Summer School

I’m going to go a bit backwards here and catch up on some of the happenings during and since the move.

Almost three weeks ago, we kicked off our summer home school session. We’ve added two students to our home school adventure, and it’s been a lot of fun so far. For the summer months, we’re doing theme weeks, centering our learning and activities around themes such as Explorers, Animals, Water, etc.

Our first week was Explorers, since I wanted to set off on an enthusiastic foot. We even made our Virtue of the Week “ENTHUSIASM!” so we could all be enthusiastic explorers. I just love how little kids get right on board with such things.

The Muse just happened to have a class at the Museum of Science and Industry on our first official school afternoon, so we all trekked downtown and made a day of it. It was rather good that we were out all day since the power was out from a honking storm that morning.

Here’s what we were greeted with on our way to the expressway.

There were some HUGE trees down. Look at the second one – pulled up by its roots! Weird, freaky storm. Power was out for days. It took us four times longer than normal to get to the expressway because all the streetlights were out. Total sucko.

At the museum, while The Muse was in her class, the littler kids and I explored a bit.

This exhibit had something to do with petroleum products, but it felt more like a rave for the junior set.

The maze of mirrors was fun. Ever tried to keep track of a troupe of little kids in a mirror maze? Mind-boggling.

There they are. All nine of them. Four of them. Whatever.

The Muse specifically requested that we hold off on the baby chicks exhibit and the storm exhibit until her class was over, so we did.

Those baby chicks are so stinkin’ cute.

And these baby chicks are pretty cute, too. 🙂

We could actually see some of them being hatched. They’re not really that cute at this point.

In fact, at least half of them looked dead. But after a few minutes, they started moving and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Dead baby chicks would not make for a fun field trip.

Another thing that doesn’t make for a fun field trip, at least with wee moppets in tow, is a really loud tesla coil that simulates lightning.

It looks really really cool. But it’s really REALLY loud. It goes off three times within about 20 seconds. So the first time the littlest moppets froze all wide-eyed, the second time they covered their ears in terror, and by the third they were full-fledged bawling.

Thankfully, the tsunami simulation was really exciting.

Look at that “wow-this-is-too-cool” face. That’s the face you want to see when you take the kids on a learning expedition to the museum. 🙂

I was quite amazed at how easy it was to take five kids to the museum for the day. Thankfully, none of them are the type to wander off. Even BoyWonder likes to be a part of the group. (The museum trip worked out much better than our trip to the zoo for Animal Week. My people don’t do heat, and it was in the mid-upper 80’s on zoo day. We saw some cool animals and got to see/hear the tiger roar, but ultimately crankiness prevailed. I think we’ll stick to indoor field trips during the summer and save outdoors for the fall.)

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