Homeschool Day at the Page Museum

 I will start this by saying I really don't like driving into Los Angeles.  I always seem to end up driving through neighborhoods with bars on the windows, peeling paint on the houses, chain link fences, and the most horrible street traffic that makes me thankful I got us there without some type of car accident.  There's only a few things I'm willing to make the drive to L.A. for and they all have to do with museums.

Today was the first Homeschool Day of the school year at the Page Musuem at the La Brea Tar Pits.  It has been years since I've been to the La Brea Tar Pits.  In fact, it was probably a field trip that I went on with my school back in the day and certainly not as an adult.  Last year the homeschool days for the Page Museum were the same day at the Natural History Museum and we always ended up picking the History Museum to go to so my littles have never got to experience the wonderful aroma of the tar pits.

We had so much fun though.  I even managed to get a rare group photo of all three.  Poor Megatron gets left out of a lot of photos still because I'm usually babywearing him when I'm taking photos.  The second part of our trip I did in fact bust out the Ergo and he was able to nap and both the olders got to rock our double stroller.  Green Bubbles loves getting the chance to ride on the back of the stroller and he rarely gets a chance to do so anymore.

The kids really enjoyed wandering the page museum.  We talked about the different types of animals that lived back then.  Green Bubbles loved the short faced bear the best and everytime Little Miss saw a Saber-toothed cat she screamed out lion and was proud to tell everyone that her learning take away from our trip was that they lived a long time ago.

We got to see so many completed skeletons of animals they found in the tar pits.  There are actually a lot more carnivores then herbivores in the collection.  Once a herbivore got stuck in the tar pit, it would cry out for help.  I imagine it sounded very much like a dinner bell to those hungry, oblivious carnivores who didn't see their demise coming. 

They had a cool touch thing for the kids to play with.  Long metal poles were put into a bucket of the tar and you were able to pull them up to see how easy it was for the animals to become trapped.  Green Bubbles worked and worked until he got his up all the way.  He put a lot of force into it!

There had a great little atrium in the middle of the museum which was great for the kids to get some wiggles out as well.  They were able to climb some rocks, view the waterfall, and marvel at the large Koi fish swimming around. 

We managed to go on the tour as well.  Tickets were free, but limited, so unfortunately our friends weren't  able to join us for this part.  Our tour guide took us to the observation pit and explained to us much of the how the animals got stuck, how they were found and excavated, and why the scientists care about what they find in the pits.  Interesting fact:  Scientists actually call the black stuff asphalt. Tar is a man-made material but due to simplicity they call it tar because that's the name most people are familiar with. 

It was interesting to see how the bones look while still in the ground before they are dug out, separated, cleaned up and polished.  I like to think Green Bubbles and Little Miss might have gotten something out of it as well.

We even got to see what a tar pit would have looked like when left alone and why so many animals fell into the sticky trap (although not as many as you would expect!  Only one animal grouping every decade or so).  The leaves cover the tar pit making it very difficult to see.

My favorite part was getting to see the volunteers working on cleaning and sorting the fossils int he museum.  I was so interested in the process I didn't get any pictures of it!  But they accept volunteer workers from 18 years old and up.  There were all ages from young adults to seniors working in the area when we were there.  They were all very friendly and waved to the kids and some held up the fossils they were working on to show it off a little better .

If you ever get a chance to go to the Page Museum, for Homeschool Day or not, you won't regret it.

Fire Prevention Week 2014

Did you do anything for Fire Prevention week last week?  Every year in the United States, the week contained Oct 9th is Fire Prevention Week.  That fell on  10/5 to 10/11 this year.   I know it was last week but I thought I would share some of the things we did and it might help you for next year!

We started the week off with a Home Deport Kids Workshop where the kids got to build an ambulance.

We spent the week talking about what happens in case of a fire.  We talked about the smoke alarms in the house, different ways to get out of the house in case of a fire, and stop, drop and roll.  We practiced saying our address and talked about calling 911 in case of an emergency.

The highlight of our week was going to the Orange County Fire Authority Open House. (My phone's battery died during this trip so I had my husband take photos for me.  He, of course, hasn't downloaded them yet so all the photos I have are from the beginning of our trip.)

 Every year the fire authority opens up it's doors and allows visitors to tour their facility, ride on the firetrucks, try on the uniform, and so much more. 

We got to meet a rescue dog,  see inside of the mobile fire command center, and practice CPR on a baby and child sized doll.

 They even led a tour inside of the actual 911 call center and explained how everything worked, including what happens when they have to take it all on the go during wildfires like the one near us recently in Silverado Canyon.  In fact, a lot of the tour talked about that exact fire, even showing us the maps they used to track it.

 I think the kids favorite was the pretend city area.  They had an obstacle course set up with a kiddy pool to jump into and 'fire' to crawl under.

If your local and haven't been to the Fire Authority Open House before, I highly recommend it!

Fun ABC Games

Green Bubbles is working on learning his ABC's still.  We are using All About Reading Pre-level and I love it so far.  I really needed something to help me teach phonemic awareness because I honestly had no idea how to go about it.  He's flourishing with all the games they include and has picked up more of the alphabet this year then we were able to do over the entire year last year.  He's still struggling with just a few letters left so I thought I would share some free resources I've found across the interest using pinterest and google searches.  There are a lot of ABC resources so I'm only included the ones that are new to us that I think Green Bubbles will actually enjoy.  I try to pick one game or activity a day to do help reinforce what we have already learned and pick up the few we are missing. 


Kay at Sommer Pride created this awesome game adapted from another kindergarten teacher using 'popcorn'.  It's interactive and Green Bubbles actually sat and picked up every single letter and colored it in on his sheet!  He was even singing the ABC song to find the letters he didn't know on sight yet.

Pre-K Pages has a race to top game to download.  There are a lot of versions of this out there but I like this one, even though it has a  Spring flower theme and it's Fall right now, because there are 6 different spaces to put letters.  Others I have seen use only two.  This way I'm able to review a lot of our trouble letters at once, almost all of them! And anytime I let Green Bubbles use the dot markers is a good one.  He really loves using them.

Learning and Playing in Two Bedrooms or Less made this great post about a letter hunt while out walking their neighborhood using a paper plate as a score keeper. Anything that gets us outside is always a plus in my book!

Playdough to Plato had this great double activity!  First you have to make the letters out of salt dough, a link to a recipe is included, and then you bury them and have an alphabet fossil dig!

Another Playdough to Plato game, ABC cup hunt!  This one allows us to work on just a few problem letters as well and we can bring it outside and move our bodies.

A special kind of class made these cute ABC witches for a Halloween themed ABC.  I hid these around the house and made the kids find them and put them in order. You can see Little Miss jumps in on this one and even Megatron wanted in for the picture!  And yes, we homeschool in our pj's some days... a lot of days.

There's so many other options that I haven't even listed.  You can check out my Daily 5 pinterest board that has things for ABC's, sight words, journal writing, and pretty much anything language arts related.  We don't do all 5 at this point, and some I'm not sure we'll ever do, such as the listening to reading, since we do read alouds all the time anyway, but there are so many resources when you search for that I kept the term.

Weekly Wrap Up - Will Little Miss join her brother on the stage?

 

It's Friday, again!  Does anyone else look through their pictures from the week to try and remember everything they did?

Monday was the first day of Green Bubbles musical theater class from Creative Kids Playhouse.  He does the Tom Thumb players which is for kids 3-7 years old and this years play is No Turkey for Perky, a thanksgiving play.  As you can tell from the picture below, there aren't many kids in his class this year and it's in danger of being canceled.  I really hope we get the missing kids to fill it up soon!  Because of the small group, his teacher was nice enough to let Little Miss participate.  Can you see her 2nd from the left in her pink shirt?  Her 3rd birthday is just before the day of the play so I'm trying to decide if I want to sign her up as well.  

Tuesday is our swim lesson day.  We recently signed up Little Miss to take lessons just after her big brother and she's doing great!  She's excited about going and is making great progress.  This week we decided to try Megatron out as well on the advice of their swim teachers.  While he did really well, he also cried most of the lesson due to the fact that he didn't know his swim teacher, not because of the lesson itself.  While I think he'd do fine with it, we decided to hold off on his lessons for now and sign him back up again when he's old enough to ask to go.

Wednesday is nature study day!  I posted all about our trip to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands here.  We all had a lot of fun.

Thursday was a 'home' day for us besides Green Bubbles speech.  He had a great appointment though.  That surprised me considering how our morning had gone yesterday.  When his therapist came out halfway through I thought I'd have to go lay down the law and was pleasantly surprised when I was told it was probably his best session ever!  Go Green Bubbles!  

Yes, we do school in our jammies some days!

Today we managed to squeeze in a little bit of school before rushing off to park day.  We finally found a park day full of kids Green Bubbles and Little Miss' age.  Even a baby close to Megatron's age!

After park we hit the library to pick up our next read aloud book, The Witches by Roald Dahl.  I can't wait to start reading it with Green Bubbles.  By the time we got home my husband was home early and we left the kids with his mother and went to a movie at the cheap theater near the house.  Talk about a nice treat.  I can't remember the last time I went anywhere without at least one child with me!  We got to see Lucy and, although it wasn't really a date 'night', I still had fun. 

I hope everyone else had a great week as well!

Nature Study - Bolsa Chica Wetlands

We've done the Bolsa Chica Wetlands in Huntington Beach before.  In fact, it was one of the first posts on this blog!  I love being able to look back and see how much has changed.  Green Bubbles was just a little bit older than Little Miss and Little Miss was very close to Megatron's age in that post.  Things sure do seem to change quickly!  And I promise, both Green Bubbles and myself are better artists now.

To make it a little more interesting I created a scavenger hunt for the kids at the last minute and printed up extras for the kids in our group.  We had a bigger turn out this week which is always fun.  If you want to download a copy of my wetlands scavenger hunt just click below!  I did make one little change from the orginal we had with us.  We didn't see many insects so I changed one of the insect spots to an animal under the water.  We saw so many things that could have fit in there I kept wishing I had put that instead.

Download From Dropbox

My kids LOVE the giant bridge over the shallow water leading from the parking lot to the wetlands.  It goes right through the wetlands and the water is clear and so easy to see many interesting things.  The kids took their time staring into the water between running circles around me.  And not just my two little ones either!  I had a whole posse of kids circling me. 

 We found a lot of sea life in the water.  In the picture below there are three crabs.  Can you find them all?  I'll give you a hint, there's one at the very bottom of the picture near the shore.

 It's a little easier to see the crabs in this picture.  We saw these guys on our way back out and the kids stopped to watch them eat the algae off of the rock. 

Here's Green Bubbles starting to fill out his paper.  I had him draw a picture in each box of what he saw that qualified for that subject.  Something rough was an old log in the parking lot, something smooth was a rock, etc.  He really enjoyed doing this until we got to the last three.  We didn't really see any insects which were two of our boxes, and something that is changing is a bit of an abstract concept for a five year old I think.

We had a lot of littles with us today which I always love to see, especially when they hold each others hands and walk along together.  Little Miss loves when she has friends her age to play with.

 There were a lot of snowy egrets around.  I managed to catch this one as he just started to fly off!  Of course, this picture was with my cell phone so the quaulity isn't the best.  I'm going to try and remember to bring my normal point and shoot camera next week!

 And since we are talking about bad picture quality.... We saw these guys swimming around in the water.  It was hard to tell but they had triangle like bodies and we thought they were some type of ray at first.  But then their tails looked more like a shark and it was just confusing.  I'm happy to report the mystery has been solved however.  They are Shovelnose guitarfish!  I love being able to identify something new when we do our nature days.

And this is the reason I always have a first aid kit with me. Green Bubbles fell in the gravel type trail, twice.  The first time he scrapped up his knee and the second time was his elbow.  We have some great nature study friends who volenteered wipes to clean it off with and a bandaid to cover it.  Strawberries!  I had everything in my first aid kit as well, but I was busy with Megatron at the time so welcomed the help.  We made our exit shortly after this so Green Bubbles could recooperate.  He's fine now, happily playing a game on his computer.  His elbow is working just fine.