Field Trip: Marine Life in Galveston, Texas

 Galveston, Texas is an amazing place to see marine wildlife.  We've seen jellyfish, dolphins, sea birds, flounder, crabs - beach combing is wonderful - even watching the birds bobbing up and down in the water is pretty awesome.

This time, we took a boat into the bay and saw dolphins.  We saw dolphins do something I've never seen them do before.  They caught a flounder and kept flipping it up into the air to each other, recatching it.  We happened to be in the harbor when it was raining and saw several dolphins jumping out of the water over and over again.  They do that to get a different view above water - check for predators, look for food, etc.

Here's some pictures of the birds in the harbor.  This is a grey pelican, maybe?  I'm not the best with pelican identification.

They're all sitting on the back of this boat.

White pelicans and a grey pelican?

Dolphins are impossible to photograph, since they just move so quickly, but this was a great picture.  Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin.

Field Trip: NASA Johnson Space Center

https://spacecenter.org 

This was an unplanned field trip to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.  We happened to be passing by it and decided to stop and tour the museum.  It's about $30 per person for adult admission, $25 for children.  There is an indoor museum, an outdoor tram ride and a display with one of the space shuttles, a plane and a rocket.

I'm going to be very honest and say this was our least favorite field trip of all time.  Frontiers of Flight in Dallas is better.  The Space Center was expensive to get into and it was very, very crowded.  You could hardly see any of the displays and the noise and visuals were extremely overwhelming.  I'm an adult and I was even feeling overwhelmed.  It was hard to see any of the displays, because people would stop and pose in front of them to take selfies, etc.  It was pretty terrible.  The line for the tram was so long that we didn't get to see that part of the tour.  Most of the museum was interactive displays, which are impossible with large crowds.  It also felt very commercial inside.  We felt like the displays were a bit underwhelming, educationally-speaking.

Good thing about the museum...you can touch a rock from the moon and a rock from Mars.  The 7 year-old thought this was incredible.

The best part of the trip was we listened to a talk given by astronaut and commander of the space shuttle Discovery Brian Duffy.  That was definitely worth seeing and very memorable.  Even the 7 year-old sat and listened to the entire presentation.  All of the kids agreed that hearing Commander Duffy was the best part of the trip.

Wrapping up 2022

 I need to work on some end-of-year tasks over the next couple of weeks.  I think we will continue working, unless we feel like we want to stop.  Everything we do is fairly enjoyable, so I don't think we'll take a big break.

At the end of each calendar year, I update and print out homeschool records for each kid.  In the printout, I include:

• Field trips
• Sports
• Activities
• Everything we did in each subject - books we read, curriculum used, labs, hands-on activities, videos
• Math
• English
• Bible
• History
• Literature
• Science
• Fine Arts
• Physical Education
• Anything extra

I keep these records throughout the year, so when I finalize them, they're pretty much finished already.  I update, save, print and put one copy in each kid's school binder.

I also need to go through each kid's book bins and clean out resources we're not using.

Curriculum Changes

I usually switch gears over the winter and add/drop resources that we're finished with or don't like.

10th Grader

At some point this fall, I realized that the 10th grader is actually doing something called unschooling.  She will continue unschooling and choosing what she wants to learn about.  She is spending a couple of years on biology and astronomy and we will continue that through 2023.  The only curriculum I'm buying for her is Mathusee Algebra 2.  She'll need that for summer 2023 (when she finishes Geometry). 

I am still using my "book bin method" (rolling my eyes, because I don't know what else to call it).  I have a row of plastic magazine holders/book bins and they are labeled with different subjects: Bible, science, math, history & literature, grammar & writing, fine arts, etc.  We fill up the bins with books or resources that she thinks look interesting.  Every morning, she just picks things from the bins to work on and reads/works until she wants to stop.  We've been doing this over the fall and it's worked out so well.  No more stress about schedules or keeping up with the pace of a curriculum.  She's been very happy with it.  She even added her own subjects: Korean, typing, classical guitar, ukulele, etc.  We originally started with Bookshark over the summer, but followed rabbit trails until we ended up at this point.    

2nd Grader

He is still in the middle of Sonlight HBL B (world history 1).  This seems to be the perfect curriculum for him and he really enjoys it, so we will continue it.  I'm going to buy HBL C this spring (world history 2).  He absolutely loves the Hands-on History Box.  From now on, when I order Sonlight, I'm going to order all the little extra things, like the history box, coloring books, etc.

I am switching to Sonlight's Reading/Language Arts 1st Grade, because he is just not making progress with reading or writing and he's starting to have anxiety when he sees our current reading/language arts curriculum.  So, we are going to stop, back up and start fresh.  He seems to do well with Sonlight, so I am going to try their language arts.    

Changes for 2023

Besides using Sonlight's Bible curriculum and reading through the Bible, I sometimes do specific Lutheran or topical Bible studies with the kids.  I'm going to start doing that again this winter.

Dyslexia Resources I've Found This Week

 I'm reading several books this week:

No More School: Meeting the Educational Needs of Kids with Dyslexia and Language-Based Learning Difficulties

The author is Marianne Sunderland.  Here's a link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58646102-no-more-school

This is a short read - about 150 pages.  It was a good book for me, since I knew nothing about dyslexia when I started reading it.  There is a great chapter called "Reviving the Shut-Down Learner" (chapter 11) that really would've helped me when I first pulled my oldest two kids from public school.  The author is very supportive of unschooling, relaxed eclectic homeschooling, etc.  

The Gift of Dyslexia

The authors are Davis and Braun.  Here's the link:  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/824615.The_Gift_of_Dyslexia?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=07TK4yvmP3&rank=1

I'm only on chapter 5, so I don't know how I feel about this book.  The reviews online are pretty mixed about it.  It is the only resource I've seen so far that describes visual disturbances with dyslexia.

Activity Book for Kids with Dyslexia (100 Logic Games in Writing, Spelling & Math)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60176119-brain-training---100-logic-games-writing-spelling-math-activity-book

My 7 year-old hasn't started working on this yet, but it looks wonderful.  It has mazes, puzzles, fill-in the missing letters, etc.  The print is huge and this book looks pretty fabulous.  I'm excited to work through it with him.

Homeschool Week: 11/14-11/18

 2nd Grader

He was very sick this week with the flu.  He actually did some things in the beginning of the week, but then couldn't after a point.  He was very bored, because he watched so much TV and couldn't go to his activities.

Math

• We played the Mathemagical World board game (addition and subtraction)
• Space Station X: Escape Room Puzzles (library book - this was fun)

Reading/Language Arts

• Reading Eggs

Science

• Up Your Nose (library book about germs)
• The Blobfish Book
• We took a walk at a nature preserve

Sonlight B World History 1 (history, Bible and literature)

• Ancient Greeks
• Ancient Greek mythology
• National Geographic poetry book

10th Grader

Bible

• 1st and 2nd Chronicles - the Bible Project videos

Math

• Mathusee Geometry

English

• Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook
• Typing practice online

Astronomy & Biology

• Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
• Microscope Lab
• Onion cells
• Zea Mays (corn) - stem and root slides
• Ranunculus (buttercup) - stem and root slides
• Smithsonian's The Planets

Literature and History

• The Westing Game (read-aloud)
• Trinity
• Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie

Foreign Language 

• Duolingo Korean

Physical Education

• Gymnastics (outsourced)
• Ballet class (outsourced)

Fine Arts

• She practiced ukulele

Botany Lab: Plant Slides

 We looked at the difference between Monocot and Dicot stems under the microscope.  We also looked at Zea mays cells (corn), Ranunculus cells (buttercups) and onion cells.

Here are the Zea mays slides - this is a monocot, because the vascular bundles are not in a clear ring around the edge of the stem.  The vascular bundles are in a random arrangement.

Also, these pictures are terrible, because it is really hard to take a picture with your phone through the eyepiece of a microscope.

Slice of a root (corn)- Monocot

Slice of a stem (corn) - Monocot

Onion cells with clear cell walls and nuclei.  One cell is undergoing mitosis.

I didn't take pictures of the ranunculus, but I should have.  It was clearly a dicot, with a ring of vascular bundles around the edge of the stem, with a pith in the center.

  

Field Trip to Amon Carter Museum of American Art

 The museum is in downtown Fort Worth, Texas.  Here's the link:  www.cartermuseum.org

This art museum is free.  Parking is free and the museum has its own parking lot.  Check hours, but right now, it's open every day except Sunday and Monday.  The museum offers public tours for free (according to their website).

This museum focuses on American art.  There are several temporary exhibits, including one exhibit of contemporary Native American photography.  Until late January 2023, there is a large exhibit filled with watercolor paintings of North American Indians, painted by Karl Bodmer in the 19th century.  These watercolors are pretty incredible. 

The upstairs has an entire room devoted to Frederic Remington - his paintings and sculptures.  The sculptures are amazing.  There are sculptures of Native American hunters, cowboys, outlaws, horses, etc in motion. https://www.cartermuseum.org/artists/frederic-remington

Next to the Remington gallery is a room devoted to Charles M. Russell.  His western-themed artwork is also pretty incredible. https://www.cartermuseum.org/artists/charles-m-russell

The second floor also has a family lounge.  There are children's tables, activities, places for adults to sit, etc.

This was a great field trip!