Science Project - Sunrise

For Gabe's science, he had to observe a sunrise, so we got up before dawn and drove downtown to the parking deck so we would have an unobstructed view. It was glorious!

EMMA Arts and Sciences Night - Fall 2017

Well, another semester is gone and it was time for the EMMA classes Arts & Sciences night! This was the first time we had four kids all in classes. This term, Olivia took Spanish, Chemistry and Physics, and General Science. The boys took Geography, Science, and Art. Emma had an activities class that went for 2 hours and an art class. All the kids took PE and Music. 

 Olivia doubled up on her science this year, so she had to do 2 projects. Her Chemistry and Physics project was to make a lava lamp using water, oil and Alka-Seltzer. It was a fun one, for sure. 

 For General Science, she had to choose a famous scientist and do a presentation about him, so she chose Galileo and did very well. 

 For the boys' Science project, they had to choose an animal from Africa, the Amazon or Australia and make a posterboard. Gabe chose the Green Anaconda, the largest snake in the world. 

 Ezra, however, went more cuddly and chose the kinkajou, which is kind of like an Amazonian raccoon, only cuter and less hazardous to my chickens!

 Emma did really well for her first time taking classes. She loved her teachers and really loved doing her art.  

Kid's got a future, am I right? 

 The boys were also proud to show off their works of art.

  

The highlight of the evening, though, was the play. All 4 kids were in it. The younger 3 were singing in the choir, but Olivia grabbed a small solo part, which she was super excited about. They had such a fun time! If you're feeling froggy, you can watch the whole thing below. Beware! It's half an hour long!

If you're in the GSO/HP area and are considering a homeschooling co-op, I would highly recommend EMMA. The staff and teachers are fantastic and the kids are having a great time learning each week!

Fort Fisher Aquarium

One of the big reasons for coming down to Holden Beach was to go to the Fort Fisher Aquarium. As I mentioned earlier, the boys have been doing the Swimming Creatures science book and so this was a great time to see a lot of the animals we had talked about over the last few months.

They had a cool albino alligator that was totally white. According to the signage, albinos don't survive in the wild because they have no natural camouflage and are very susceptible to sunburns. 

We got to hear a presentation about sharks and how they tag and track them in the ocean for research.

There was a touch pool that had things like rays, urchins, starfish and hermit and horseshoe crabs. 

Because the Outer Banks are a sea turtle nesting area, they had a display area about the sea turtles that come to lay on the beaches and had a tank with a young turtle in it.

Ezra just about lost his mind... He loves turtles, especially box turtles and they had a big terrarium area set up with about a dozen box turtles in it. He's been bugging me ever since to get one at home....

They have a bald eagle there, which was very cool because we'd been watching the baby eaglets on the DC Eagle Cam all spring as they grew up and finally left the nest. This one was found injured and they nursed him back to health. Unfortunately, his injuries left him flightless, so they are unable to release him back to the wild.

The Aquarium's main tank had tons of huge fish in it along with a gorgeous sea turtle who kept coming around to the window to see the kids. 

There was also a huge manta ray that tried to get in on the attention.

One of the coolest areas, at least to me, was where they had the smaller creatures, like the sea horses,

Sea dragons

pipe fish

lobsters

lion fish

some ugly rock fish

and the colorful tropical fish. Of course, the kids flipped out at finding Dory and Nemo together. :)

A Visit to the Vet

Olivia has spent the 6 months doing a science curriculum through Queen Homeschool called Our Animal Friends. It is part of their Discovering Nature and Science series. Each week there was a continuing story to read. This book is about a girl who lives next door to her uncle who is a veterinarian. She learns through talking to him about many different kinds of animals. After each story portion there are four lessons that require her to do further research and learn herself about the type of animal discussed. We allowed her to use an internet based encyclopedia as well as some other internet sites to do her research. This was a bit of a hard decision for us as we were not sure about setting her free around the internet. But she had pretty strict guidelines about what she could do and we were close by. We actually invested in a subscription to the Encyclopedia Britannica online so as to avoid the popup ads which are really the main problem and distraction that we ran into. Olivia really enjoyed all the animals she learned about. The last chapters talked about animal careers. We have friends that have a veterinarian practice in downtown Greensboro and they graciously allowed Olivia to spend the morning there. John is a talented vet and he was just wonderful teaching Olivia about the work he did.

John showed us around and let Olivia meet the various pets who were "vacationing" with him.

She got to meet Turtle, the practice's resident cat, and hear about how he had lost more than 15 pounds since coming to live with them!

Olivia got to see them remove the sutures from this poor dog who had suffered a mysterious burn, but was recovering well after surgery.

Then came the main event: A feline dental. 

She got to see them put the cat under and do the cleaning part of the dental work.

Sadly, the poor boy had to have a couple of teeth removed, but it was really neat to watch.

In the end, everything turned out well and the cat was recovering nicely.

Thanks again to John and his staff for such a great time!