Lesson Planning: Summer 2011
If you’re a long-time reader at This Adventure Life, you may have noticed that I am not doing lesson planning posts for each mod the way that I did last year. One of the reasons that I haven’t been doing them is because we’re not switching materials with the same frequency that we did last year.
2010 was our first year homeschooling with school-age kids (we’d gotten in a couple of years of home-pre-school before LBB started K), and as a newbie, I was experimenting with different styles, different methods, different schedules – basically trying out as much as we could to find what works and what doesn’t. I’m glad we did it that way; we got a look at a ton of different materials and tried on quite a few ‘homeschooling hats’ and got a feel for what we liked and didn’t, what worked and what we should change. If you’re new to homeschooling, I’d definitely recommend approaching your first year in that manner – as an experiment of sorts, to find your groove. The benefit was that going into this, our second year, I felt like a I had a much better grasp on the mechanics of homeschooling, and a better idea of the kinds of materials and lesson styles suited my kids best. For the most part, we’ve stayed pretty consistent with our materials and methods – we’re still using what we started with in January (though we’re finished with some of it already) and our 4 weeks on/1 week off schedule works well.
If you want ‘categorization’, I’m really not sure where we fall in the homeschool styles spectrum (though I did find this nifty teaching style quiz. I’m a 56 – combined parent/child directed. I think that’s pretty accurate, though I see a lot of what’s described as ’traditional’ in my style as well). I see us as fairly easy-going, but by no means do we fall into the ‘relaxed’ homeschooler category. We’re also not ‘rigorous’, though we do have a lovely schedule and manage to stick to it a goodly portion of the time – at least for the months that fall within the traditional school year. For the summer months though, since we school year-round, we’re making some adjustments to the schedule to accommodate the goings-on in our community.
I have divided our school year into ‘sessions’ to accommodate what feels like a good pattern for us. The Winter Session is January – May. Summer Session is May-August, and the Fall Session is September – December. Our heaviest session, work-wise is the Winter Session. It’s the longest (5 months), and is the beginning of the new school year, so everything is all shiny and new. During the summer, my niece Fred (y’all remember Fred, don’t you?) spends a significant amount of time with us, so it’s somewhat impossible to hold a ‘regular’ school day with a sometimes-guest. This year we’ll be coordinating her visits with our activity days, so we’ll have a bit of a better routine this year, I hope.
We’re fortunate to live in an area where there are many summer offerings to take advantage of in the community, on both a city-wide and state-wide level. With gas prices being so high, that will curb our comings and goings on longer trips, but around town, there is still plenty to keep us occupied.
Our local libraries (in our county and two neighboring ones) all offer a summer reading club. In addition to the
book/reading part, each of them host different kids’ events for several weeks; puppet shows, magic shows, local Parks & Wildlife and Rangers give presentations, our local art museum has a mobile program, the Houston Zoo’s Mobile Zoo comes, Gator Country does presentations… it’s a pretty extensive list of ‘things to do’ that offers plenty of material for a homeschooling family to use as a jumping-off point for unit studies and lessons – and that’s just from the library.
We also have the Texas Nature Challenge, with missions from all over the bayou region (all over the state, really), we have the chance to explore state parks and other educational attractions with an eye towards education and conservation. This year’s missions include destinations such as Matagorda Bay Nature Park and Natural Science Center, Sheldon Lake State Park & Environmental Learning Center, Sea Center Texas and Habitat March at Nature Discovery Center’s Russ Pitman Park, among others.
And then there are the museum programs, visits to friends’ homes and Spindletop Rollergirls games, community service projects, 4H, and whatever else piques our interest. We like to stay busy!
HomeschoolShare.com‘s extensive list of unit studies and lapbooks will come in handy, I’m sure. We’ll cater more to the boys’ interests (ages 8 and 9; in 3rd and 4th grade-ish) this summer and focus less on ‘curriculum’, though we will continue with some basics, just not as rigorously. I did buy a couple of workbooks for the summer, Math Minutes and Summer Activities for the Gifted Student (just to clarify on that one; no, I don’t think my children are ‘gifted’ – well, they’re both exceedingly bright, but we’re not talking savant-level genius or anything. That’s just the name of the workbook. Don’t get your panties in a twist over it. {wink}).
We’ve used the Math Minutes workbook before; it’s 100 lessons with 10 problems on each page, designed to be done in 1 minute. LBB took more like 10, and often did 2 pages at a time, but then we used that as a bridge between ‘OMG, we’re homeschooling!!’ and ‘proper math curriculum for properly homeschooled child’. We’re >thisclose< to being done with this ‘grade’, so the two new books will be used here and there where needed to supplement our more regular, though considerably lighter than during the Winter Session. (On a side note, when I was looking for the Amazon link to the Math Minutes workbooks, I came across this: Math Minutes by Sadlier-Oxford Publishing. It’s a website that you can use to practice math concepts. You choose the category and set the time and then go. We haven’t used it yet, but it looks interesting. Just thought I’d share…)
In addition to the already full summer plan, two of our local movie theaters also do a kids’ program; one previously-released kids movie each week for $1 per ticket. You can’t beat that and since we don’t often go to the movies, we’re planning on taking advantage of that this summer as well.
I can’t wait to get started! What’s on your calendar for the summer?
Warmly,
~h
First Camping Trip!
Well, we made it… there and back again, safe and sound. In a possibly not-well-thought out, last minute plan, we (myself, SFK & PB&JMom) decided to take our heathen crew camping for 3 days/2 nights without the dads.
We all three endured much weeping and gnashing of teeth during the entire first half of the week over the fact that we were not scheduled to leave until Thursday. I must have listened to PeaGreen ask for ‘clarification’ on his dates (his words, not mine) at least 30 times.
My family used to go camping alsmot every weekend. My dad was an avid outdoorsman, so we were roughneck camping in the winter at the hunting lease, and on the lake in the summer (for fishing, skiing and other outdoors-y fun). My kids’ only experience with camping has thus far been in an emergency refugee from a hurricane situation. Loverly Husband and I did not enjoy that, but I guess to babies who barely remember it, it may have been fun…
This was much better all around.
We reserved two screened shelters (we opted FOR water and power) and brought tents as well. With 3 moms and 8 children, we needed the space to spread out. My kids each have their own tents – a bee and an elephant – that I found at Target when they were babes. We never expected that they’d see ‘real’ camping, but the elephant tent is well and truly indoctrinated into camping life by this point! LittleBoyBlue is a mama’s boy through and through, opting to sleep in the big tent with me, while PeaGreen and PuddleJumper shared the elephant tent. There were many complaints from our fellow campers about the noise level from that elephant in the wee hours of the morning… They had a most excellent time though, so it’s hard to complain too much!
Once we got set up, PB&JMom took the kids to the swimming hole while SFK and I finished setting up and got the grill going. We had hobo packs for dinner and let the kids roast marshmallows over the grill. There was a fire ban in effect, so we didn’t get to have a nice big fire, but it was mostly acceptable. I’d have preferred a real fire, but the fines are heavy, so we opted for rule-obeying and safety.
Day 2 began early, as mentioned before, with noise from the elephant tent. We had breakfast and coffee, then the moms and I had some AM meditation and yoga-ish stretching before heading off for a long hike.
For the afternoons, we lunched, then headed out to the Nature Center with Ranger Stephanie, then biked through the Forest Trail. We should have done the Texas Nature Challenge mission that went with this park, but we were having too much fun elsewhere to focus overmuch on that. We’ll just have to go again in the future {wink}.
Saturday was a pretty relaxing morning with not much on the agenda. We all were pretty pooped by this point and decided to pack it in relatively early. I got home around 3PM Saturday and slept in Sunday in preparation for today’s ‘back to the grind’. We started M7 in truth today (the last 2 weeks have been a mish-mash of school and break) and are looking forward to getting back into our groove.
As a final note, I would like to say how much I enjoyed this weekend. For a spur of the moment plan, it worked out well, and I look forward to doing it again soon! You can read about PB&JMom and SFK’s account of this weekend on their blogs, Enlightened Life & The Adventures of a Domesticated Woman.
Warmly,
~h
Houston Museum of Natural Science
I was raised in a Christian faith that believed and taught that the earth was young; only 6,000 years old or so. As you can imagine, dinosaurs didn’t really fit into that picture being that they’re millions of years old. So naturally, the dino bones at the Houston Museum of Natural Science have always held immense fascination for me. I am so pleased to be able to pass that fascination along to my children without the challenge of fitting scientific fact into religious dogma.
We went with our homeschool group yesterday, and even though we were not ‘technically’ in school, they certainly took a lot of information in. We had lunch in the courtyard, which was lined with statues. We had the kids go read about a statue and come back and tell us 2 interesting facts about their statue, then we went ’round and checked them out.
Inside the museum, we discovered that they were previewing a new IMAX film, so we got to see a free show, ‘Legends of Flight‘ which will be released this Friday. The film is a documentary about the design and making of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet. LittleBoyBlue is all about being a pilot when he grows up, so that was right up his alley.
Inside the main gallery, we got the info for the Texas Nature Challenge mission and their stickers for the Houston Wilderness Passport, then went fossil hunting. All of the boys except PeaGreen were totally into the fossil hunting exercise. PeaGreen was very into the dinos, so he and I took a quick trip around to see the parts that were of interest to him. The TNC mission was about ‘predator and prey’ in the TX marshes, but we expanded that to all of the galleries and he found quite a few on his own in other sections of the gallery. He was really into it and I was impressed with his enthusiasm.
We spent some time in the 3rd floor gallery, which was South American cultures (Maya, Aztecs, etc) and by the time we were through, the boys needed some outside time. We got some fun pictures and walked across the street to horse around under the statue of Sam Houston for a bit, then we re-joined the girls for a tour of the 2nd floor gallery, which was gemstones, aquatic life, marshes and African animals.
After we filled out our TNC paperwork, we trekked outside for a few last shot pictures of the kids outside the museum (you’ll have to check SFK’s blog for that; I didn’t get a shot) and then headed back in a homeward direction. We didn’t get home until 10:07PM, but it was so worth the trip! The kids all had a fantastic day – no meltdowns or upsetting moments – and the moms did, too.
If you get a chance to visit this museum, I highly recommend it! We spent the day there, with plans only to visit the main galleries, and didn’t really get to see everything. Thanks for sharing a peek into our field trip!
Warmly,
~h
Not All Fun and Games
We had a really crappy morning in school today. I don’t know why this surprises me. It happens every time we start back with desk work after a break. Yesterday was the more or less ‘official’ start of M5. We’re actually running about a week behind. That’s okay though; one of the supreme advantages of homeschooling is that it’s flexible enough to take breaks when you need them. PeaGreen’s birthday and ensuing celebratory activities, combined with the constant go-go-go of Summer Activities over the past few weeks, have us all drained. We needed a bit of an extended break, so we took one. That’s all well and good, but for some reason going from ‘break’ back to ‘routine’ is excruciatingly painful. Especially the first few days. It’s like running around trying to catch all of the raindrops from one storm in a cup – you’re constantly moving but making little progress.
Then there are the mulishly stubborn offspring to factor in.
Let’s hear it for the child who can take something as simple as 2 + 2 and come up with EVERY ANSWER BUT 4 and insist – insist – that 9,276 is a viable option. We spent almost an hour solving this riddle: ’I begin with /ch/. I rhyme with lamp. I am another word for winner. What am I?’ Keep in mind that his spelling words this week ALL begin with /sh/. His grammar for today was a worksheet focusing on the /sh/ and /ch/ sounds. His favorite song in the world is ‘We Are The CHAMPions’ by Queen…. suffice it to say that the boy KNEW the answer and was flat out REFUSING to say it. He danced all around it. ‘Tramp’ ‘camp’ were two offerings that stand out in particular as taunting Mom instead of just finishing it. We ended up putting it all on the chalkboard and he was left with no option but to write ‘champ’. Then he finished the last 2 riddles with virtually no problem.
I recounted this story to my BFF & SFK (both of whom came to a potluck/swim day event at our house this afternoon) and got the expected chuckles at my frustration… BFF asked PeaGreen why he wanted to torment Mom like that, and his response was his standard, “That’s the way how I roll” with a big fat grin. Who would’ve thought that a 7-year-old child could be that diabolical? It positively staggers the mind. It’s impressive when you’re removed from the situation, really. That he could hold out for that long on his little tangent before finally tiring of the game and deciding to finish up so he could go play with his friends says a lot for his future as a lawyer.
Then there’s the other one… 8 years old and already a champion procrastinator. If he applied one tenth of the effort that he put into avoiding doing his work into actually finishing it, he’d be the speediest student in history. His spelling assignment today was a cryptogram style worksheet where you have to figure out which number = which letter, then fill in the blanks with the right letters to match the numbers. It wasn’t difficult, just time-consuming. He piddled. He fidgeted. He went to the bathroom. He sharpened his pencil. He got the cat out of his basket (on his desk where we store school books). He got a drink of water from his water bottle and dropped the cap. It took 10 minutes to find it and four other things under his desk. He added a letter. The repeated the process. Frustrating!! We won’t talk about the language arts lesson. We just won’t.
I honestly don’t know what to do on days like this – where it’s just a battle of wills that apparently must (for some reason) occur in order to settle back into the daily grind. If we had not just had a 2 week break with zero schoolwork of any kind, I’d have just scratched school for today. The most annoying part about this is that normal tactics of logic and sympathy just don’t work. If they did, then I could simply empathize that yeah, it sucks to go from carefree playtime to recalling how math works, but we want to learn things and to some extent, this is how we do that*. But no matter what logic you throw at them, no matter how much you sympathize, they won’t have any of it.
Once I’m out of my funk and irritation, looking back I can pick out the parts of the scenario that I would admire if it involved another adult. My kids are tenacious and goal oriented – they know what they want (in this case, not to do school work) and are willing to go the extra mile to accomplish it. They do know when their rock meets a hard place and understand that sometimes giving in is the best course of action. I can never say that they didn’t give it their all – they tried everything they could think of to get out of doing work today. I’m not sure what lesson we all learned today (and I’m sure we’ll repeat this scenario again…) but I do know that I need to figure out how to work smarter, not harder – I need to brainstorm on how to motivate them better.
Oddly, I don’t get a lot of protesting with the actual work once they get past the mental block that they throw up when we start a new mod. I kind of wonder if the farther we settle into homeschooling the smaller these kinds of hurdles will be. With PeaGreen, especially, it seems like if we go even a day without reading something, he slips back into such a negative head space with reading that it’s really hard to pull him out of it. Even with as crappy as this morning was, we managed to overcome that negativity relatively quickly and move on to actually sounding out the letters and reading the words (instead of seeing a mass of words and freaking out because there are so many). LittleBoyBlue, once he realized that I was not, in fact, kidding about tacking on extra writing if he didn’t get on the ball, actually finished his work with a fairly decent attitude. It took a while, but they both completed the assignments given to them and we were able to visit with our friends and carry on with the afternoon with basically no conflict.
If we hold true to form, tomorrow will be awesome. Actually, this afternoon as pretty great. We had friends over to swim and managed an impressive 3 hours in the pool. The kids played well together (all 9 of them!) and we three moms got to chat for a bit without having to regulate too many kid disagreements. When we came back inside we pulled the watermelon that we popped in the freezer before we went out and had frozen watermelon slices – so yummy!
Incredibly, it didn’t seem like that many kids when we had them all running around.
‘This, too, shall pass‘ is an often tossed out phrase among the mothering groups and forums I frequent. When you think about it, that’s a phrase that almost never has anything good come from it. If things are bad, then you’re repeating it over and over again while simultaneously looking for solutions and strategies that work better than whatever you’re doing right now that isn’t working. When things are good, that phrase is a reminder that the days are slipping by quickly and to hold on to that moment.
As I write this, my kids are gone. When my sister came to pick up Fred to go home, the boys managed to get permission to spend the night over there since Fred’s coming back here in the morning. Loverly Husband and I have spent the evening in near silence, just reveling in the quiet. Strangely enough, I actually miss them. As awful as this morning was and much as I need the break, and though I am supremely grateful to my sister for taking the kids off my hands for the evening, I am very much looking forward to tomorrow’s lessons and a fresh start.
We’re headed to my other sister’s house in Jasper tomorrow, so we’re planning a little car-schooling. I’ll print out some of their work and we’ll take workbooks for the drive. We’re planning on hitting Martin Dies Jr. State Park either tomorrow or Friday for the TX Nature Challenge mission there. It’s been a while since we’ve done one so this should be fun. Or we might just laze around the house. Plans are in the ‘as yet undetermined’ state at this juncture.
Warmly,
~h
*No method debates here, please – we’re working hard to integrate three distinct learning styles here and to some extent, desk work will always play a part in our homeschooling. When I say ‘desk work’ it’s not necessarily ‘working at a desk’. I use that term to describe anything that is from a workbook, worksheets and assignments with lots of handwriting or written demonstration of lessons learned. Some homeschoolers opt not to keep track of progress with written work, others do. I choose to keep track this way for my own peace of mind, to show their dad and as a CYA-type thing if we ever get called to the carpet to prove what we’ve been doing with the kids’ education. Texas is easy to homeschool in now but it may not always be that way. Plus, even though writing may be drifting towards obsolete as technology becomes more and more integrated into daily life, that also may change one day. Just because we type more than we write doesn’t mean that writing shouldn’t be an integral part of education. My kids do an actual handwriting/penmanship lesson in addition to journaling and the written portions of whatever lesson we’re doing that requires writing. Boys, especially, seem to have a harder time with writing assignments so I try to keep writing assignments short, sweet and pretty narrowly focused. But however much they protest, write they most certainly will.
Lesson Planing for M4 (June-July 2010)
Welcome back!
If you’re just joining me, then be warned – this post might get a tad overwhelming. Every 6 weeks, my kids and I take a break from school and relax… well, they relax; I plan our next 6 weeks! This is the time when I go back through all the websites and homeschool materials I have to refresh my memory on all the cool things I wanted to try and lessons I wanted to do with the kids. I usually post a lot of links and reference a lot of materials, so if you’re starting out this might be a good place to look to get ideas or to find spiffy little homeschooling gems that you might not have come across yet.
If you’re joining me again as I plan this next module, then I’d love to hear if my posts have helped you. I’d also love to hear from you about how you plan or what some of your favorite materials and resources are.
In scanning some of my earlier posts, I just realized that my previous “lesson planning” post had a huge mistake in it – the title is “LPing for M2″ and it was actually M3 that was being planned – so if you noticed that, then you get a gold star for having a keen eye.
So – we’re going into M4 – that’s our 4th six-weeks grading period. Our school schedule is year-round. We do 6 weeks on and a one-week break throughout the year, then take all of December off and start our new school year in January. We end up with a total to 7 grading periods, which comes out to about 165-ish days (we school M-Th). We’re going into our 6th month of homeschooling – I can’t believe how FAST the months have passed! It seems like we have just gotten started. Looking back at how much we’ve accomplished, I’m simply amazed. I didn’t really suffer with self-doubt about homeschooling (overly much, anyway), but it’s really nice to be able to look back and see just how much we really have covered. Last week, for example, we were discussing a friend who recently moved back to Michigan and how far away that is. We haven’t done a whole lot of geography on the map, but we have discussed in great detail the Great Lakes area in one of our lesson series. I was trying to tell the kids how far away Michigan was in relation to Texas, and I brought up the Lakes… and they totally got it! They had a whole discussion that reviewed much of the material we discussed months ago – on their own! That was such a gratifying “homeschool mommy moment”.
With summer coming up, we’ll have a unique addition to our family’s school days. My niece, Fred, will be joining us several days a week. She’s a “school-a-holic” – she loves school, and has requested to be allowed to participate. So I’m going to be planning some things for her to do as well. Since she and my oldest, LittleBoyBlue, are in the same grade (going into 3rd), it won’t really be any problem to add in lessons for her. PeaGreen is going into 2nd now (wow – my baby is in second grade!).
So, without further adieu… planning! {fanfare}
Okay, so… one of the main things we’re going to work into our summer is letterboxing. If you’ve read previous posts, you’ve probably seen it mentioned before. Basically, letterboxing is a treasure hunt. You have a notebook and a stamp (hand-carved or bought, your choice. It’s your personal stamp – your mark), and ink pad and the list of clues to find the box (and there are literally thousands of them, all over the world). Then you go out and find the box. In it, you’ll find a notebook and a stamp. You stamp your book with the box’s stamp, and mark your stamp into the box’s book and then hide the box back exactly where you found it so it can be found again. And that’s it! Unless you want to start making and hiding boxes (in which case you have a whole new level of fun to enjoy). Learn all you want about it at Letterboxing North America’s website.
The other thing that will be taking up a lot of the next 2 mods is the Texas Nature Challenge. It’s a 12 week, 24 state park “how many can you visit” challenge with a mission for you (the kids?) to complete. We snagged a nifty poster from the Big Thicket Visitor’s Center a couple of weeks ago. We stopped in by chance and learned about it by accident. It’s such a cool concept though that we’re really looking forward to sinking our teeth into it. The neat thing about these two projects is that they can be done in conjunction with each other. We’ve already completed 2.5 missions and are really looking forward to doing more of them!
Now, as for what subjects those things fall into, I’m filing them under science, geography, critical thinking, history, art… pretty much all of them! Different missions and different clues and locations for letterbox hunting contain different aspects of “school”. Sometimes we’re drawing, following a map, learning about the history of an area or object – the list is endless and i LOVE being able to have school be a living, breathing thing.
Of course, we’ll still be doing ‘real’ schoolwork as well. I still haven’t had time to delve into Lesson Pathways site yet, so that’s high on my list for planning this mod. I’m planning on using their Year 3 Math for LittleBoyBlue and Year 2 Math for PeaGreen starting at some point this mod. I have Saxon 3, but not all of the consumables, so I will be supplementing LP’s stuff with that. We were supposed to get into multiplication tables this past mod with LBB, but haven’t really sunk into them yet, so we’re going to start off next week (week 3 of M4 – already!!) hitting them hard and heavy.
Something else we’re starting is mock-scouting. I love the concept of scouting, but the dogma of organized scouting programs just don’t work for our family. So, we’re doing an ‘adventure kids’ type thing that mimics scouting in some ways. I started buying patches from the State Parks we’ve visited and am going to make a sash for them to showcase their achievements. I also found a bunch of merit badges (demerit badges, in some cases) that are fun and amusing that we’ll use as well – I want this to be fun and interesting – not plain ole’ Boy Scouts stuff. So I’m going to choose the badges that I like and come up with a worksheet/accomplishment/task/skill set for the boys to complete to earn them. I’m still working on this, so when I get it together better in my head, I’ll do a new post about it with links and such so you can see.
Another really cool thing that is going on this summer is our library’s Summer Reading Club. Their theme this summer is ‘The Reading Express”. In addition to encouraging the kids to read (20 books), they can log their time and compete for prizes from the mayor’s office and get an award for reading. There are also a TON of nifty classes, presentations and projects that they’re offering in connection with the club – and the best part about it is that it’s all FREE! If you’re not local, then check your library – they may have something similar that you can take advantage of. Our library also has a room (or shelf, depending on the branch we’re at that day) with books for sale – either donated or withdrawn. Usually, they’re super cheap. If you’re book hunting, you can usually pick up a text-book or two, and almost always find a handful of kids books to supplement your personal library for very little dough. Other places, like Barnes & Noble and Scholastic also offer Summer Reading Programs that might be worth checking out.
Language Arts: Mad Libs! Or, if you’re interested in playing online, you can use Wacky Web Tales, which is similar – and still fun! Of course, we’re still going to be doing more traditional LA work – I’ve been using EnglishGrammar101 for LittleBoyBlue, but I am thinking that it’s a bit too far ahead of where he is at. We’re into Unit 1, Lesson 14-ish, and he’s having trouble with a lot of it. Whether that’s due to inattention or inability, I am just not sure. I’m thinking of starting with Lesson Pathways Language Arts (which starts with Boxcar Children lessons, which I like) and trying some of the ProTeacher resources.
For History and Geography, we’re still using ‘A Short History of the World’ by Alex Woolf, and also using worksheets from SuperTeacherWorksheets – I use that site quite a bit, especially when we’re going to be schooling on-the-go. It’s easy to snag and print a couple of worksheets that coordinate with something we’re doing “in-class”. The library’s summer reading club has some history-based activities (like the Pioneer Lady’ mentioned in my previous post).
Science is going to be spent outdoors a lot this summer. In addition to the above-mentioned Texas Nature Challenge, we’re planning a trip to the Houston Museum of Natural Science and to several additional state parks. We’re also doing the Houston Wilderness Passport, which focuses on specific ecosystems in our area.
Other than that, we’re kinds going lite this mod. We’ve scaled back history and science to only 1 day per week each, and art and music are each 1 day. Handwriting is M, T, W and journal is at least 2 days per week. Math, spelling, reading, phonics - those are everyday. We’re trying to fit lessons at home with lessons out-and-about; since we have such a busy summer planned, it will be a challenge to get all our lessons in. So far, so good though. Tomorrow marks the last day of week 2 – Only 4 more weeks left in this mod!
I hope you found something useful in this post! As always, I’d love to hear what you think, or what you’re using.
Warmly,
~h
Texas Nature Challenge: The First 3 Missions
Well, we have 2.5 missions of the Texas Nature Challenge completed! We would have three, but along the way, we discovered a fatal flaw with the TNC program. More to come on that in a minute; first let me backtrack a bit.
A few weeks ago, we went with our homeschooling group to Heritage Village. I blogged about it here. On the way back, we stopped by the Big Thicket Visitor’s Center and picked up some info on the various programs that they have going on. We learned about the Houston Wilderness Passport and about the Texas Nature Challenge (which is basically 12 weeks to visit 24 state parks and do a mission assigned by the website). It all sounded so cool and like so much fun that we decided to play along.
Our first mission went pretty smoothly. The kids and I, along with my SIL, Bambi (long story and inside joke), and my niece and pre-school age nephew, and another friend of ours (whom we’ll call Rapunzel because of her beautiful hair) and her 3 kidlets (2 homeschoolers and an infant) met up at my house and made the 20 minute drive out to Village Creek State Park. I’d never been there, despite living so close, and I have to say that was pleasantly surprised! It’s a great area and very well-maintained. There are trails and camping grounds and it’s really lovely and definitely a place that we’ll bring the kids camping once fall arrives and the weather cools off a bit (a lot).
Our first mission was to do with learning about and identifying three different species of pine trees.
We had to walk quite a ways, but my ever-resourceful boys did find walking sticks, which naturally made the journey more pleasant. {wink}
It was so hot that we got back into the car to finish the paperwork. Once we were done, we all got back out and went in search of one of the two letterboxes that were hidden out there.
We didn’t find it – I did send an email to the box-placer to find out if it had been checked on since Hurricane Ike came through a couple of years ago. We were planning on finding two boxes, but the kids were tired – the mission and looking for the box took longer than I had anticipated (one of the previously mentioned flaws with TNC is the estimated time frame – they WAY understate them!!), so we opted to go in for lunch and come back another day to find the other box.
The boys and I went back on Thursday – just the three of us – and searched for the second box (again with no luck). The box placer did email me back on this one and said that he’d not checked it since Ike and so it may very well be gone. So, though we didn’t find letterboxes, we did have a very nice walk in the woods.
Skip ahead a week and this past Friday, my frequently-mentioned friend SFK and her two girls, Bambi and Bubba (my brother) and niece and nephew, and my sister’s daughter (Fred) went with me and the boys to Houston to work on the Hermann Park and Houston Zoo missions. I have to say that I was expecting the morning to be stressful and to my great surprise and delight, it went so smoothly.
Once we got into the park and found a parking spot (for which competition was high) and piled out, we had to take a few minutes to check out the map. It apparently didn’t help because after walking for about 20 minutes, we realized that instead of walking towards Lake Plaza for the Hermann Park Mission, we were actually walking along the golf course. After back-tracking and heading in the right direction, we discovered that the clues were not as self-explanatory or as easy to find a one might expect.
One of the first things it says to do is find the informational plaques that tell about the art displays. We found that one (it’s the work of French artist Bernar Venet), but the other questions were less obvious. We actually didn’t find the answers to the next 2 questions. Supposedly, they were on plaques in Lake Plaza, but we checked them all and didn’t find the answers. I even asked in the gift shop (which is one of the last places to find a clue in the mission) and the employees knew nothing about the Texas Nature Challenge – so no help there. I was annoyed by that – that the employees weren’t informed about the project. It seems that someone should have known something about it.
So we went to the next section – checking out the 40ft. tall water jets – then moved on to the ‘walk along McGovern Lake’ part. We walked to the monument and reflection pool, but that’s apparently not one of the clues – so at this point, we checked the map and found that one of the clues was clear across the park. We’d already been there for over an hour, in the heat with 6 hot and hungry kids – so we decided that the mission was not worth the effort – let’s go eat and then ride the train and call it done.
So we trailed back to the car and had our lovely picnic in the shade. After re-fueling, everyone was in a much better mood, so we went back to the train station and had a lovely ride around Hermann Park.
After getting on, we realized that the train now has sub-stations. The mission did mention that, but the train only comes around every 15 minutes – so to stop at the cross-street for one of the clues about a statue, we would have been stuck waiting till the next train, or left to walk forever and a day back to the other side of the park. So we were quite glad to have abandoned the mission at that point in favor of having a good time. Once we got home, I did look at the mission site and it gives a time frame of half an hour to complete. I say that is WAY wrong. It took us that long to figure out exactly where we were supposed to go to begin with. Maybe half an hour IF you’re familiar with Hermann Park – allow more (like half a day) if you’re from out-of-town.
So after that, we went to the Houston Zoo. I just love the zoo! Such fun! Before we went in, I went into Guest Services and asked about the Houston Wilderness Passport sticker for “Other Places to Visit”. They had it (yay!) so the kids all got their butterfly sticker for their passports. That’s 2 stickers now – we’re doing well!
We hit one of the indoor exhibits first, to cool off for a minute. They had some really neat kid-friendly features in that building, including a tube for the kids to crawl through under one of the aquariums.
The Zoo Mission was a little easier to accomplish. One thing I don’t like about the introduction of more technology to the zoo exhibits is that the information on the animals is a bit sketchier. In the past, there was a plaque by each animal enclosure or window with information on the animal(s) inside. Now, there’s a name, but the information is broadcast in patterns on a television above a group of windows/enclosures. You have to read fast because the info is only up there for a minute – or wait till it comes back around. When you’re trying to record information about the animals that makes it much more difficult than it has to be. Thankfully, the reptile house was the only on that was that bad – the rest was a bit easier. I did find that the map was a bit unclear if you’re looking for certain animal enclosures. As a general guide, it’s okay, but if you want something specific, it’s not the best map. We ran into trouble locating the jaguar (which was on the other side from where the map said it was) and the bald eagle (which was at the end of a little maze-thing in the children’s zoo and not at all clearly marked). We ended up with me and Bambi writing everything down and just talking to the kids about it. Once we completed everything, we were looking for where to go to finish the last task, and again none of the employees knew anything about the TNC. Frustrating!! So I went back to Guest Services and found that the sticker we were supposed to get as a reward for completing the mission was the Wilderness Passport sticker that we got at the beginning of our zoo trip. {sigh}
Overall, I’m really happy with the trip. It was a great day, and we all had a truly wonderful time. I have to say that I am disappointed with the lack of support that the TNC seems to be getting from the entities that are supposedly involved – there needs to be some internal education and communication so that families who are participating can successfully complete the missions. I’d also like to see the mission lists revised to be a little more instructional, and to have a more accurate time frame listed. Parking, for example, at Hermann Park and the zoo is SO confusing! It would have been nice to have the mission say, “Park at….”". Even the zoo’s 45 minute estimation is way off – maybe if you run between exhibits and if that’s the only thing you do while you’re there. I’d like to see them update the age range, too – our oldest child on the trip was 9 and loves school and it was too much for her to do without help. Not that I mind taking my kids on learning expeditions where I do most of the work, but it’s nice to know that going in rather than learning it mid-stream.
Reading back over what I’ve written, it seems that a lot of this post is a complaint – I guess it is, but I do want to reiterate that we had a GREAT time working on all of the missions we’ve attempted thus far, even with the minor irritations related to the mission descriptions. Though that was one of our main reasons for going to the Houston, we did just enjoy being at the Park and the Zoo – so if you’re considering doing the missions, please don’t let my comments dissuade you. My goal here is to give our experience – and maybe cast a little more realistic light on them, not to say it’s impossible or that you shouldn’t do them. We’re going to give the HP mission another shot in a week or so – when we do the Natural History Museum mission. I just know to allow more time for that one {wink}.
Overall, I think we’re off to a great start with the TNC. I am excited about working on the rest of them – even if we don’t finish them “on time”, we’re still going to work on completing them all.
Warmly,
~h
