School on Vacation? - Part I

We've just returned from several days in Florida.... probably our best day of vacation was our beach day. In the area of SW Florida we visited the beaches are gorgeous - crystal clear blue water, lots of shells, and even dolphins close to shore. Being a native on Florida I grew up around all of this, and I think I took it for granted for the first seventeen years of my life. Since that time I have lived in Texas and Georgia, and I still miss the beach.

Of course, being a homeschooling mom I see everything now through a learning lens. The minute we arrived at the boardwalk leading to the beach I was scoping out learning opportunities. As usual, they were everywhere.

I knew the names of all of these shells from little on, but my children don't - we learned the names and found several of them at the beach. The kids spent literally HOURS combing the beach for shells - there were so many.

Miss B arranged all of hers to see what she had gotten:

The thing that made me so happy was the pure JOY on their faces. We have had a long winter (by Georgia standards!) and it was just great to be barefooted and free to explore.

We have bags full of shells. I'm going to purchase the Download N Go "Sunny Seashells" for us to do this week - have to strike while the iron is hot!We saw several dolphins swimming so close to the shore - I did not get a picture because that would have required me running back to our things to retrieve the camera, and then I would have missed seeing them.

My husband, who has a long commute each day and works in a demanding IT job, enjoyed the vacation. He read his book (he NEVER gets a chance to do this - by the time he has time to read at the end of the day he usually falls asleep!)

and took a LOOONG walk with the kids down the beach. I watched them growing smaller and smaller down the beach and thanked God out loud for the gift of my family and for His beautiful creation.

I brought along a great beach read - Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult. You MUST read it... I love her books and this one did not disappoint!

So yes, we had school at the beach, but wait until you see the next place we had school on our vacation! I'll tell you about it in Part II of School on Vacation?!

*This post is linked to Kris' Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Visit her site to hear about other homeschoolers' weeks.

A Fantastic Find for Your Young Baseball Fan (that everyone will enjoy!)

The season for baseball is fast approaching. Our first ball practice is this week. My husband and son made a pilgrimage to the Minnesota Twins training camp in Ft. Myers, FL, yesterday. Fantasy baseball drafts are near. Baseball fever has officially HIT.

One of the ways I captured my son's attention way back in the fall when we first started homeschooling him was through his first love: BASEBALL. We did a baseball lapbook. In First Language Lessons we copied the names of all of the Atlanta Braves players as examples of proper nouns. We play Topps Attax online (a great, free online game for kids) and in person. I found lots of baseball math activities online. I ordered several first reader books about baseball players.

For Black History month my husband decided to start a read-aloud with the kids that GMan got for Christmas, Jackie and Me. Each evening before bed we all sat in the living and listened to daddy read this book. Not only was it a great biography about Jackie Robinson, but it also was such an accurate portrayal of the civil rights struggles Jackie and all other black Americans dealt with.

In the book, Joe Stoshack, a white little boy from Kentucky, travels through time to meet Jackie Robinson . After his adventure he gives a report to class for Black History Month. I love this excerpt from the book, where Jackie finds out about Joe:

"Wait a minute," Jackie said, holding up one hand and clutching his stomach with the other. "I can accept that traveling through time may be possible. I may even be able to believe a white kid could turn black. But Black History Month?" At that, Jackie let out a loud guffaw that woke the baby. "You've got to be kidding! White kids from Kentucky studying our history? Now I know you're crazy!"

My nine year old daughter very much enjoyed this book, too. She picked up on the deeper elements of the book, but the story also kept my six year old son's attention, too.

Today my husband asked me to see about getting more of Dan Gutman's baseball card adventures. It was my lucky day - Amazon offers them in their 4 for 3 promotion. Much as we have built a library of American Girl books for my daughter, these books will go into my son's baseball library.

You don't have to have a baseball fan to enjoy these books - they're just good reads for the whole family.