Ripley's Aquarium

When we went to Myrtle Beach, we stopped by Ripley's Aquarium. Although we've been to the one in Gatlinburg, TN a few times, it was our first time at that one. It was much smaller than the one in TN. It did have the tunnel like that one does though. The kids always like getting on the moving floor and having the big fish swim over their heads. They also had a neat room with an exhibit called Lethal Weapons. It has information on how creatures can survive and kill other things. Most of the exhibits have a hands-on activity for the kids that is similar to what the animal does. One of them shoots bugs down from trees and next to it, they had water guns the kids could use to shoot at bugs in trees.



Molly said this was her sad face because she was sad for the little fish.



Caleigh & Colin shooting down bugs



Molly with jellyfish

Caleigh with jellyfish

Colin being attacked by the jellyfish

Waterpark- Birthday Celebration

The kids were very happy that the hotel we stayed at had a waterpark. The hotel had two separate towers and there were actually waterparks in each one of them. You had to go outside to cross from one to the other. I went over and looked at the other one. It had a few different things and bigger slides. The kids were content to stay at the one in our tower though.

Molly hit with cold water.
This small area was the one spot that was never really warm.

Caleigh trying to get where the water doesn't hit her.

Colin floating in the lazy river

Molly on the slide

Caleigh on the slide

Colin on slide

Colin spent most of his time both days playing basketball in this pool with some other boys.

In addition to the water stuff, they also had lots of games. There were pool tables, shuffleboard, a Wii, ping pong, etc. They also had these giant chess and checkers games.

Our Week: The Moon, Owls, and the Crusades

The Three Rs

I got Colin started back with RightStart Math E this week. He doesn't want to stop doing Life of Fred so he has decided to do a lesson from that on top of his regular math. Caleigh had games in her math lessons a few days and she always likes that. Molly had a couple of worksheets this week. RightStart relies more on games for learning, especially for kindergarten, but she did well and liked them.

Everyone is progressing well with spelling, handwriting, phonics, writing, and grammar so there's nothing too exciting to report.

Astronomy

Astronomy this week was all about the moon. We focused on the phases of the moon, the moon's atmosphere, and lunar eclipses.
We'll be continuing to study the moon next week.

Some of the books we're reading about the moon

Using Oreos to learn about the phases of the moon



Phases of the moon
Ignore that they're red; I bought them on clearance after Christmas and didn't want to buy another package for this.




Using an orange and a flashlight to demonstrate why the moon seems to change shape.
This room wasn't dark enough so we had to move to the theater.



We spent some time outside observing the moon. Here is the night of the full moon.

History

The main topic this week was the Crusades. We learned why Christians, Jews, and Muslims believed Jerusalem was a holy city. We read about how the crusaders went to fight the Islamic empire to take Jerusalem and succeeded after a few years. Then we found out that Saladin defeated them and took Jerusalem back. After that there were many unsuccessful crusades.
We then read about El Cid helping the Christians to defeat the Moors and reconquer Spain.

One of the project suggestions from the Activity Guide was to learn to play chess. It was played by knights to practice strategic skills. Colin starting learning to play chess a few months ago. Caleigh seems to be picking up a little too. I got this book that he spent some time looking through.

Unit Study

To go along with studying the moon, our Five in a Row book this week was Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.





We learned about owls, the moon, similes, metaphors, imagery, tracks, and much more. I'll do a separate post soon with more on what we did and pictures of the kids digging through an owl pellet, our owl craft, notebook pages, and the cute owl cookies we made.

Everything Else

Colin didn't have hockey this week, but he has practice today (Saturday) and a game Sunday.

Colin's First Lego League team, which we're now calling Robotics Club, met at our house. The boys are going to work on learning more about the robots, programming them, sensors, etc. now that the competition is over.

We went to a program about raptors at the library this morning. They had different owls and hawks for the kids to see and talked about them. They also had a vulture even though it's not a raptor. They showed them what the eggs from each one look like and discussed some of the rescues they've done.

I have pictures of the owls that were there too, but I'll put them in my Owl Moon post.



Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Beach- Birthday Celebration

Caleigh said her favorite part of our trip was getting to go to the beach. Even though it was way too cold to get in the water, she loved walking along the beach collecting shells. We must have a million shells around here.

View from our balcony

The Birthday Girl

Molly writing Mom I heart

Happy Birthday to My Wonderful Husband!

There's another birthday in our house this weekend!

Krispy Kreme donut breakfast

With presents

This is what you end up doing on your birthday when your daughter's birthday is the day before yours.

Caleigh's 8th Birthday

My little girl is 8 today!

She asked for a sing-a-ma-jig cake.

I used one of hers to choose the colors.

She picked Olive Garden for lunch.

Opening Presents (I was able to bring most of her presents with us, but she'll have 2 to open tomorrow when we get home. One was too big and the other is heavy.)

Ordering pizza was all she had asked to do before she knew we were going on a trip so she got pizza for dinner (yes for the 2nd time today). She picked Littlest Pet Shop plates, napkins, and cups.

Caleigh wasn't sure what she wanted to do for her birthday when we asked her. So I just planned a surprise weekend. They knew we were going somewhere on Friday (the day before her birthday), but they thought it was close to home. We secretly packed their clothes, swimming stuff, the presents, and the cake without them noticing. We went to Ripley's Aquarium. Once we left there, we drove to the hotel and told the kids we were spending 2 nights. From the parking lot, they could see part of the indoor waterpark so they were excited about that. The hotel is right on the beach and we have a view of the ocean. It's too cold to do more than walk on the beach, but Caleigh's favorite thing about the beach is collecting shells so she was happy.
I'll be posting more pictures soon of the aquarium, beach, and waterpark.


Adding in a picture of Caleigh with her new bike she received when we got home.