Field Trip

 

 

     We are trying to visit as many national monuments and parks in Arizona as we can. Today we took a field trip to the Casa Grande Ruins. Truth be told it is practically in our backyard. We drove by it once a week for two years as we would go to gymnastics and yet this is the first time we have ever visited it.  I am so glad we finally went! It was a great trip and so informative.

     For starters do you know about "Every Kid in a Park".  Google it! If you have a 4th grader or homeschool age equivalent you can get a pass that gets 3 adults and all your kids in to any national park or monument for FREE!!  We discovered this last year and renewed it this year with Natasha and this was our first visit using it.

   They have a junior ranger program which involved the kids each getting a booklet that they had to fill out during our trip.  I loved this! We all learned some interesting facts about the "Big House". Outdoor, hands on learning is the best!

    We can't decide if our next trip will be up north to Flagstaff and the Walnut Canyon or south to Tucson to Tumacacori. 



 

First Lego League

This semester Joshua is participating in First Lego League competition.  The competition will be held in November.  The boys are presented with a challenge that focuses on a real world topic related to the sciences.  (You can google it)  This year it has to do with solving a trash problem.  I am pretty hands off on this one.  I have a friend who is leading the group and they meet on Tuesday mornings.  I take the girls to gymnastics during this time so either Jay or Anastasia take Joshua.  However, they had a field trip this past week to a transfer station and so I took Joshua and Jadon.  It was pretty cool.  One of the boy's dad in the group runs this place so he gave us a tour.  Even though it was nasty hot in the middle of the afternoon it was quite interesting.

 Showing us how the trash and recycle is sorted to be sold off to other trash and recycling places.

Their favorite part was getting to get up in the trash truck and push the buttons to make the truck pick up and empty the trash bin.  Then they got to blow the horn.  Jadon thought this was really cool!

Arizona Science Center

Friends of ours had free passes to the Arizona Science Center and they were not going to be able to use them before they expired and they were so gracious and gave them to our family. We were thrilled. We had not been here in a couple of years and it was a nice time with just our family and no agenda. We packed our lunches and headed out to downtown Phoenix. We all had a great time as there were things to do for all ages.

Yes, this is a bed of nails!! The kids were nervous to try it and then amazed that it did not hurt. (The nails retract......while they are down you get on the bed and then someone holds a button down and the nails come up)

Can you lift your body weight? This room was filled with all different physics activities.

Any guesses as to what this is?? It is your stomach and would the correct term be rectum??? LOL This was soooo funny! It is a slide complete with sound effects!!!

The kids thought it was great and gross all at the same time and it freaked Natasha out!! She did not like it at all. So we made her go down it (the poor girl) hehehe

Here she is coming out (our little squirt, OK no more comments ;) she was traumatized.

Savannah posing with Solar Man!

Competing in wheel chair races.

There was a room with "brain games" We had a lot of fun playing in here.
Joshua building a house with Lincoln logs.

Okay you have to check out this game if you have never heard of it before. It is called the Tower of Hanoi. The object is to get the stack of rings to the other peg on the right. There are some rules involved and it is a lot trickier than it looks. It kept Jay and I busy for over a half an hour. I came home and googled it (I love google!) and there are some online versions. Go check it out.

We were blessed to spend this time together as a family and we had a great afternoon!

Boyce Thompson Arboretum

Today we went to the Arboretum with our Co-op group.  This was the first time Jay has been able to join us on this trip.  Everything was in bloom due to all the rain we have been having.  I didn't get too many pictures because Anastasia took the camera with her.  She went on the "bird tour" with the older kids and we went on the "tree tour" with the younger kids.  After the tour we went to the picnic area and had lunch.  All the kids were great on the tour and it was hard for some of the boys because they were told they could not pick up rocks, sticks or even squish bugs.  Talk about little boys needing self control in this type of environment.   So during lunch time they made up for it by "exploring" all around.  hehehe

Monkeys in the trees