OMSI

Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is a very cool place to visit. We went specifically to see the latest OMNIMAX movie, Bugs! A Rainforest Adventure. Isn't this the perfect complement to our bug studies we've been doing lately?

It was SO COOL! But, before the movie...

Princess played in the sand... explored the forest... gathered acorns to store for the winter...
explored animal footprints... experimented with pulleys... built a castle... that is wheelchair accessible... made a friend in the play area... examined slides under a microscope... assembled a skeleton... and examined it... reported the weather... played at bears catching salmon in the river... and explored play dough. We had a fabulous time and can't wait to go back again soon...but we may just wait until school starts. We homeschoolers like it when it's less crowded.

Butterflies

I have mentioned that we're homeschoolers, right? Yes, it has been a while since I've posted anything that we've learned. That is probably because we spent a month not doing any official school work. Not that we didn't learn anything, I mean really, how can one not learn?

Anyway, we spent the last week of so learning about butterflies. We found four awesome science books at Costco. We started with "Bugs & Insects".

The books are well written and interactive, using stickers to answer questions at various points in the book. Princess loved this.

When we started this book, I had no intention of doing anything more than reading, placing stickers and discussing what we read.

A while back, I heard the word lapbooking. I had no idea what it was. A friend showed me her lapbook, but I never did anything.

When I started reading Sherry's Living and Learning blog I began to get more curious about lapbooking. She has created some pretty awesome lapbooks with her son. One day she mentioned that there are tons of resources available on the internet. That was enough to get me hooked. I love Googling! I was ready for us to create our very first lapbook.

I decided that butterflies would be a great topic and began scouring the internet for resources. I found a ton of them! Here is what Princess and I created.

I hope you enjoyed our first lapbook. We are looking forward to making A LOT more. Isn't this the perfect way to summarize what we've learned? They make wonderful keepsakes, too.

Manipulatives

I bought this set a while back from Oriental Trading Company. They have some really cool stuff. (They have a bunch of junky stuff, too.) Princess loves playing with this because she gets to hammer 'real nails'. She also gets to create fun pictures.