Zoo Field Trip

We're now just over three weeks into our homeschooling year.

Each day brings new opportunities to learn and grow together as a family. It isn't always easy, but overall it has been a good experience for us all. We're slowly, but surely finding our rhythm. Beginning next week some changes to our weekly schedule will come about as my daughter begins dance lessons again and both children will be taking violin this year. We will have to adapt to our new normal, but I am excited about all that we have going on.

Our journey this week has included two wonderful days where I truly felt God telling me, "You CAN do this!"  Homeschooling is a lot of work, but I love it. I love witnessing the connections my children make and learning alongside them. We've been using the Classical Conversations (CC) Foundations guide to work on learning our memory work. My daughter loves all the songs and the Timeline Song even has my husband and I thirsty for learning more. Before we decided to do CC, however, we invested in the Sonlight Full-Grade Package for Kindergarten.  I have been using this curriculum in conjunction with CC since it covers much of the same material in history as Cycle 1 in CC.

I do really like the Sonlight curriculum - especially the books -we have enjoyed many of the read alouds that come with the package for Kindergarten. I am also thankful that the history/geography books go well with Cycle 1 history/geography, but I love CC. I love all that we are learning. It is just a rich, beautiful curriculum.

The Sonlight science has also worked well with what we are learning in CC. For example, yesterday we read in the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia, about mammals and birds as part of our science for this week. In CC, we are learning about the classification of living things and the kingdoms of living things. And as we were reading through the encyclopedia on mammals, I heard a little voice say "take the kids to the zoo." So I did.

We even parked in the Mammal parking!

It was so delightful to spend time with the kids doing something we enjoy and reinforcing what we are learning at home. We had great fun pointing out all the mammals and identifying what makes the particular animals mammals. We loved looking at all the various birds at the zoo and determining what kingdom the plants and animals belonged to that we saw at the zoo.

We live near the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha. It is a spectacular zoo and currently under a lot of construction as they develop a new African Grassland exhibit which will include an elephant habitat. It is amazing the progress they have made so far and the new exhibit is set to open next year.

With all the construction going on, it was super exciting for my son. He loved seeing all the excavators and diggers and desperately wanted to say hi to all the construction workers. I thought it was fantastic that the zoo had decided to turn all the ongoing construction into a learning experience as they had posted placards on the construction fence with information about the different construction equipment being used.

And a trip to the zoo is not complete without a train ride. I noticed that the zoo did post a sign about the history of the zoo train, but I didn't stop to read it. Something for another time!

My little construction worker digging at home following our trip to the zoo. ;-)