A Day at Busch Gardens

Several weeks ago when the weather was so nice I took the kids on a field trip down to Busch Gardens. Jordan had been asking for some time about going wanting to ride the choo-choo train and see the elephants. Juliana and Jacob were looking forward to seeing the birds since we have been doing a bird study together. Jessie was all about riding the roller coasters and Jared was just along for the ride. Some homeschool friends met us there and we enjoyed the day together.

While we were looking at the flamingo's one of them decided to start preening the kids hair. We had just been learing about preening in our bird study so this experience was very fun and interesting. Deven, Jordan's little friend who was with us thought the whole thing was hilarious! He laughed and laughed as the flamingo preened his sister Shaye's hair as well as Jacob and Juliana's.

We got to pet an inguana and ask questions about it. We had never seen a lizzard being walked on a leash before.

In addition to our day being educational, it was just plain fun as you can see from the pictures below.

Free Homeschool Seminar from the Comfort of Home

It has been a long time since I have sat down to post. I have missed it and hope to get back to not only posting regularly again soon, but checking the posts of blogging friends.
I wanted to let you all in on a great opportunity coming up this weekend to be encouraged in your homeschooling. Cindy Rushton is hosting virtual seminar that you can attend for free. http://www.cindyrushton.com/LGO2008.html Click on the link then sign up at the bottom of the page after you read about all of the great topics that will be discussed.
I have never been able to attend one of her virtual seminars but have heard great things about the encouragement she offers so I plan on making this my first one. Won't you join me?
Will let you know what I learn.

Gardening and Math?

This year we decided that due to rising food costs we were going to try our hand at gardening once again and this time we were going to invest the necessary time and money into the prep work so that our garden would, Lord willing, produce a harvest of veggies rather than weeds and an insect buffet as had happened in the past. We did lots of research and decided to go with the square foot method. So, for all you homeschoolers out there who are wanting to put in a spring garden while at the same time learning about not only botany but math, I encourage you to read on.

Square foot gardening is based on most beds being 4' x 4' giving you 16 sq. feet to work with. That right there is a small lesson in AREA.

After daddy built our boxes my 6 year old son and 8 year old daugter measured (there's a lesson) and marked of our boxes at one foot intervals all the way around. They then hammered in nails at each mark and used string to make a grid giving 16 squares to plant in. Here's where some practical math skills come into play. One box we planted full of bush beans and black-eyed peas. Here's a question:

If we plant 4 seeds in each square and there are 16 squares in this box, how many bean plants will this box hold?

More problems:

*4 squares are planted with cucmbers. If each plant produces 8 lbs. of cucumbers during the growing season, how many pounds will we have harvested?

One 4X4 box is planted with tomaotes. If each tomato plant produces 10 tomatoes, how many tomatoes will we have harvested?

I'm sure you are seeing my point. If your children like mine say things like, "Math is dumb. I'm never going to use this stuff....", it is easy to show them how practical math is for so many things.

We have also been doing the Exploring Creation through Botany study this year from Apologia Ministries. What great prep work for our gardening project. Back when we started the study we didn't have any plans to garden this spring. God is so good to have prepared us this way. We've been seeing what we learned about His glorious creation at work throughout the whole process.
Psalm 19 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands."

I'd like to paraphrase and also say that "The plants and vegetation declare the glory of God: the flowers proclaim the works of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowlege. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world."