Homeschool Notes: Field Trip!

Mostly, homeschooling at our house looks like this:
But now that the sun is out and the weather is warm, none of us have the patience for this Sitting Still Indoors business. Once in awhile we just can't do it anymore. On those days, homeschooling looks more like this:



A trip to Rifle Falls for a picnic and nature walk was a whole lot more fun than practicing multiplication tables and tracing letters, to be certain.

We had a lovely discussion about fossil fuels and our consumption of them on the way to Rifle as we drove past the rigs. "But, um.... won't we run out of gas eventually, if we get it that way?" Exactly, darlin'. You keep on practicing riding that two wheeler.

We covered more topics than I can count- stalactites and stalagmites and the formation of caves from mineral deposits; the nocturnal habits of bats in the caves;

This is her "There is no way I'm going in that cave
and I can't believe you're even crazy enough to suggest it" face.

A study of birds, where Cora quickly learned that blue jays will happily eat cinnamon rolls; watching bugs skate around in the water below the falls, and seeing that if a moth gets wet, it can't fly anymore; And we learned that waterfall water is really, really cold and refreshing.



we watched and identified butterflies, plants, flowers, and fungi (because homeschoolers are known to carry field guides around in their backpacks.) We even stopped at the fish hatchery (where I failed to get the camera out) and we got to feed the fish and talk to a lady about their life cycle. (Because when random strangers learn that you homeschool, they take it upon themselves to teach your children something. Am I the only one who's noticed that?)

A giant mushroom growing
on the underside of a tree trunk.

And on the way back home, we even said all the multiplication tables. So we didn't end up skipping math, after all.



And of course, there was the study in compass reading and the use of GPS when we stopped for a few geocaches while we were in the area - three micros, for any of you that enjoy caching. Micros are so hard for me. It was exciting to find three in one day, with the help of the Daddy.