October Homeschooling (Including our Air and Space Field Trip in D.C.)

By October, I think we all were definitely falling into our groove with homeschooling. We had a few things in the schedule that made the beginning weeks a bit more hectic, like t-ball finishing up and Reid's birthday in the mix, but we took things in stride. Being exhausted from still being in my first trimester, I learned to focus on what was important and rest when I needed it. Sometimes that meant just getting everyone outdoors so we could all get a breath of fresh air and so they weren't pulling out toys or making food messes all over the place as quickly as I could clean them up. 

H.E.A.R.T.H. provided a couple good opportunities for getting outside with some friends - the first meeting in October being a P.E. day at Criser Park where the kids learned how to play kickball. Caleb wasn't thrilled about the idea since at this age he's not real interested in sports, and the fact that he was smaller than most of the kids and was having trouble keeping up with them and the rules led to a meltdown by the end. Hadley was willing to get in there are learn something new, but even my social butterfly got a little overwhelmed by the end. I debated if it was really worth it as I tried to balance Reid, my napping toddler, in my lap and consul my older ones, but hey they got exposure to something new and it's all a learning experience.

The following week though, they had a blast at our group's field trip to Marker Miller Orchard. H.E.A.R.T.H. visits some type of pumpkin patch every year, and I was so excited they'd chosen this one this go around because it is my favorite in the area. I was feeling pretty terrible that day but getting out in the sun and watching the kids enjoy their friends was good medicine. We even got to pick a few apples.

The last two weeks of October we did election classes held at the library. While the older kids learned about the process of elections more in detail, the younger ones simply learned about presidents in general. The first week we did George Washington and the second Abe Lincoln. We read a couple books about each of these famous men, created timelines, and did some crafts, such as creating a log cabin like Abe's out of pretzel sticks.

Reid mainly slept through the classes or looked at books we'd picked up in the library prior to our meeting. Gathering there really made it nice for making sure we got in a weekly trip to the library to pick out a few books as one of our "specials" too. Caleb was especially thrilled at the opportunity and would try to race through his work at H.E.A.R.T.H. to get back to reading whatever animal books he'd picked up. Usually he'd even be finished with everything he'd brought home by the end of the day...I have a book lover on my hands. :)

As for our other co-op, we continued to get together weekly too and were ironing out the beginning kinks that are always present when you start something new. My crew skipped out the first week in October because I wasn't feeling up to it, but thankfully it's a pretty laid back group. At each meeting, the kids continued learning about creation during Bible time, studied about fall and began to explore the elements of matter in Science, practiced letters and reading skills, and were introduced to some new P.E. games. Lots of learning and playing.

I forgot to mention in my last post that we also are back in Awana this year, which provides both a good place for learning Scripture as well as a social arena. Actually quite a few of the kids in both of our co-ops attend as well, which makes it nice to see familiar faces. My three definitely enjoy it - even little Reid who had been struggling for several months with separation anxiety has been doing great there.

 

One week we even went to an annual Sunday morning worship service at Fantasyland park in town hosted by our Awana church. 

Another thing we jumped into in October once t-ball had wrapped up was art classes. We'd talked about the possibility of getting Caleb into something like this since he enjoys painting, so when I saw a friend post some pictures of her daughter, who is around the same age, with her art work, I decided to check out the studio they use. We set up his first class towards the end of the month, and he definitely enjoyed it. I thought he did a pretty good job too!

One of the biggest highlights this past month was our field trip to the Air and Space museum in D.C. Although we'd visited their partner museum in Chantilly at the end of last year, I really thought this would be a good experience as well as we finished up our astronomy book. The main draw for me was that it was the only place where I knew they still had a planetarium, which I remembered enjoying as a kid when we studied constellations. Sadly, things aren't like they used to be and instead of just projecting the stars and outlining the constellations as they told about them, we ended up watching a very vivid show about the stars and the universe which may have been appealing to some but wasn't quite what I was hoping for. That said, I am so glad that we went anyway because the museum itself was pretty impressive. While space exploration and all that science stuff has never really been my thing, to tell you the truth this was such a wonderful day and I probably enjoyed myself as much as my engineer husband and our science loving boy. It was an awesome field trip and so cool to connect so much of what we'd been studying to the exhibits inside.

Our first stop was to the How Things Fly section, which is designed specifically with kids in mind. We learned about weight, gravity, drag, lift, air, and so much more

Wondering how much you would weigh on other planets? Check out this scale that Caleb's trying.

Sorry for the poor quality pics from this point on. My memory card filled up and we had to use Dave's phone the rest of the time.

The Space Race section had a lot of real space craft items to check out .

 

Discovery Model

The chapter we'd been studying most recently focused on how astronauts live in space. Getting a glimpse inside a space shuttle and a space station to see how they sleep, eat, shower, and go to the bathroom was pretty interesting to everyone.

There was a lot of computerized learning opportunities in the Moving Beyond Earth section of the museum. The kids could figure out what type of job at NASA was best suited to their interests and skills at one station, and at another they could compete against others in a little space trivia. The interactive table in the picture above was a program that allowed visitors to create their own modules and then connect them to the International Space Station. Both the older kids and Dave spent a ton of time here.

Caleb also liked the area where he could pretend to drive a rover and explore the moon or different planets and get an incredibly unique view on the huge screens surrounding him. 

The Explore the Universe section was pretty neat because we got a glimpse at a replica of William Herschel's 20-ft telescope that we had studied about.  I was amazed at just how large it was - definitely impressive for his time period. The room was too dark to take a pic, but here is Caleb trying out a smaller one.

We also got to check out a model of the Hubble Space telescope.

Apollo 13

We are standing in front of the original Wright Flyer. It was pretty neat to see it in person but all of us agreed we wouldn't have wanted to be the ones flying on that thing.

I think we ended up spending 6+ hrs in the museum and still didn't get to everything we wanted to see. The kids were so well behaved too. The little ones took turns napping the stroller when they needed and we just went along at a leisurely pace trying out all we could. We even walked out on the mall for a little bit to see the Washington Monument and Capitol Building before heading home. In the end, while we all left worn out, it was with the feeling that we'd had a great day.

So there's our October Highlights...a pretty good month.