Nature Study: Oak Canyon Nature Center

So we actually did this one a few weeks ago but I'm just now getting to it.  We visited Oak Canyon Nature Center in Anaheim Hills.  This is a great place to visit when it's hot out because it's in a canyon, obviously, and it remains a lot cooler than other areas.  There are plenty of large trees everywhere that provide shade and even a little man made stream.

The kids were excited to be outside this day!

 

We got to see some cool things like several large rat nests.

There were plenty of bridges to cross over.

And cool things to see in the water like these pond skippers.  I love the look of the shadows they cast on the stream bed.

Life and death, we also saw some crawdaddy legs, and on the floor the rest of him.  The ants were sure happy.  I wonder if a bird caught him since he was up on top of the bridge on the hand rail?

We stopped for lunch after our hike and I broke out our old nature journal from last year.  Green Bubbles surprised me by actually drawing something that #1, we actually saw on our hike, and #2, something besides just scribbles!  He's really growing up.  There are even bird eggs in his bird house.

After lunch there was a fun game of hike and seek.

And then the kids discovered the creek! 

They made a dam between the rocks out of loose sticks they found in the area.  Using small cups and bags they even collected mud to help strengthen their dam.

Story of the World: Chapters 2 - 3

So I haven't posted these in awhile.  Shame on me for falling behind lol.  We finally hit our groove with school in the mornings mixed with caring for baby and toddlers.

We made a model of the Nile river and Green Bubbles did a great job!  He loves flooding the Nile to water our plants.  Your supposed to put grass seed in the dirt but we used what we had and planted these English Daisy's instead. 

(Side note: it's been REALLY hot here lately and we may have forgotten to 'flood' the Nile for a few days.  We had some tiny little green sprouts coming but then they all died and haven't come back so I don't think our daisies made it. I never claimed to have a green thumb.)

We also read a lot of great books about the Nile river, croodiles, and Egyptian Gods and Goddesses.  We stretched the mythology book out a few weeks and read a different myth each week just to get a feel for some of the things they believed in.

Chapter 3 was about the first writings.  We had a crazy week with an awesome field trip at the end which is when we usually do our projects from Story of the World.  And I wasn't as prepared as I should have been and didn't have all the resources ready.  We ended up making a 'clay' tablet out of play dough and writing in it using a play dough knife.  I didn't take any pictures unfortunately but Green Bubbles did have fun with it and we talked about how big and bulky real clay tablets must have been. 

Nature Study: Aquarium of the Pacific

Aquarium of the Pacific has a homeschool day a few times a year.  They do two days in September and one day in December.  It's become a tradition for us to go every year now.  The cost is only $6 a person which is a deal compared to their normal ticket prices.   They also have a lot of touch tanks, booths, volunteers, and they open up their classrooms to the kids.  It's always a lot of fun and I love seeing what things my kids are drawn to each year.  Things they found incredibly interesting last year, aren't even on their radar anymore and things they barely noticed before were full of wonder this trip.

Touching the jellyfish

After every field trip we have I ask the kids, even Little Miss, what their favoriate part was, or to tell me something new that they learned.  Little Miss responded with an excited "Fish!"  I tried not to laugh since almost everything there was a fish of some type.  She was pointing out fish in every tank we passed calling out, "I see another one!" 

Even Megatron got involved and started randomly screaming throughout our trip.  I like to pretend it was because he loved seeing all the fish but in reality I think it was just because he liked to hear how loud his voice sounded in the crowded spaces. 

Green Bubbles loved the hammerhead shark we saw in one of the tanks and is still talking about it the next day.  And can you believe I didn't get a picture of that hammerhead shark!?

After the aquarium we walk across the street to get Cold Stone ice cream.  It's become a tradition for us as well.  As we were pulling up to the aquarium Green Bubbles pointed across the street and said "there's the ice cream place!"  I can't believe he remembered that from last year.  This year we even made a pit stop over at the $1 bookstore and bought 13 books for the price of one brand new children's book! 

Trying on the costumes in one of the classrooms.

Even Megatron liked watching the fish.

A shark egg with a section cut out to see the developing shark inside.

Jellyfish

A rare group photo of us infront of the sea lions thanks to an awesome friend of ours who offered to take it!

Checking out the trout.

And because we are Disney family... We found a whole tank of Nemo and Dory!

Disneyland Homeschool Day 2014

We love Disneyland.  Well, maybe just all things Disney.  Not to the crazy obessive point, but enough that my kids ask to go to Disneyland quite frequently and we have passes.  So of course, we had to make a special trip to go for Not Back To School Day!

While this event is not sponsored by Disney, it's still a lot of fun.  Homeschool kids go to Disneyland, or California Adventure, to spend the day playing.  You can spot fellow homeschoolers by the tie dye they are sporting!

That means our adventure started out with... tie dye!

 I made a shirt for each one of us.  Mine's on the top!  I let Green Bubbles have at it all by himself with no direction from me and I'm rather impressed it didn't turn out as a giant brown mess.  Little Miss insisted that her shirt should only have pink and purple and I helped her squirt the dye on her shirt so it wouldn't get all over the ground.  I picked a bigger shirt for Megatron thinking he could just wear it for awhile but was amazed it fit him so well the day of.  He just keeps growing!

 Here's Little Miss and me showing off our shirts.

 Little Miss has two favoriate Princesses.  One is Elsa, and the other was waiting right inside the gate when we came in!  She was so excited to meet Ariel.  I was hoping to make a straight dash to the back of the park to get tickets to see Elsa but couldn't pass up Ariel.  Unfortunately, by the time we did make it back to Elsa, the tickets were hours past the time we would be staying and I knew with a toddler and infant I wouldn't be able to last that long.  Someday we may finally meet Elsa.

We did manage to go on the carrousel.  Even though Megatron doesn't look very thrilled about it lol.. he ended up falling asleep right after this ride so I think he was just ready for his nap.

 We hit small world where we were able to walk right on, and a good ride to get out of the heat and let Megatron finish his nap.

 Green Bubbles favoriate part, and mine as well, as the Jedi Training Academy.  We've had passes to Disneyland since Green Bubbles' first birthday, except for the last year, and he has always been to shy to leave my side to become a Jedi.  But not this year!  Green Bubbles finally raised his hand and his Mickey Ears and tie dye shirt landed him a spot on the rooster!

He was one of the first kids picked and got to stand up on stage.  The entire crowd aww'd when he held the light saber upside down and the Jedi master had to help him 'activite' it.  I loved watching him up on stage and he told me afterwards that we have to do the Jedi school every time we come now.

 What made it even better was Darth Maul's fascination with Megatron.  He came over to us dozens of times during the show trying to taunt Megatron.  Tapping the ground in front of him with the light saber, crouching down in front of him, and he even poked him with the tip of his boot once.  Megatron stayed strong and never joined the dark side though, or even looked at him!  Perhaps that's why, even at the very end when the stage was going back underground, Darth Maul gave one last heated point towards Megatron.

 The end of our day was approaching and we happened to catch Mickey Mouse on our way out to the group photo.  Mickey was tickling the kids and even blew a sweet kiss to a sleeping Megatron.

 We made it to the big group photo infront of California Adventure.  Can you spot the kids?

 After a quick stop at the Lego store in Downtown Disney we made it to the car where Little Miss joined Megatron is a much needed nap after a long day of fun.  And I can honestly say, having three small children at Disneyland by myself was challenging.  It didn't occur to me until after we were there that many of the rides we normally do wasn't possible with only myself and three children. A 1:2 ratio was fine, 1:3 made me plan out what we could do.