Posted in Field Trips
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I just want to state up front that we are not big into celebrating "Halloween". That just happens to be the name of the event we attended. This event is always a week to ten days before the end of October.
Every year the local Natural Resources Conservation Board hosts a Halloween Hike in our county park. Each year there is a different theme that they follow and they perform 6 skits at various areas along the trail. This year's theme was Fairy Tales and in a previous year when we attended, the theme was Television Shows. As the actors perform their skits, they weave in education about the park, natural resources, animal habitat, endangered animals, etc. This is the second year we attended and we thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot.
Fairy Tales used this year were: 1. Shrek (overdevelopment) 2. Cinderella (natural beauty) 3. Snow White (wise use of energy and other resources) 4. Three Little Pigs (protecting habitat) 5. Ugly Duckling (endangered species) 6. Hansel and Gretel (using maps, compasses and GPS)
They have groups of 25-30 people leave the railroad depot approximately every 10 minutes (you sign up for a slot ahead of time). The night before, they host a pumpkin carving contest and then the jack-o-lanterns and other luminaries light the path through the park as you hike to the various skits. It took us just under an hour to complete the hike and when we returned to the depot, there was hot chocolate, hot apple cider, popcorn and cookies waiting.
Perhaps you can convince your local conservation board to start up something like this. I know a lot work goes into this each year and it takes at least 40 volunteers, but what a huge educational outreach they make all in one night. I like that it is family oriented and not a drop off your kids here and pick them up here 2 hours later. |
Posted in Field Trips
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We returned Monday afternoon from 8 days on the road. My husband attended a 2 day meeting and we all attended a conference related to our farming. It was a rather long trip (about 18 hours of driving one way), but we spread the driving over 2 days on the beginning and the end of the trip.
We drove as far as St. Louis the first night, stopping by to meet several members of a homeschool loop I am on, for a picnic. It was great to put faces with names of the many people that I "talk" to on a daily basis. We had to laugh, when we found out that our perceptions of others didn't match reality (read hair colors), others thought I was blonde (I am far from it). At any rate, the time of visiting went all too quickly and we headed just south of St. Louis to find a hotel room outside of the rush hour traffic on Tuesday morning.
We left Tuesday morning, hopping on I-55 which we drove on all day till we arrived in Jackson, MS around 6:30. I-55 took us through Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and finally to Mississippi. We had forgotten our paper with confirmation number, etc. so we had to drive several miles to a couple different hotels to determine which Holiday Inn we were at. There was a Holiday Inn every 2 miles. Thankfully they called around and found ours. We checked in, got a bite to eat and took an evening swim.
The following day, while dh attended his meetings we visited the Museum of Natural Science. On loan there, is the T-Rex named Sue that was found in South Dakota a number of years ago. If I remember correctly, it was found by a group of homeschoolers. I will have to research that a little more. The entire dinosaur fossil is 42 feet long. In fact, I couldn't get a digital picture from directly in front of it, as it was too long. I was able to get a full length picture on the landing. If I can get it figured out, I will try to add a picture.
Later on that week, we visited a museum of Agriculture Aviation and Forestry. A large part of the museum complex was an outdoor display of buildings, as they were in the mid 1800s. The kids enjoyed the various buildings including the blacksmith shop, the cotton gin and the general store.
On Friday and Saturday, we attended portions of the conference with my husband. Friday evening there was a banquet and the keynote speaker was Bill Kurtis, host of A&E's Cold Case Files. He was very interesting to listen to and talked about a lot of his experiences in journalism and television. Saturday we attended some of the speakers. One of the speakers ,we met briefly on Friday evening and he challenged the kids to a tug of war with him on Saturday noon. The speaker was billed as the World's Strongest Man. We were able to get his autograph and talk to him briefly when he finished.
My son asked if he was going to have a tug of war, so he took a brief break from signing autographs and did that. Of course, we had to add dad and mom to make it more evenly matched. The kids had fun with it. This man also bent steel rods with his bare hands and rolled up frying pans before our very eyes. Amazing! I got some pictures of that too!
The rest of the afternoon was kids' activities including rock climbing walls, bouncing pits, and mechanical bull rides. Of course, it was beyond hot! 96 degrees and heat index in the 100s. We went back to the hotel for a swim, then out for supper. The evening entertainment was a showcase of a number of country song-writers. They were superb, and wrote and sang many current country hits.
Sunday morning we headed for home in the heat and got about 2 hours past St. Louis. It was still 95 degrees at 9:30 that evening. Unbelieveable! We enjoyed our time traveling and seeing new sights and meeting new people. We even met another homeschooler at our first hotel. We hope to meet them again next year when we attend the conference. One of the speakers for the first meeting brought his wife along and we struck up a friendship with her. They were from Argentina and she was learning to speak English, so we enjoyed learning where she was from and listening to her tell us about her family.
We are glad to be at home again and I am slowly getting caught up on laundry. No laundry done in 8 days and you can imagine how big that pile was (is). Overall the trip was very educational and we are glad we were able to take the kids with us. I think they really enjoyed it and learned a lot. Looking forward to attending the conference in another state next year. |