When Real World Experience Means Crashing Down

If injuries come in three's, I hope we've met the quota. K was climbing a tree with some dead branches on it. Well, one of those branches broke and sent him, not only tumbling to the ground, but gave him quite a gash in the leg.

Holy Week

He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

-Matthew 28:6

Field trip: Hogle Zoo

The kids loved seeing the baby snow leopards so much last fall, we decided to go back and see how big they've grown. Our visit did not disappoint. 

Field Trip: Thanksgiving Point

There is so much to do at Thanksgiving Point that it is near impossible to see it all in one or two days. We didn't even make it to the Museum of Ancient Life, but we were able to see the rest.

First, we went to the Curiosity Farms. The kids had fun petting the animals, riding the ponies and milking a cow.

Our school Week: Getting Warmer

Art lessons continued with painting ocean bookmarks with straws and "stain glass" windows. We have now finished all of the Mia Academy art lessons we plan to do.

Art Week

 This week was Art Week. K loves art so we made it a point to do at least one art project every day, sometimes more. Unless otherwise noted, these ideas came from Mia Academy.

Birch Tree Art

K's

A2

J's

Art for Kids Hub- Fruit Stack

K made one from him and one for A2

A2 started coloring the apple red,
and then went a little happy with the crayons.

J drew a windy day at the beach

Kittens

K's

J's

Art for Kids Hub- Mother's Day flowers 

(K drew them both, he colored the top, A2 colored the bottom.

Straw Blown Cherry Blossom Trees

K's

A2's

J's

High Contrast Hand Art

J's

A2's

K's

Art for Kids Hub- Wide Mouth Frog

3D painting (K's on left, A2's on right)

Art for Kids Hub- Minecraft Guys by K

A1 does not like art, so he did not participate. He did, however, finished Earth Science and Language Arts on Mia Academy. 

He also built a Crunch Labs kit.

And engineered a candy dispensing machine out of Legos.

He is also advancing quickly in piano lessons and enjoys making up his own songs. We love to hear him play.

He created a fruit salad from his Minecraft Cookbook.

And we did math.

Long division was extremely confusion to him. On his own, he discovered a trick to make it easier. He has great critical thinking skills.

On the left, is the long division I was taught in school. There is also the box method. 

Both of these use the order of operations: divide, multiply, subtract, add, and repeat until you have gone all the way to ones place (or last decimal place if dividing decimals).  Are you confused?  There's an easier way!

In the example above, A1 noticed he knows 60 divided by 5 is 12.  That left him with just the 7 left. He knows 5 goes into 7 one time. 12+1=13. Since 5 doesn't perfectly go into 7, he knew there would be a remainder. 7-5=R2. 

Despite him saying he doesn't like math, he is very good with numbers.

We also enjoyed reviewing some fun multiplication facts.

I just love that 8X7 can be written 5,6,7,8

Grandma helped J learned about sew machines and picked out fabric to start a project.

J also had a health lesson and studied Africa for Geography. Occasionally, we do world events usually from the Good News Network to keep it positive. 

This time we talked a little about the US tariffs on the world and what goals are trying to be achieved by implementing them. We got a really good laugh that two islands inhabited by penguins, but no people, were being tariffed. Poor penguins, but I guess they really don't care.

We're outta here

Science- While our rootfinder seeds didn't grow, our cat grass sprouted quickly. The kids will get to watch it grow if the secretary doesn't eat it all. 

J learned one cat goes wild for dry catnip, but ignores the grass, while the other devours the grass but doesn't react to the dry catnip.

A2 had story time at the library and we did reading at home. We are reading Where the Sidewalk Ends. Poems by Shel Silverstein. 

The three oldest also put on a hilarious slow motion sword fight (with pool noodles) for Drama. A1 makes the best expressive faces.

And the Learning Continues

I guess A1 does create art after all, just on his own terms.

Animal Handling- Loveland Living Aquarium and Scales and Tails

When our kids are between 8-10 years old, we take them on two special trips. One parent takes them on a bigger trip, and one parent takes them on a trip closer to home. A couple of years back A1 went to Seattle with Dad. Recently, it was my turn to take him on a closer to home trip of his choice. Our animal loving son asked to interact with as many animals as possible, specifically snakes and sharks.

Enter Loveland Living Aquarium in Draper and Scales and Tails in Kearns. At Loveland Living Aquarium, you can feed both the stingrays and penguins. With the stingrays there are a couple of sharks who also come to take a nibble. If you want to do something extra at the aquarium, but don't want to pay a lot of extra, I would recommend feeding the stingrays. A1 enjoyed the stingrays and was particularly happy to feed a shark (his 3rd favorite animal).

The penguins were cute, too, the price to feed them changes depending on the day. You can check their calendar to get the best deal.  (By the way, general admission prices range from $18-28, and there are discounts for those on fields trips, homeschool days, and SNAP/WIC families.)

If you don't want to pay the extra to feed animals, you can still have an amazing interactive experience at the tide pool and stingray pool, where you can still pet them. 

And there is plenty to see and do, including the new-to-us virtual reality motion experience (ECCO Voyager). 

After a day with A1's 3rd favorite animal, it was time to move on to his favorite type of animals-reptiles. Scales and Tales offers 1 hour interactive tours at their zoo for select hours. They also travel to school, birthdays, and other groups to showcase their animals and bring reptile education to the people.

Baby turtle

A spider, too.

And A1's number one favorite animal in the whole world, the snake.

He got to hold this beauty, too, with a bunch of other kids. His favorite part was, because he was on the tail end, the snake used him as an anchor by wrapping its tail around him.

He loved visiting Scales and Tails so much, that he went home and recreated his own reptile zoo.