Living in the boonies, we are in the odd situation of (technically) living in Town A but being part of Town B's school district. We do pretty much everything in Town A, though, which is why I was caught off guard when Town B started back to school a couple of weeks ago. Town A started back Thursday, and since that is where most of the people we know go, we had our official Not Back to School celebration.
We started off at IHOP for breakfast with friends and then moved on to the splash pad.
No crowds and the weather was just about perfect.
Friday morning, though, I loaded up the kids and took Jack to school. After a year of speech therapy when he was 4, he tested out, but it looks like it's time to start it up again, so he will be heading to the elementary school he would be attending (you know, if he weren't going to the splash pad) for speech--and we found out his speech teacher was homeschooled! After his evaluation was done, we tried out a nearby park since both kids were dying to get on the playground at the school.
Jack would probably tell you that the best thing about the morning was finding out that the splash pad was still on. For me, it was the look on Jack's face when he thought he was going to be drugged at the school. We were waiting in line behind a couple of kids and their dad and the girl was supposed to take some medicine before she went to class. The dad was getting on to her and saying, "You'd better get over here and take your medicine!" and then the nurse came out and got on to her about it, too. Jack looked up at me, horrified, and asked if he was going to have to take medicine, too. I could hardly keep from busting out laughing because it was clear he thought this was going all wrong. Hopefully he will find that the drug-free speech sessions aren't too awful!
Guess who had a birthday today?
Since we are rowing Three Names, we have been delving into tornadoes this week--an appropriate topic for our area of the country. I found this book at the library and we tried it out today!
Friday was our first field trip--a little road trip with some friends!
As you drive toward the lodge, you pass all kinds of animals. According to Jack, one of the big highlights of the trip was getting to unbuckle to move around the car and see all the animals--we were only going about 3 miles an hour on a one way road, so my main traffic worry was being approached by a buffalo.
You also see signs like this on the way in. They give you a CD to listen to, but my CD player is broken, so that stunk.
Highlight number two: climbing the rock wall around the parking lot.
We started in the visitors center.
Upstairs they have some displays about the buildings and also one about stickball, which Jack remembered from our trip earlier this summer.
There is also a good sized petting barn.
Hey, kids! Watch out for all the cars! Oh...well...carry on!
Between most of the area schools being back in session and the temperatures back over 100 degrees, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.
You can tour a small part of the lodge. Most of these animals used to live on the ranch except for six that were gifts.
One night Frank Phillips won a circus in a poker game, but since he didn't want a circus, he deliberately lost it back to the man the next night. The man sent him the elephant head later as a reminder of the day he owned a circus. The lion was a former circus animal who lived at Woolaroc when he got too old for the circus. His mouth is closed because he had lost all his teeth.
Someone at Woolaroc (I'm not sure who) invented this way to put bark on stuff and got a patent for it. Almost every picture frame there has it and they even covered the Steinway piano in it. I told the docent that was taking the decorating a little far, and she said, "Well, if you have the money..." If I ever have the money I have a lot of other things I will do with it before I cover my piano with bark. A lot of other things.
Not a shabby front porch view, eh?
We hiked a bit on this rocky area.
Jack with the "Indian action figures" he found in the museum. The museum is huge and has a bit of everything.
A rather morbid bronze of a pioneer woman holding her baby and a rifle while standing over her husband, who has been shot with an arrow. Good times, good times.
Minerals
Shrunken heads--I told you this museum had all kinds of things. I didn't even include the wall of all kinds of dolls next to the other wall with all kinds of guns.
Alice tried so hard all day to keep up with the others (two 9 year olds, two 7 year olds, and a 4 year old) and she was successful until we got back on the highway on the way home!
We had a great time!
When I saw the school bus go by this morning, I realized that it was our district's first day of school. Since Alice and I were in our jammies and Jack was in bed, I guess it's a good thing he didn't need to catch that ride. Instead, we went to the bookstore and stopped off for a little CherryBerry and SpongeBob. Hopefully I'll remember our first day of school on Monday!
All that work to put all of our pages in one picture and then it turns out like this. Sorry about that. Anyway, we finished up Three Names Friday, which isn't exactly Five in a Row, but that's how life is sometimes. We used printables from Homeschool Share and I also printed off pictures of things like our tornado in a bottle and our Woolaroc field trip.
We finished up our mobile of prairie animals.
One day for lunch we had cookies that looked like Three Names--that's the name of the dog in the story, in case you haven't read it.
Friday we tried our hand at some pioneer cooking by making homemade bread in a bag.
After the dough started rising the kids wanted to use their bags as pillows.
We also made homemade butter to go along with the bread. We decided we were glad we lived today so we wouldn't have to go to so much work for all of our meals!
Snack time!
