September, Week 5

Last Friday Shaun had Zoo School at Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence.  This is a once monthly class where the kids will spend the year learning all about running a zoo.  They heard about the zoo's history and saw sketches for proposed future exhibits and changes.  They also learned all about "vertebrates", and all the classes of animals that fall under the category.  A couple of animals even came out for show and tell after a tour of some the exhibits.

(Shaun took this picture of the ferret all by himself.)

After 'school' got out we spent the afternoon walking around, visiting all the exhibits.  The kids favorites were the baby giraffes.  The other favorite was the Asian Alligator, which Shaun has chosen as his animal to do a final presentation on (a short story, a poster-board,  and a brief zoo tour with education on his animal for family on the final day of zoo school.)

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Today in Math Shaun did his last pages of addition, so we are officially onto subtraction.  YAY!!  We also went to our first pottery class.  The class is being held by another homeschooler at her home studio, and will run for six weeks.  The kids adore Amy and actually created for an hour and a half straight today, which is a REALLY long time.  They had a blast!  I took a couple of pictures, but they made pumpkins and a turtle after the camera was away.   I had to tell them time was up, or they may have stayed at Amy's clay table all day.

This is Shaun's bowl.  He pressed a leaf, a pine cone, and the top of an acorn into the clay.  There is also a face on the outside of the bowl (that he stuck on and gave eyes, a nose, and a smile) that can't be seen in this picture- he is a little upset about that!

Here are some of the other creations.  These will be made into a wind chime.  This is special clay, that when fired at a certain temperature, will produce musical sounds when banged together (as opposed to a 'thud' that other clay products would make).  

The kids used leaves and bark to make impressions on the clay.

Here is a chime Amy had out as an example today under our 'pottery tent':

Can't believe my next post will be in October, the school year is flying by already.