Classical Charlotte

What we have been enjoying this morning.

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Since our Tuesday co-op doesn’t officially start until next week (although we had an informative meeting yesterday afternoon), we joined a homeschool field trip to Shoestring City Ranch down in Long Beach.  The ranch was originally run by 4-H but now is run by various volunteers, etc…  It’s purpose is to expose city kids to free/low cost “rural experiences.”  And it is right smack amongst city living.  Even the metro train zooms by while you listen to the buzz of huge power lines.

A very loving goat.

The horse lost his mate so now the donkey keeps him company.

Annette, a fellow homeschool mom, gave the tour.

Doo asked lots and lots of questions.

The metro zooming by.

Pretending to be horses.

Llama

This goat provides her owner's family with milk daily.

Pygmy goats

Petting a baby chick inside a hat!

Rooster.

Baaaah!

Letting the sheep out for a run.

The kids got to chase the goats into the running area. They had a blast.

They plan to have monthly Tuesday field trips there but we will be busy with our co-op.  Doo loved it, though.

The co-op meeting was very useful, especially since I learned I totally missed that there were afternoon classes!  So Doo has cooking and storytelling/art in the morning, then after lunch she will have Games and then a class called Odyssey of the Mind which is some sort of teamwork class.  I know she’ll have a blast on Tuesdays.

Yesterday we focused on counting.  Doo likes to rush when she is counting something which often ends up in a wrong number.  So we made an elephant counting book and I occasionally prompted her to slow down when counting.  When she takes her time, she does well with it.  I then asked her to start counting out loud.  She counted all the way to 100 with a little bit of help from Mommy (for the numbers 21, 30, 70, 80, 90).  She was very proud when she made it to 100!

Today was our last day for Babar: To Duet Or Not To Duet.  We finished up rowing the book with a science lesson on the ears.  Kid friendly info was read on this site then she colored a couple of ear-related pictures.  She seemed to enjoy saying “cochlea” because as she colored I heard her telling a whole story which involved saying it over and over and over again.

Now she’s enjoying Baby Ballet.  I bought this weeks ago and finally got it out today.  It’s a little ballet class that she can follow along with.  She loves her ballet class.  This week we’re going to try out a Musical Theater class just to see how she likes it.  Given that every day she puts on her own musical I kind of think it will be up her alley…

Little ballerina in her cool, new jeans.

Scientist Papa not only sent a few elephant sites to Doo the other day but also brought a couple of books to show her during his last visit (he used to be an Earth Science Teacher).  Doo enjoyed looking at the different pictures.  Papa also sent her a scanned picture from one of the books for her to color (which can be seen above with the ear pictures).

Tomorrow we will start with The Story About Ping.

Scientist Papa emailed a few interesting websites about elephants that Doo and I just took a look at.

Proboscidea

Intro to proboscidea

Elephant Evolution

Doo has been playing “zoologist” and “marine biologist” a lot this week so Papa sent her some other sites to check out.

Animal Diversity

Kids Corner – Animal Info