We had an extraordinary time this week because we moved our homeschooling down to "Nonny and Poppy's" home and went on some field trips! We had a great time and felt pretty spoiled. The first place we hit was a new butterfly biosphere. We had such an enjoyable time seeing all the different butterflies: the Blue Morpho, the Halloween, and the Zebra. A couple of the butterflies landed on both Elsie and Peter. We also enjoyed looking at the chrysalises and seeing the newly "hatched" butterflies. Outside the biosphere, we had the opportunity to hold some cave cockroaches. Even Anna and Adam were brave enough to have them crawl on their hands. One of our favorite things was a huge, heavy ball of "dung" we were invited to push to see how we measured up to the massive strength of a dung beetle. With the help of Nonny and Poppy, all the Jeppson's (except Adam who was holding our phone and recording the event) we were able to push 881 pounds and set the daily record!
We also went to a university museum and saw a bunch of taxidermy animals: giraffes, elephants, musk ox, lions, lots of birds, and more. We also watched a short video that explained how bringing the wolf back into Yellowstone changed the habitat drastically, encouraging more plant growth and diversity as well as more mammals and birds. Peter really liked looking at an exhibit showing the difference and similarities in build between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthals, as well as modern day apes.
The children loved learning about water and how to manipulate its movement and learn about water pressure at a children's museum we went to as well, and they played in a "rainforest" playground and learned interesting facts about rainforest animals. Adam and Anna learned about their different senses. We went to a little farm and the younger kids got to ride on horses around in a circle. Anna loved this, and Adam was a little nervous, but got comfortable after a while. He thought the horses were going a little fast. We went on a horse-drawn wagon ride. This was really exciting for Elsie because the Wagon Master let her take the reigns and drive the team. She loves horses and was in heaven!
We also went to a Tulip festival and had a picnic while we looked at all the tulips. We had learned about how bees pollinate flowers, and the pistil and stamen parts of a flower. Anna had a lot of fun taking a q-tip and being a pollinator herself, as she mixed the pollen from the stamen and put it on the stigma part of the pistil.
The kids practiced their instruments only 2 times during the week, one time at Nonny and Poppy's, and one time on Friday. Instead, we learned some about art and went to an art museum. We saw Patrick Dougherty sculptures made from willow sticks and Danae Mattes' art using clay as a medium. We learned there are all kinds of ways and mediums to use to create art. We also learned about the 150th year celebrating the transcontinental railroad and saw lots of old photos about the building of the railroad.
Peter went with Poppy during some of our field tripping to a Waste Treatment place where they turn sewage into compost. He learned how they are planning on reusing the water that they use in the process to cool down the serves at a Facebook Server Farm that will be moving in soon. He also learned how to take the pH readings of soil he had gathered at intervals up our local canyon for a science project he is working on.
Peter read 150 more pages of Treasure Island, Elsie read another 100 + pages of A Tale of Two Castles, Kimball read several books outloud to Adam and 20 pages from a Weird But True book. Anna read another chapter out of her Days Go By book called "No Ride for Peter". Peter, Elsie, and Kimball also wrote about their field trips. Kimball wrote facts about things that he learned about butterflies, and he four sentences about his favorite field trip. Elsie and Anna wrote a letter to dad saying how much they missed him. Elsie also wrote about the butterfly biosphere. Peter also wrote out a ingredients and instructions for a recipe he invented called "French Toast Bread".
For math we learned about the Fibonacci Series and how it relates to the golden mean. The kids wrote out as much to the series as they could in a given amount of time. We learned that a beehive also uses the golden mean as the ratio of workers to drones. We watched a youtube video by ViHart explaining the Fibonacci series as well. All the kids worked on their math as well. Elsie found her math book(!) and did a few pages of math learning about adding and subtracting fractions, in chapter 4. Kimball did 8 pages in chapter 3 of Delta, learning how to divide. Peter finished chaper 6 and took the test and started on chapter 7. He is learning how positive and negative slopes and how to put the slope of a line into an equation/formula. He is also learning about rise over run and reviewed solving for the unknown.
For business we reviewed the importance of customer service. We discussed businesses we've been to with good customer service, and what we noticed how we personally were treated. We thought of ways we could give customer service in our own business. We also discussed how important it is to keep up with market changes. We watched a short video about how to adjust to a marketing change, and how as a business owner it takes creativity to adjust.
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