Birds of Prey Field Trip

Our homeschool group visited Wheatley Birds of Prey on October 10. It was an incredible experience, thoroughly enjoyed by kids and adults. Clive and Jayne, the handlers, are both very knowledgeable and personable.
Holding a Barn Owl was definitely a highlight...

Kestral

Sky, a Peregrine Falcon, feasting after her flight. 

Sky

Hannah slept through most of the outing.

Eagle Owl

Check out those eyelids.

Field Trip: The Globe and more...

We stayed in London at our friends' flat for a few days and worked some learning into our adventures.

First on the agenda, tour The Globe.

Each of the boys completed a set of questions related to the exhibit. 

Waiting for our tour guide to tell us lots of interesting things. 

We spent most of a day at the Science Museum. While there, we enjoyed a presentation about structures.

The "hands-on" room tied in nicely to our physics lessons in science. 

We did a run through the Natural History Museum. It was insanely crowded. 

School in the States

Our trip to the States was too long to abandon our normal school routine. Over the seven weeks, we were able to do 15 days of school work as well as some fun field trips.

Our first field trip was to the Aquarium of the Americas in Atlanta. Amazing! We arrived just after 10am and didn't leave until after 4pm. The boys loved every minute. The pictures are sadly of a very poor quality. Nick needed our camera for his work in the museum, so we used a disposable.

Penguins!

Whale Shark! The sharks, manta rays, and dolphins were among our favorites.

We spent a lot of time at this touch pool.

Great day!

Gigi helped Caleb while I worked with the older boys.

The boys joined Aunt Ginger's painting class.

Here's Caleb's masterpiece.

 Our second field trip was to the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport. The tour was intimate with only one other couple joining us.

Touch pool in the Discovery Room.

Horseshoe crab - He was a favorite.

This guy was seriously aggressive.

Sifting through the sand for a shark tooth in the fossil dig.

We each matched our fossil with the appropriate animal.

Up close with the dolphins.

Our final field trip was to Fort Conde.

Running on the grounds.

Imprisoned.

The tunnel below the fort.

Field Trip: Oxford University Museum of Natural History

We've focused on insects and other mini-beasts during our nature time this term. Kirsty organized a field trip to the Museum of Natural History for a workshop entitled: Minibeast Madness. It was excellent! The education officer was well-informed and engaging.

There's a 15 child minimum, so other homeschoolers joined our normal crew.

Madagascar Hissing Cockroach

The girls had a go too.

After the workshop, we explored the museum.

Noah sprawled out on the floor to sketch one of the exhibits.

The honeybee hive was a big hit and was GREAT reinforcement of the previous week's lesson on honeybees. The comb is inside the glass, and the bees are able to travel through a tunnel outside of the museum to collect pollen at University Parks and other locations. We watched them do their waggle dance.

The exhibits are great and the architecture is not too shabby.

Ashmolean

Our resident Ancient Near East expert took the boys on a field trip to the Ashmolean last Friday.

A full day's work and then an outing

Our circle time has become chair time. The boys are less inclined to roll around and cause disruptions. 

We studying Sumer, Mesopotamia, and Egypt today. The boys did map work, and we used the globe to pin-point the location of their maps. I think a trip to the Ashmolean is coming up soon. Hopefully Nick can take us around since he knows a thing or two about this time period.

We finished our unit on the stages of life. The boys glued the photos cut out yesterday into a book and added a few sentences about each stage. 

 I decided to take the kids into town a little earlier than usual (Cooper and Noah go to Whizz Kids at 5:30). We had a picnic lunch in the Botanic Gardens.

That's Magdalen College tower in the background. The boys had a great time running around the rose garden.

The pond is also a favourite (oops...I just slipped and used the British spelling).