

Baby still learning to walk! Dirt is forgiving!

“This is great! I can throw food on the floor, without Mom freaking out!”

Our next nature buff discovering fir cones.

Can’t camp without a campfire, and they’re especially appreciated when the mornings are chilly!

Dirty but happy!

Camping bed head!

JD Boy’s picture of one of the many seals hanging out by Shaw Island.

A poppy. Another picture by JD Boy. He’s taking after his father’s photography skills.

A picture of the real photographer among us.

I have no clue what he was taking a picture of. I think I was the one that had the view in my viewfinder, all that was behind me was a stone wall. Oh, well, camera wars are fun, especially with my hubby.

Camping on Orcas Island

November 15, 2011November 10, 2011prayingmother

We had a very fun camping trip to Orcas Island this summer. One of the most fun camping trips ever. Well, I always say that unless it rains on us. I really enjoy camping with my kiddoes. It’s so fun to go exploring in the wilderness with them. We saw so many things. Here are a few.

Of course, we had our binoculars and kept our eyes open for new and loved birds. Here are a couple that afforded us their picture.

A wren singing his heart out. Something that just always fills me with delight to see and hear.

A Rufous Hummingbird sipping from Great Hedge Nettle. (I hope I got my flower identification right.) Talk about jewels. This kind of beauty just makes me get goosebumps. I love God’s artwork!

God’s artwork is just as beautiful in wide shots as in those close shots.

We took a nice hike to this beautiful waterfall in Moran State Park. It was stunning, no doubt about it. I decided to add the view to my nature journal, since I tend to add close pictures to my nature journal of birds and flowers and things like that and I’d like to learn how to draw nature scenes like this. Unfortunately, one of my boys decided that mother nature was calling loudly, just as soon as I had seated myself and started my sketch, so it is still unfinished. The good thing was that my husband had the camera, so maybe I’ll finish someday, looking at these pictures for reference. My son and I ended up hiking back out much faster than we had hiked in. We freaked out my husband and the other kids, because we couldn’t get their attention as they were ahead of us and my son didn’t want to lose time chasing them down. Anyway, we obviously met back up, but it added a few laughs for our camping trip!

This one was taken after I left, but I love it.

This is the newest toy at our house. (Thanks to Craig’s List.) We took it with us. And enjoyed lots of paddling in the lakes. Now we need another one.

This is the view from the fire lookout tower on Mt. Constitution. Actually, this is only part of the view. We could see a long ways and see lots of islands. Other than the fact that being a fire lookout might have been boring most of the time, this one sure had awesome views.

On our way to Orcas, we visited a couple of other islands, here a couple of shots from Shaw Island.

This is Shark Reef at Shaw Island. I want to take my dad here. He’s a very good artist. I want him to paint what he sees. It’s on my list of things for him to do!! Doesn’t that look like it should be made into a painting to you?

Two stragglers we found there.

Bad hair is one of the fun parts of camping. I have a few of those kinds of shots too, but I’ll save those for my next post. I just get this devilish little thrill of taking pictures of people around the campground, you never can get pictures quite like that anywhere else. So next time. Thanks for enjoying the beauty of our trip with us!

Mexico Pictures

March 2, 2011March 2, 2011prayingmother

We recently spent several days in Mexico. We have so, so many pictures. I don’t know how to choose which ones to post, but here are a few that I sure like.

1. Little Blue Heron, 2. Mama and Baby, 3. Sunset silhouette, 4. Captured Orange Fronted Parakeet, 5. Orange Fronted Parakeet Captured, 6. Orange Fronted Parakeet in Captivity, 7. Orchid, 8. Kids playing at the beach, 9. Leaf Cutter Ants, 10. Rosette Spoonbill, 11. Orchid, 12. Jacana, 13. Wood Stork, 14. Vermillion Flycatcher, 15. Tri Colored Heron, 16. Papa and Baby, 17. Little Blue Heron and Minnow, 18. Building Sand Castles

Does Vacation Count for School?

February 23, 2011May 3, 2012prayingmother

So how do you receive counsel about homeschooling from non-homeschoolers? Do you grin and bare it? Do you stick your fingers in your ears? Do you nod your head in agreement with something you know you’ll never actually worry about or do? Do you roll your eyes? Do you give the reasons why the speaker doesn’t actually know anything about what they are talking about? What do you do when people, seemingly with the utmost concern, come up and offer you advice on how to homeschool?

I recently vacationed to a foreign country with my family, which includes two school-aged children. I was a bit bemused by the number of comments that I got about my children and school. I especially got lots of comments while in airports and planes.

It always started, “so you must have just been down here for the weekend”, or “you must just be coming down just for the weekend, because of school. So how long are you here for?”

My answer (said with a little hesitance, because I knew what was coming next) “No actually we’re down here for almost two weeks.”

Looks of shock and dismay. So I always rushed to explain without waiting, “We homeschool.”

The first time I stopped there, but got one of those knowing looks like, “Ahah, bold faced truants.”

After that I rushed on to say, “We brought our school with us.”

That calmed the fears of some. I don’t know if it was completely true though. It depends what the definition of “brought our school with us” is. I have the feeling that if they watched us, they wouldn’t have agreed with my statement at all. We really truly vacationed. My school-aged children brought along books to read. A couple of them actually were readers. See, I told you, that we brought school with us. They brought along their nature journals and some pencils. Isn’t that bringing school with us? We had our snorkel gear. Surely that counts for school stuff. We read a book on the life of Christ everyday. We studied from the most important textbook of all, the Bible.

Maybe I should have said, “We’ll make it up in the summer.” But I haven’t planned our summer out yet. I’m sure it will be full of nature study too, so will it actually be more school-like than our vacation? Maybe, I don’t know.

So, do I think that my kids were schooled while we were vacationing? I do. While I do think that they need to get some math done now that we’re home, I happen to think that they learned tons while we were vacationing and I’m off to record our learning experiences in my journal.

They snorkeled and saw lots of neat fish. They went birding every day with their dad and saw and identified some of the neatest birds, you can imagine. They had hands-on social studies and geography lessons. They were encouraged that learning Spanish was a practical thing to do.

Now I have this question for you. What do you count as school? Do you have to do math, reading, language arts, penmanship, spelling, history, science, Bible, etc. before you count it as a homeschool day? Do you count field trips? What do you call a field trip? Don’t you think that vacation counts as one long field trip?

I still don’t consider our family unschoolers. I do however appreciate the learning opportunities that come from things other than textbooks.

I do believe in “doing school”. I’ve just started to really believe that sometimes we overdo school, when actually it’s the experiences around us that help our children to learn and remember.

P.S. I actually wrote this post last year after a vacation. We did just return from another vacation to the same spot and it reminded me that I had never actually posted this. This year, I didn’t hear anybody ask about school. Maybe I was too busy trying to keep a squirmy baby in my arms and to look like I was in complete control of her, I don’t know. We did get in a really fun math lesson on this trip. My husband spent a couple of hours teaching my two school-aged kids all about cameras–aperture, shutter speed, etc. They know it better than I do. Hurrah! Score for including math on our vacation! It was school for sure!

These pictures are from our most recent trip.

Stehekin Trip

October 6, 2010October 7, 2010prayingmother

I have a whole bunch (and I mean A BUNCH) more pictures that I want to share. These are from a trip that we took to Stehekin, which is at the north end of Lake Chelan, Washington. We spent three days with my family and some friends. It was such an enjoyable trip. We definitely want to go back again.

Somebody windsurfing on the lake.

My sister enjoying a dip at Rainbow Falls.

My dad enjoying a moment to draw the scenery.

JD Boy taking a break on a hike.

One of two planes that water taxi people up there as there are no roads. We took the boat.

My younger siblings and a friend ready to go on their flight back.

Zippy hanging out on the bridge railing.

Me with a backpack and a frontpack. It’s the life!

The view at the south end of the lake. The top of the lake and the bottom of the lake are like two different worlds.

Actually there are several more pictures, but I didn’t want to make it so that this page would never load. So if you want to see more, here is the link to them Stehekin Photo Set.

Mt. Rainier Trip

September 28, 2010prayingmother

We had the privilege of enjoying a day at Mt. Ranier just one week before we moved, when Baby was 3 weeks old. It was fun to introduce Baby to our love of hiking and the beautiful world around us when she was so little!

We didn’t take a very strenuous hike. (Due to the fact that I was only three weeks beyond giving birth.) We walked a very beautiful trail though, called Grove of the Patriarchs. If you ever visit Rainier and want to take a nice and beautiful stroll, I highly recommend this trail. The trees are grandiose and there is a swinging bridge to cross. Here are a few pictures of what we saw while on the trail.

The kids decided to hold up some of the fallen trees!

Tree Holder

If you want to feel small, stand next to some of these trees. You realize, you’re pretty young and pretty small both.

Here they are standing inside the roots of a fallen tree.

We enjoyed watching this little bird (which I think we identified as a Western Wood-Pewee) feeding her babies. We stood by the side of the trail and watched for a long time. Other hikers stopped to watch when they saw us watching her. The ones who had children with them thanked us for pointing this out. It’s a reminder that it’s important to pay attention to what is going on around you, otherwise you might miss out on some really neat experiences.

Before we left the Park, the kids all got their Junior Ranger badges. This is one of the highlights for them of visiting National Parks.

Unplanned Social Studies–In Mexico

March 2, 2010May 3, 2012prayingmother

We were very privileged to take another vacation in Mexico this year. I am still battling some days with morning sickness, so it wasn’t as active as some of our previous years, but we still had fun and some adventure.

We like to learn about how the people live down there and what things are the same and different from the way we live. I think that is the best way to learn social studies–experience it. On this trip, we had the opportunity to have a social studies lesson that was totally unplanned. We got to experience a Mexican hospital first hand.

The second day that we were there, it was raining. My husband and I were a little disappointed because we had visions of soaking up sun. It didn’t bother the kids at all though. Their idea of fun in Mexico is to play in the water, and rainwater qualified. They put on their swimsuits and splashed to their heart’s content. Unfortunately though it all ended very abruptly. JD Boy slipped and fell on the slick, wet tile and bit a hole clear through his lip.

My husband and I debated for awhile what we should do. We ended up taking him to a hospital named Ameri Med. We thought that going to an American hospital would be the thing to do. It was false advertising. While the receptionists and billing folks spoke excellent English, the doctors and their assistants did not. My husband was the only one allowed to accompany JD Boy into the exam room. He speaks no Spanish. I’m not too sure why they didn’t send one of the receptionists back to translate or allow my husband’s grandfather to accompany and translate, but anyway, that was the way it happened.

The doctor tried to explain to my husband what his options and the prices would be. "Suturos" were 4000 pesos. After my husband asked about glue, he said "Derma Bond" was 1700 pesos. He chose the glue and thought it wouldn’t be too expensive, but we later learned that that was only half of the charges. We were also charged for the "servicios". All of it came out to around $300US. I concluded that the "Ameri" part of the name wasn’t because the care given was American type care, but that the prices were American.

Once they settled on the Derma Bond, the doctor looked real close at JD Boy’s lip, pinched it together and the assistant smeared glue on. And that all went faster than you can read that sentence. My husband was shocked. He was expecting that they would clean the wound, but once it was glued, it was too late. No hydrogen peroxide. No iodine. No alcohol. No water. Nothing. They were done.

We were very concerned about infection. In a place where sanitation is an issue, it seems that they would be even more careful to disinfect wounds than we are, but not so. On our way back from the hospital, we stopped and purchased some hydrogen peroxide and had JD Boy rinse his mouth several times a day until we could tell that it was healing and that the possibility of infection had cleared up.

His wound looks good now. The inside is healing and there is a minimal scar on the outside. So I’m glad we took the route we did.

Last year, when we went down, I took JD Boy to a Mexican dentist and we were intrigued by Mexican dental care. This year we took him to Mexican hospital and were concerned about Mexican health care. If we go next year, I’m hoping that we can learn about something totally different and that maybe we can plan our social studies’ experience rather than having it as the result of an accident.

JD Boy refuses for me to post any pictures of his wound. I didn’t take any of the hospital for fear of getting in trouble. It looked fairly normal though, at least the waiting room, which was all that I got to experience. However, I have a few shots from just around town, that I thought were interesting.

The Cathedral in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
While Mexico has no official religion, 89% of the population is Catholic. There are services and activities going on at this Cathedral all the time.

Electric lines close to the Cathedral.
You can see the Cathedral in the distance. The infrastructure, even in this town that runs mostly on tourism, is poor. This isn’t even the worse case of spider-web lines that we saw. The roads are also poorly maintained. Right now they’re repainting and remodeling all the store fronts in certain parts of town. The locals think that there must be some event planned that they just haven’t heard about yet.

Playground equipment.
The playgrounds aren’t covered with lawn. They are covered with dirt. You can see that the equipment isn’t super well maintained either, but my boys thought it was a blast to play on anyway.

Stay tuned for pictures from our nature study while we vacationed. I can’t wait to share them with you.

High Desert Museum Again!

October 9, 2009February 27, 2012prayingmother

We’ve been doing some traveling again and we got to spend a very enjoyable afternoon at the High Desert Museum again. (See my post about our previous visit to see several pictures from the museum.) We discovered two sections that we weren’t able to visit before because they were closed off. One was on science and one was on Indians in the Pacific Northwest. We only had two problems this time: we forgot the camera in the car and we didn’t have enough time to look at things as long as we wanted.

The science room was really great. They had all different microscopes set up with prepared slides to look at. The kids were very intrigued with this. But the thing that they were the most intrigued with was the ferrofluid display. I was amazed too. I’d never even heard about it before. Now JD Boy and I are doing some research to learn about this stuff. You should too! It’s really amazing. It is magnetic liquid. It was invented by NASA for space travel, but is used in all kinds of things from X-Rays to DVD players.

The other area that we hadn’t been able to visit before was the Native American section. We saw the most amazing bead work, you can believe. I wished I could buy some of their baskets and bags. They were so pretty, but they weren’t for sale. That’s where we really wished we could have spent more time. I guess, we’ll have to go back some time. Maybe, we will. We seem to be able to visit Bend, Oregon once or twice a year, due to my husband’s work.

We also enjoyed the wildlife exhibits again! This time we especially enjoyed learning about porcupines and meeting and watching two of them. We were able to visit with the keeper about them, so learned all kinds of things. Did you know that their gestation is 7 months? Poor little things, whenever I’m pregnant, I’m ready to be done by 7 months! Hah! And the female that was there was 12 lbs. and gave birth to a 1+ lb baby. Kudos to her! That means even though I’m not a very large person, I should be birthing nearly 10 pound babies. No thanks!

Well since, we didn’t get any pictures of the neat things that we saw, here is a picture of my kiddoes proudly showing off their High Desert Museum t-shirts.

Visit my Daughter's Blog

June 25, 2009February 27, 2012prayingmother

Please visit my daughter’s blog: Zippy Art. She just posted her photo log of our trip to New Mexico. All of the pictures, except the ones of people, were taken by her. I think she really took some great ones. I’m right proud of her work!