Tyndall Air Force Base field trip (11/13/08)

One of the coolest things about living where we do and being involved in the homeschool group we are in is that we are close to the Air Force base and actually know a few of the fighter pilots. One of them was nice (or crazy - you decide) enough, to get us onto the base so we could tour the hangers, check out the fighter jets, visit the control tower and "play" with the flight simulators. The kids had a BLAST!

Because it's an AFB, I couldn't take a lot of pictures, but I did snap a few.

Inside the cockpit of the F-22 Raptor

Delaney LOVED being inside the jets. I don't think I've ever seen her smile bigger. She says she wants to be a pilot when she grows up *eek*


This is a shot of the air field taken from the deck of the control tower. Here's your vision test...See that row of trees? Behind that is East Bay and behind THAT is another row of trees. We live just behind the other row of trees. Can you see our house? :) Seriously though, we do live just across the Bay from the AFB which means we get to see and hear a lot of jets. We LOVE it.

You can tell F-15s from F-22s by looking at the tails. I may be wrong, but I think it's the F-22s that lean while the F-15s stand up straight. I hope I got that right, but it might be the complete opposite!

Here's the family standing on the aforementioned deck of the control tower. Notice Sydney holding on to the bulding for dear life. She has developed her mother's love of high places *ugh* And look how happy B and Sadey are....

That's because Sadey hated nearly every minute of this field trip! She was so freaked out by the loud noises that she cried the whole time.

Thank goodness Dad came along so, between the two of us, we were able to keep her somewhat subdued. But poor B though! He took the day off work for the field trip under the promise of getting to try out the AF flight simulators. Sadly, we ran out of time right before it was his turn!!! He was a trooper though. No temper tantrums from Dad.

Pioneer Days

Right after we originally did week 5 (I reviewed it before I made the last post), we went on a field trip to a local Pioneer Days village. It was a very rainy day, but we had such a good time!

The village is actually made up of houses that were built in our area and were all moved to this site. I can't remember the exact dates, but some of the houses were from the 1700s and others were in use up until the 1960s. Here is one of the older houses. One of the most fascinating things was that they knew the history of the homes and even had many of the families' belongings which made it seem more real to the girls.

One of our first stops was at the smoke house. The girls were a little grossed out by the idea of killing the animals and rendering fat, but they loved eating those cracklins! I think that was Sadey's favorite part of the day!

The blacksmith told us all about making horseshoes and even made me a plant hook for the front porch. I love it!

There were a few arts and crafts stations. Here the girls are learning about making quilts and even got to make their own squares. At another station they got to make and decorate marbles and were excited to learn how easy it is if you have some clay and lots of time to let them dry in the sun.

Here's the family outside the general store - waiting for the rain to slow down a little bit.



During a particularly bad part of the storm, we were stranded in a house with a wonderful older couple who were all about re-enacting the pioneer lifestyle. They gave us warm biscuits and homemade jam, and then taught the girls some games that pioneer children might have played. Here she is showing Delaney how much fun you can have with a button and some string.


Thankfully it didn't rain the whole day! Delaney had fun making us some butter.


We had so much fun talking to this woman about the baskets she was weaving from pine needles. Pine trees grow like crazy around here - we have more needles in our yard then grass! She told us how she collects, washes and prepares the needles and then makes the baskets with just the needles and some string. Someday it would be nice to take a class from her and learn the technique - but it doesn't SOUND like it would be too hard once you get the hang of it.

Adventures in MFW - week 2

Week two was all about Jesus and Christopher Columbus. What fun!

Our Bible lessons for the week served mainly as an introduction to Jesus in the Bible. We looked at both Old and New Testament verses that described God's promise of His arrival and how He was named.

Our history lessons this week were fabulous. We had so much fun learning about Christopher Columbus and his ships. We read about him in our history spine Exploring American History and read a story about what sailing across the ocean would have been like for some of the earliest settlers in our other history book American Pioneers and Patriots. We made 3 ships out of foil and tried sailing them across the tub and then discussed how hard it must have been for the sailors to make it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean with no motors on the ships.

We all know there is no such thing as coincidence, right? Well I was astounded to see God's hand at work when I found out that a replica of Columbus' ship The Nina "just happened" to be docked at the marina the very same week we were studying Columbus. So the girls and I met up with other members of our homeschool group for a tour.

I read Pedro's Journal to them which is the fictionalized story of one of the boys on Columbus' ship. I was reading it at the same time as we read Columbus' journal so we talked about the differences in the entries and how that may have related to pride, morals, and/or point of view. I think they are starting to see that two people can tell the same story in very different ways (although these two books were quite similar).

We also did our first science experiment this week. We were trying to learn the effect of salt on water so we added salt to one glass, none to another and then had to guess in which glass an egg would float. We spent some time discussing the scientific method and used the experiment as a good introduction to recording our theories and observations.

To round out our studies, we did the usual art, math, language arts and also began learning the words to "God Bless America."