Homeschool Discoveries

We just finished the second of two short “mini vacations” we had planned for the early part of our summer.  Two weeks ago we went to visit family in Iowa, then this past weekend we took a 4 day trip to the Chicago area for a family gathering.  Chicago is a nearly 8 hour drive for us, so two of the four days were pretty much spent traveling.   The family event took one day…and that left us one day free for sight seeing!

We decided our kids would really enjoy the Field Museum of Natural History, and possibly the Adler Planetarium as well:

I knew one of our local museum memberships would get us some sort of admission benefit at both the Field and the Adler through the ASTC Passport Program.    We decided to start our day at the Field, and see how things went from there.  We were very pleasantly surprised to discover that our local membership got us into the Field museum for free!  This was just a basic admission (not for the special exhibits) — but there is so much to see that we were totally okay with not upgrading our admission.

The Field museum was unlike any museum I’ve ever visited.  I realized that I had never really been specifically to a natural history museum before!  Highlights for us included animal dioramas, an exhibit on Egypt that included many mummies (as well as two actual rooms from an Egyptian tomb!), dinosaur skeletons, and the incredibly realistic plant models.

Since we didn’t have to pay an admission fee to see the Field, we decided to check out the nearby Adler Planetarium as well.  Just like at the Field, we also got free admission to the exhibits at the Adler with our local membership card.   The kids were excited to see a planetarium show at the Adler, so we paid $10 each to see one of the several shows they offer.  We weren’t quite as “wowed” with the Adler.  Part of it may have been that we had already spent four hours walking around the Field!    The kids’ favorite part of Adler (besides the show) was an extensive kids’ play area that brought together various space exploration themes and activities.

We really did enjoy both places very much and hope to visit again — though on our next trip to the Chicago area, we may check out the Museum of Science and Industry, another museum we can visit free through the ASTC Passport program.

If you enjoy “sciency” sorts of museums and have travel plans in the upcoming months, you should definitely check out if any your local museums and the museums at your desitnation participate in this reciprocity program.  Our free admissions on this trip actually turned out to be of greater monetary value than the cost of our year-long membership to The Works (a favorite smaller science and technology museum in our metro area).  You may just find you could visit the sites on vacation AND visit your local museum all year long for less than you could spend on full price admission on vacation!

I’m linking up with Blogging through the Alphabet @ Ben and Me!

Celebrating 100 days of school is something I’ve thought about doing for at least a couple of years, but I’ve never quite gotten around to actually doing it.   Prior to last year I wasn’t keeping track at all of our number of school days, so it would have been pretty difficult to figure out which was #100.   (I know some homeschoolers track their number of school days or hours carefully, but it’s not a requirement for  in our state, and last year was my first year with a student at the compulsory attendance age anyhow).

Last year I was keeping rough track of our school days in my planner.  But I figured out which day was the 100th day…about the night before the 100th day.  And besides, it fell during the same week as other special activities, so I didn’t feel like I could really take time out of our week to celebrate.

I decided to plan ahead this year and let the kids keep track of our days in school.  I gave them a blank hundred-days-of-school chart, and let them fill in a box each day.  As it happens, our 100th day falls on a special day anyway this year (Mr. K’s birthday).  But he was okay with doing some “100th day” celebrating on his birthday, so we’ll spend the morning on Wednesday doing a few fun activities to celebrate #100.

I’m still making my final decisions as to what we will do, but here are a few ideas I’m considering:

1. 100th Day Snack Mix (10 each of 10 trail mix items — cereal, candy, raisins, etc)
2. Cookies or Jello Jigglers in the shape of 1′s and 0′s to make “100″
3. 100th day creative writing (What would I do with $100? What will the world be like in 100 years? I would like 100 of..  etc)
4. An art project: Something creative made in the shape of 100, A “what I would look like at 100 years old” project, or just a 100th Day coloring page
5. Legos: What can you build with 100 legos?
6. 100-themed challenges: How many … can you do in 100 seconds?  Can you do 100 jumping jacks? 100 sit ups? and so on
7. Counting to 100 together
8. Making a necklace of 100 cheerios or fruit loops
9. 100-themed math activities — measuring 100 centimeters, doing math problems on a 100′s chart, etc
10. A 100-themed scavenger hunt around the house — this could be clutter inducing, but it would be fun to count out 100 of a few small food items, 100 buttons, 100 paper clips, 100 books, and so forth.

There are a lot of 100th day ideas out there — I collected quite a few on my 100th Day Pinterest board.  Some of the ideas I saw would work much better in a classroom, but I tried to pin activities that make sense for a homeschool celebration — it’s not quite the same as in a classroom where students can each bring a different 100 items from their own homes to school!

Why celebrate 100 days to begin with?  I guess just for fun!  It’s a neat milestone to mark, and it happens in the cold, dreary days of winter.  What more excuse do we need for a party?

Linking up with Top Ten Tuesday @ Many Little Blessings!