FIeld Trip to the Outer Banks!

I am always up for a fun field trip.  I'm thankful for friends that are too!  What fun we are able to have together!  While studying Neil Armstrong (Beyond FIAR), we also spent some time learning about the Wright Brothers.  Since there is a memorial close to home - in the very spot where they flew their plane - I thought a field trip was in order.  We have visited this site, but it was just before Eliana was born so the younger boys were pretty little when we were there.  

Getting a groupon for a hotel in Kill Devil Hills just sealed the deal for me!  I mentioned it to our co-op group and was delighted that 4 friends were interested in going on the trip too!

We picked our dates and made reservations.  Unfortunately, as the date drew nearer, the weather forecast was horrible.  Cold and rainy.  Calling for 80 to 100 percent chance of rain.  Ugh!  Well, we prepared for it by packing extra clothes, umbrellas, layers and lots of towels.  As we were driving down, I was delighted that it had not yet started to rain.  Then the forecast shifted to pushing the rain back until lunch time.  This was great!  Some time to explore outside before the rains hit!

We started at the Wright Brothers Memorial.  

 We thought is was fun to have a photo with Neil who inspired this road trip!

Since this is a National Park site, there was an opportunity to earn Ranger badges!  Daniel and Trent were delighted and I think it was fun for them to work on it some together.  Eliana did a bit, but wasn't really highly interested.  Maybe another day.

 Trying to get a quick group photo.  "George" is a stand-in for Eliana in the second photo.

 Learning from reading the signs.  The building is a replica of the one that they lived in while they were here.  It was surprisingly nice inside.

 Love this path which marks the spot where the Wright brothers flew their plane.  There are markers along the path showing how long each of the flights actually were as well as how long each flight lasted.  The boys wanted to race to see who was faster - the plane or the boys.  Boys won on this one.

 The last flight was the longest and was pretty impressive.  I'm sure it was a thrilling moment!  Loved the view of the monument from this place too.

 The monument is set up on a hill and is more of a walk than it looks.  (Most especially for those with shorter legs - or for anyone carrying someone with shorter legs.)

 Love all of these faces!  The beautiful girls.  The handsome boys.  Can't you just see that this was a sweet and fun time?

 After spending some time on the monument, we went to a picnic area near the base to have lunch.

After lunch, as we were driving out, we stopped by this model of the plane.  There are also statues of some of the people that were there.  The children LOVED playing and interacting with the statues.  It was quite funny and I think it makes for some delightful pictures.  What do you think?

We are still experiencing a reprieve from the weather.  The latest update looks like rain at 3pm and not lasting more than an hour.  The next day though is 100 percent chance of rain all day long.  We had planned to visit Bodie lighthouse the following day but due to weather made a change in plans.  It wasn't far, so we drove on over.  Isn't it beautiful!

 Bodie lighthouse has undergone some renovations and for the first time was open to the public!  What fun!  Have I mentioned that I LOVE lighthouses!  I know I'm not alone in this feeling either.

We bought our tickets and went on a tour to the top with a ranger.  In the pictures below, the top right is  on the bottom floor of the lighthouse and was used to store things.  The next photo down is the entrance to the room where the stairs begin.  The bottom right is a shot looking up through the stairs.  The bottom left is a sign inside the lighthouse.  You can see the change in spelling which also indicates the correct pronunciation of the lighthouse.  Its just like "body".  There are various stories as to where the name originated.

It was very windy at the top!  So thankful for a beautiful afternoon.  We had a little bit of sprinkles, but that's it!  Thankful!  And happy.  I love these big smiles!

Here are some of the shots I took from the top of the lighthouse.  The view is beautiful.  Nothing much is built up around this lighthouse so you have clear views of the marsh and also the ocean.

We also had a view of Eliana bossing around our friends in a game she had made up.  I wondered why they were laying on the grass and heard about my bossy daughter when I got down.  LOL  The house is the lighthouse keepers home that is now a gift shop and offices.

 I took a lot of pictures of the lighthouse.  I think it is beautiful.  (Though not quite as much as the beautiful young ladies in front of it.)

 Still hanging in with good weather so we now head over to Jockey's Ridge.  Its open later in the day and was the top request of my boys.  I really wanted to be able to go there and the following day was going to be a bust in terms of weather, so we headed over.  Managed to get a shot of some of the group before they headed inside the visitor center.

There are great hands-on displays inside.  Informative, interesting and fun!

Heading down this path to make it to the dunes.  Jockey's Ridge is the tallest natural sand dune in the Eastern United States.  Well worth a visit.  It is beautiful and fun for people of all ages!

A shot of the group before they took off for the dunes.  It was hard to keep up with them after that!

I'm not sure if you can tell how steep the slope of this dune is from the photo, but it so quite tall - and big/wide.  And the view at the top is amazing!

View from the top of the sound on the other side.  Isn't this gorgeous!

From flying a kite to climbing the hills, from sliding to rolling down, it was all fun!  The children LOVED being here!!!

 We packed a lot into one day, didn't we?  And yet it wasn't rushed.  It was sweet time spent learning, laughing and having fun.  Some of my favorite of our homeschool days!

An amazing display of God's handiwork.  

This trip is worth it if you are considering it.  Even for just a couple of days.  We spent just 2 days there and were able to do a lot.  Now, I would have loved more time, but we'll save that for another day.  :-)

I'll post our second day soon I hope.

Blessings

Leslie

Peter Rabbit: Five in a Row

Oh, what a delightful time we had with this story!!!  I purposed to spend more time planning our week and boy did it show in the things we were able to do.  I really want all of our weeks to be like this, but the reality is that some are and some aren't and I'm thankful for both!  

I need to find a schedule (for me) that works for planning for all of my children so that we can have more weeks that are like this!  I'm hoping to use the summer to do some planning.  Though I may need to work on a 6-8 weeks on and then 2 weeks off in order to have some built in time for planning.  Anyone want to share what works for them?  

We read Peter Rabbit.  I gathered resources before we started our week from printables (there is a free fold n learn from Five in a Row to go with this book), to books (other books in the series) to art lessons.    Planning and preparing really helps *me* to be better able to do the fun things that I want to do.

We read the book each day and had some great discussions on various topics.  We did some map work.  (Printable from Homeschool Share)

One of the fun things that we have done over the years in our notebook is to have a title page for each story.  I love doing this because it is fun to see their artwork and what grabs them from each story.  Typically this is done after reading the story for the first time.  I love Daniel's picture here!

So many of our lessons don't end up in pictures.  Like acting out the vocabulary/action words in the story.  That is always a silly, but fun activity!  And the discussions.  What a great tool - stories - to use to talk about life and how we would act in the same scenario.

We made a trip to the store to buy seeds.  

Of course he wanted carrot seeds!

We planted these in pots.  

Daniel worked hard in getting the pots ready.

The seeds are so very small.

As is often the case, Eliana wants to join in on the fun too!  Its so good for her to have siblings to learn from and with.

And any excuse to get messy and dirty is alright in her book!

We also bought some plants and put those in these planter boxes on our deck.  We also tried some in the yard.  We have not had much luck in the past planting in our yard (too much shade) so we'll see how it works for us this year.  It would be so much fun to have some produce from our own garden!

One day I did a fun snack idea that I read about from Gourmet Mom on the go.  It is so cute, isn't it?  Its a Peter Rabbit garden snack.  

I took a muffin tin and filled it with fruits and veggies and then covered it with green tissue paper.

Then Daniel and Eliana poked to see what was planted in their gardens. 

Eliana loved the surprise of it even though she would not try all of them

I mostly used things we had on hand and tried for a variety of colors and a mix of fruits and veggies.

This was a huge hit!  This is it for pictures.  I didn't take that many, but we did have a fun time.  Daniel loved reading more stories in the Peter Rabbit series and adding in the hands-on activities really made our time memorable.  I think this may go down as one of our favorites.  

I have more ideas on my Pinterest board if you want to check it out.  There is also a community board with more ideas for Peter Rabbit here.  

Enjoy!

Leslie

Another Awana Post

Doing a little catching up on May as I work through hundreds of photos from our last field trip and beach trip.  :-)  Gotta love digital when you can take soooo many pictures.

I posted about Daniel's Sparky award already.  (Click on the link to read more.)  He continued to work on his verses until  he had done all of the review work and the extra verses too.  He has earned all that he can at this level.  He worked so very hard and more importantly, he is learning to hide God's work in his heart.  I pray that it will bless and benefit him his entire life!  Way to go Daniel!

Eliana also worked hard with her verses this year.  Here she is with one of her wonderful Cubbies leaders.  Many of the leaders are students who volunteer their time to serve.  This sweet leader has been with her for 2 years.  She will be missed next year!

 Can you see how very proud my sweet girl is of her reward?  Look at that face!  I love it!  She completed her book again this year!

 Also this year, she was given a special award.  Last year, she signed most of her verses.  This year we worked with signs and words.  She said her verses this year often with me doing the signs with her.  She has grown and improved so much.

What a delight too when I see others enjoying our little girl.   I'm so thankful to be a part of this group - an encouraging and uplifting place to be sure!  Thank you Nikii and David for all of your work this year.  You will be missed!!!

This program has been a great practical way to work on memorizing more Bible verses.  Thankful to be a part!

Blessings,

Beyond FIAR co-op: Neil Armstrong 4

Well, this is our last co-op of the year.  Its also the end of our Beyond FIAR co-op.  We started 4 years ago with FIAR volume 4 and then did a volume of Beyond each year following.  This past year was volume 3 and our last book was  Neil Armstrong.  What a blessed and amazing group this has been and I'm so very thankful for all the sweet memories I have from our time together!

On this last meeting, we covered Sir Isaac Newton and the Laws of Gravity, Rockets, the principles of light and more.  

This was a peek of things to come for those who are really observant.  ;-)

We covered more chapters than usual in this meeting as the ending chapters were shorter or rather had fewer lessons.  As a fun review of the chapters, the book was passed from student to student to share what they liked or learned from each chapter.  (Each student would take a chapter and then pass it to the next person to move forward to the following chapter if that makes sense.)

What a great verse to go with our lesson today and incidentally was also the verse used at our last co-op last year.  :-)

Learning more about Sir Isaac Newton was very interesting and also how his faith impacted his life.  The children learned about the 3 laws of motion.  Then their knowledge was put to the test in a quiz!

Learning more about the sun/moon and their effects on the earth.

Just seeing some of the things laying on the table raised my curiosity about the lessons that lay ahead!

And mamas in the kitchen working on lunch.  Always lots of behind the scenes work to pull off a fun day like this!

Time now for the history of rockets.  The children learned about various people how either made discoveries or inventions that contributed to the knowledge we have today about rockets.  

Then it was time for a visual demonstration of how rockets are made today.  Its not so easy to see in the picture due to the pattern on the rug, but there is a rocket outlined with string and all of its parts inside the string.

Here are some pictures of some of the individual parts like the payload, guidance system, controls and more.  I think if you click on the picture it will become larger.  What a fun way to better understand the roles of the various parts of the rocket.

An experiment to see which falls faster - a heavier ball or lighter ball of paper when dropped at the same time.  This demonstrated Newton's law of gravity.  Do you know the answer?

The both hit at the same time?  Want to understand it better?  You can read more here.

Last we watched the take off of the rocket in which Neil Armstrong rode to the moon!  I love that we can see and share this with our children so many years later!

We did a lot of moving from place to place for lessons which I think helps with concentration.  The next lesson was on light and we gathered around a large round table.  And look what was in the middle!  Moon treats!  Lots of freeze-dried fruits as well as cheese and "rocket" crackers.

This is a poster.  The students had the answers and facts about light which went with the pictures which they discussed and put on the poster.

Did you know that each color has different wavelengths?  Can you see the picture below?

And that some animals can see far more colors than we can?  I think it was 14 wavelengths of color that the Mantis shrimp could see.  (And how did they figure this out?!)

There was a lesson on light and the colors that we see.

We also talked about  pigments and how the blend to make various colors.

This chart demonstrated the difference between light and pigments.

The last item was a demonstration of a "pop rocket" using baking soda and vinegar to pop the cork out of a bottle.  Really went high and I was not able to capture this in a picture very well.  They also used balloons as a means to propel 2 cars in a race.  We found that the friction of the driveway made them go much slower than on a smooth floor inside the house.

We ended our day with a feast of foods from various countries.  Neil visited so many different countries and we had foods from many of them.  Isn't this an amazing spread!

And as a treat to take home - ice cream and moon pies.  They loved that!

Can I share that I'm so not ready for this to end?  I don't want to "graduate" two more students from Five in a Row!  I love using this with them!  I am thankful for 2 more students with which to use these fun books!

I'm also not ready to end this fun co-op.  Thankfully, neither are these gals!  We are going to continue our co-op but using our  own studies.  We plan to spend a semester on a Shakespeare play and then cover 2 books the following semester.  We are still planning but I will share more as we move into next year.

This has been an amazing co-op.  Fabulous lessons.  Wonderful friends.  Memories for a lifetime.

With a thankful heart,
Leslie