Home Schooling Summary for the Last Week

 Our friends' flight was delayed due to the weather and we disregarded the extreme cold in favor of as many exciting adventures as we could fit in.

We tried out the new Carousel at the National Zoo. It was 3 dollars a ride, but there were plenty of cool animals to choose from and big sister A had a great time.  After his bad experience at the county fair this summer, brother M did not ride and just wanted to "pet" the giraffe character.

Little brother S can't wait to be old enough to ride the Carousel too.

With the cold temperatures, there were very few other people at the zoo -- in other words plenty of time at each window. We had a good visit with the gorillas in the Ape House. They all (including the baby) came up to the glass to see us.

At twilight we saw and heard the wolves howling. It was the first time I have heard them in person. We also had an amazing encounter at the observation glass with a sea lion.  She was following the kids' mittens as they ran their hands along the glass! including loop de loops and everything. They had a wonderful time.

 We had a class scheduled at the Nature Center on the day that it was only 10 degrees. I thought it would be cancelled, but schools were open and so the class was open too.

We were the only visitors to the nature center that day and got special treatment. We saw the bald eagle flying over the misty water. Our guide showed us two special cold weather experiments.  She heated water and then threw it off the observation deck outside. It was so cold that the water changed from boiling directly to a huge cloud of ice crystals. Then our guide blew bubbles outside and set them on the metal trash can. We watched as they FROZE! from the bottom up. Then the kids popped them and they SHATTERED like glass.

 The nature center class was about one of our favorite books, The Mitten, by Jan Brett. They had a great craft for us to go with it. She had made white felt mittens and printed animal clip art from the story for the kids to color and put in their mittens as she read the story.

The Mitten -- Jan Brett clip art craft

Wednesday we went to a free kids concert at the local shopping center and hear Peter McCory's one man band. It was a lot of fun, even though the kids were too shy to participate much.

Saturday was our first day of ice skating lessons. The lessons are "Parent & Tot" so Daddy went out on the ice with them as they learned how to fall safely, get up, walk and bend down if they felt wobbly. Each lesson includes a free practice session during the week.

Needless to say, the formal schooling was limited. On Friday we did spelling and math. I thought this picture teaching kids about graphing was pretty fun and so did big sister A once she got the hang of it.

Teaching young kids math and graphing