Designing a home-centered life: learning, exploring, and creating with our five littles
Our family recently visited one of our local zoos, The Elmwood Park Zoo. We really enjoyed our family membership this past year to The Philadelphia Zoo, but decided to join the smaller and slightly closer-to-us Elmwood Park Zoo for this year. One of the main motivators for our membership switch was the giraffe exhibit recently added … [Read more...]
Since we've started homeschooling our children, my husband and I have realized how great it is to be right where we are. We are in Pennsylvania, specifically just outside Philadelphia. All around us are historic locations waiting to be explored. Plus many more locations well within driving distance. Just a couple weeks ago, … [Read more...]
As we're heading out the door for a weekend of camping at the shore, our nature study buckets were one of the last items crossed off our pack list and thrown into our car. This should be fun! … [Read more...]
This week we took a scheduled trip to our local library with some of our friends. We've been using this library for years, but thought that knowing more about the library system could help us navigate it. While the children's librarian, Mrs. Sara was speaking to the children, myself and the other moms received a refresher.Mrs. … [Read more...]
Our family LOVES to travel! We have adopted the goal of visiting all "50 States Before They Graduate" as our own. Besides the hundreds of photographs I take while we travel, we also have two other main forms for documenting our travels. The first, my children's travel notebooks. They each have a 3 ring notebook in their favorite color. … [Read more...]
Our final field trip of the CC school year happened this past Friday. We met up with many families from our campus at Ringing Rocks Park in Upper Black Eddy, PA. It's really a unique park, in total over 120 acres in size, with 7-8 of the acres piled 10 feet high in boulders of various sizes. Some of these rocks, when struck by another … [Read more...]
Our family joined other CC families for a trip this week to see The Philadelphia Orchestra perform Beethoven Lives Upstairs at The Kimmel Center. Our campus has made this trip before, but it was our family's first time. I was so excited to experience this with my guys! The production had two actors, one playing a young Christoph … [Read more...]
Our family, along with many other CC families from our campus, traveled into Philadelphia (ahead of the snow storm headed our way!) to visit the UPenn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. We started our visit with a class, the Pharaoh Fashion Show, led by Jen. We learned so many neat things about pharaohs. Jen was great at … [Read more...]
Along with friends from our CC group, we recently visited the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ. A few times a year the Adventure Aquarium offers "homeschool weeks" which allow for discounted rates to homeschool families, $10 per person versus the general admission prices of $18 per child and $24 per adult (over the age of 12). Because we … [Read more...]
Chicago was our main destination in Illinois (50 States Before They Graduate!). First excitement, riding the double decker train to Union Station. Next, roaming through the stalls of a German Christmas market at which we eventually bought 3 wooden swords and 2 ornaments. : ) As per our usual, we roamed the streets of … [Read more...]