We opted not to do a summer vacation this year, due mostly to Sean's age. We also knew that we planned to start homeschooling at the end of July. If we choose to continue homeschooling after this year we won't start until at least August, but for this first year we wanted to have some experience under our belt before public school started. From the beginning we planned to do 6 weeks of school and then take a break while all the other kids went back to school. It worked so well I imagine we'll do something similar in future years.
So the first week of September Eric took a week off of work and we planned a few fun things. We enjoyed Labor day with a picnic at some friends and then, probably the highlight of the week for Sean, he got to try his first solid foods. Which, believe or not based on the below picture, he did seem to enjoy :-)
We decided to space out our "field trips" a bit so Sean didn't get too out of whack and that turned out to be a wise choice since he was spent by the end of each day. We chose to go up to Door County and "The Farm" for our first trip. Since there were very few others there the girls got to give the baby goats several bottles (much to the delight of both varieties of kids).
While there the girls also got to feed corn to the older goats, milk a mama goat, pet a mini horse and her filly, explore an old well, meet a variety of other animals, and probably the highlight of the day...watch a baby chick hatch. We passed by and saw that there were a few eggs ready to hatch in an incubator in one of the buildings but figured it would take a long time and we didn't want to spend all day watching an egg crack. So I told the girls we'd check back on our way out and sure enough there was very little progress on the couple eggs we'd noticed had started to hatch. However, a new egg had started to hatch and this one was determined. When the progress was obvious I told Hannah that we could stay and watch, much to her excitement. And within 10 minutes it was out. It was a precious sight and an awesome way to explain to Hannah how chickens come to be.
They enjoyed their trip to the farm.
Our attempt at a family picture.
Our other chosen field trip was to the Milwaukee zoo. The girls have been looking forward to this since day one of school, so the entire day was a lot of fun. We printed off a "scavenger hunt" that we found online and helped the girls find the things on the list. One thing I really love about the Milwaukee zoo is their signs. They have some really great signs about the animals and their endangered levels, plus lots of interesting trivia. It is easy to read a sign like that to little kids and have them actually enjoy hearing it. Of course, the first thing we had to do was ride the train for Eric:
And after a hard day of walking, they needed to take a break and rest their feet in their "animals thrones". Everything is a throne to these little princesses.
We had so much fun as a family this last week and I think it helped affirm to us that we've made the right choice to homeschool. We feel so much more connected as a family and I love that learning is a family event. It is easier than I thought to find educational value in the world around us. Particularly with Hannah since she has an incredibly inquisitive mind. If we didn't offer the information, she would probably ask anyway!
We are looking forward to many more family vacations. Maybe next time we'll actually get to go away somewhere!
