Monday, September 1, 2014

August Field Trips

Okay.  Here's the plan:  one monthly post to summarize all the field trips of that past month.  Will it actually happen?  Time alone can tell, but for August, that's going to mean a rather long post.

We had some great trips this past month!  The first I want to tell about was a real "doozy": going to Nashville to visit the Belle Meade Plantation for their state history homeschool day.
The mansion
To start off with, I bought the wrong ticket.  I bought a regular family pass to tour the estate instead of the special homeschool day ticket.  This may sound like bad news, but as it turns out, this was all for the best!  Even though they had maxed out the enrollment for the homeschool day, several were no-shows so we were able to participate anyway.  Then, when the homeschool activities were done, we were allowed to join the guided tour of the mansion because I had bought the "wrong" ticket!  What a wonderful day!


First, the state history day provided interesting information about the 3 Presidents from Tennessee and African-Americans' role in local heritage.  Also, we had the opportunity to "meet" several historical figures from the Nashville area.  We met Cornelia Fort, a WWII female aviator; a French longhunter; Charlotte Roberson, a woman who came to the Nashville area with her nine children by riverboat in the 1700's to meet up with her husband who had come the previous year; Sam Davis, a Civil War Confederate soldier who was hanged as a spy; a Native American (with a "real" buffalo hide and tepee); and Rep. Harry Burn, a 1920 statesman who voted for women's suffrage in Tennessee.  Then the tour of the mansion topped off a fabulous day!
 


 We have also been to the park twice already.  Once for a tree identification class, where we made our own book of leaf rubbings to take home.  We also stayed for the next class where we made a turkey call from from a tin can and cotton string.  Then we went swimming in the Cascades.  A perfect day in my kids' book, to be sure!

The other trip to the park was for a hike to overlooks of the Cascades and Cane Creek Falls.  Beautiful!  We also took in a lot of the wildlife along the way, which on that particular evening included a bunch of mushrooms, a couple toads, and some trees (Good thing we'd already made our leaf ID books;  that ranger thought we were pretty smart!)

Oh, so soft chinchilla!

Check out Reagan's face.
I wasn't the only one who was creeped out! 
Now for the creepiest trip of the month:  the reptile show.







This was a gathering of a number of exhibitors and retailers of exotic pets-- mostly reptiles.  The girls were fearless: touching snakes, holding lizards, whatever creature presented itself.  Reagan had all he could do just to look.  (Andrew was not able to go with us because of a football obligation.)  As for me, my "creep-out factor" is maxxed out for the rest of the year!!


This fella was HUGE!  How would you like to find
him crawling around in your basement?  {Shiver. Gulp}
Adventurous one with
a bearded dragon.


Call of the wild

Our last field trip for August took us to the Chattanooga Zoo.  This is always a big hit.  The boys' favorite exhibit was the monkeys.  Ellie really liked this light pink macaw (?) (pictured above), and Marian thought the red panda was the cutest.  But I think the best moment captured that day was Ellie's and Reagan's attempts to mimic the calls of the apes!




Phew!  That wraps it up for August!  We have a full schedule of adventures for September, too.  Can't wait!

Sharing at...
Weekly Wrap-Up
Collage Friday
My Week in Review
Homegrown Learners

3 comments:

  1. What a great list of field trips. I love them. We are real big on field trips also. Looking forward to next month!

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  2. Wow, those look like great field trips!

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  3. Some amazing field trips! Much fun and learning! Thanks for linking up with "My Week in Review." I hope you can join us again this week. http://our4kiddos.blogspot.com/2014/09/my-week-in-review-4.html

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I look forward to hearing from you!