A Month of Field Trips

Quite unintentionally, we have taken several field trips this month.

Very early in the month, it was Fleet Week at Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale.  This is the USS Cole:

And the USS California - a nuclear submarine.  We toured the submarine.

We also toured the USS Bataan, which is an amphibious assault ship and much bigger than our street. 

Proof we can all look at the camera at the same time!

One afternoon, for what reason I cannot remember, I took the kids to play mini golf. 

Another day - we went to the Free Air Conditioned Zoo  (aka Petco)

What is a post about field trips without a picture in an actual field!

One of our neighbors had some passes to Skyzone that were going to expire before they could use them and gave them to us.

I had my doubts about the value of a Skyzone admission - it's like $14 an hour per kid, so I was really glad to get the passes to check it out for free.  They really had an extremely fun and exhausting time.  We went on a Monday afternoon and there were very few other people there, I think on a busy weekend you would not get your moneys worth out of it because some of the areas had lines.

And I'm not sure how many times we headed down the marina path. 

We also went to the zoo this week and Caleb got to go to a football scrimmage in Immokalee.

When Sharks Fly...

Caleb loves things that fly - not exactly airplanes, although he thinks they are just fine, he seems to prefer rockets or things that float like kites, parachutes, paper airplanes, and of course helium filled balloons.  A few months ago we were at a garage sale and found one of those radio controlled sharks that you see at mall kiosks.  He also likes radio controlled things and sharks.  Win, win, win.

Somehow we let months and months go by without trying it out!  Well we decided one day to make it happen.

Before

They inflated it for us at Publix and charged $2 for the helium.  It is easily as big as 4 or more regular mylar balloons.   The guy filling the shark grinned and said, "I had one of these!"

Once inflated, you attach the fins and the r/c parts that control the tail.  It also has a piece that runs on a track along the belly to move a weight back and forth depending on whether you want your shark to dip down or point up. 

One benefit of having a super tall ceiling is your radio controlled shark "swims" really high!  It really worked and was well liked - very much worth the $2 at the garage sale and the $2 in helium.  (And probably $2 in batteries.) 

The helium began to let us down after a few days, so we deflated it and can reinflate it another day.  Everyone liked it except Irene.  Irene is very intense - she either really really loves things or very much hates them.  Sharky fell into the 2nd category!

Irene's Turn!

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

More Butterflies

Munching On!

We brought home the wild Julia Caterpillar we found and stuck it on our plant.  I've found that this plant grows very well from cuttings (even cuttings that have had every single leave nibbled away) and I'm attempting to start a few new vines of it. 

This is a zebra longwing (L) and the Julia (R)  The Julia Chrysalis looks a lot like a Gulf Fritillary.

They eclosed the same day:

The Julia is shaped similarly to a Zebra longwing but is orange all over.  It also has pale eyes.

Fuzzy picture to show wing shape:

We are kind of known around our neighborhood for coddling these insects, and even out new neighbors have to admit that they are pretty amazing!

So Miami: Weather

This is the closest we get to fall!

It's the end of the dry season - even though we've had an unusually wet dry season - and that is when trees here lose their leaves (if they are the sort of tree that loses leaves, most here are not.)  It also means that it is almost time for the royal poincianas to bloom and the blue land crabs to coming knocking on our front door (and that is not at all an exaggeration!)

The Baby is The Lesson

 It wasn't long into trying to balance teaching long division and caring for a newborn that I ran into the quote "the baby is the lesson".  More specifically - it isn't that a baby keeps you from your lessons, the baby is the lesson.  Honestly, I hadn't really been able to explain how this is so until more recently.  I understood that babies have intense needs and those needs can supersede almost anything else that seems important.  I understood that the children were learning how to care for a baby.  I also understood that the baby forced them to be more independent.  But beyond that, I couldn't figure out how the baby was the lesson.

Like other homeschooling families, we've found that there are times the big kids have to "babysit" Irene.  I have been working on a rotation where one kid babysits, one studies alone, and one meets with me.  On paper this is beautiful, but life is not paper!  Since Irene is way past the E.S.P.* stage of babyhood, briefly babysitting her really only involves playing with her, easy enough - except only one of the big kids seems to do this easily.  The thing the other two have trouble with is playing in a way that interests her.  They want to play in a way that interests themselves.  This I have found is another area where "the baby is the lesson".  The task here is to learn to put their own interests aside for the purpose of serving someone else.  Additionally, it is learning that you can't always be the boss in a relationship and expect the other person to passively follow along - especially when the other person is a toddler!

So in short, we must learn long division and irregular spellings and historical timelines and phonetic rules, but there is much more to learn about life than this - and a baby is a surprisingly effective teacher!

*E.S.P. - Eat Sleep and Poop - as in "All newborns do is eat, sleep, and poop."