Washington DC Day 3: White House & Monuments November 15, 2011

Day 3 was probably the best day of the entire trip.  In the morning, the kids and I were able to tour the East Wing of the White House.  Since 9/11, the number of tours of the White House has been limited.  You also have to go through background checks and a lot of security checkpoints to do the tour.  We were so excited to be able to get tickets (thanks to Mr. Tiberi and his diligent staff!).  The kids and I loved being inside the White House, with all of it’s history.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but we were allowed to use our cell phones and get a picture by the front entrance.  We were able to see several rooms in the White House (and items such as Abraham Lincoln’s China pattern were on display!), peek through the windows at the garden, and stand in the exact spot that President Obama gives his addresses.

After dark, we joined my husband for a walking tour of the many monuments in DC.  They are absolutely gorgeous at night, all lit up.

The kids and I in front of the White House following our tour. Thank goodness my cell phone was being nice and taking crisp pictures that day!

 

The front of the White House

 

Up close to the White House--this is where we left after the tour.

 

Proof we were there--our brochures we received at the beginning of the tour, and the kids' ranger badges!

We couldn't take pictures, so we just bought postcards of the rooms we were in.

 

Washington Monument

 

The World War II Memorial with the Lincoln Memorial in the background

 

The lights & water at the World War II Memorial were beautiful!

 

God Bless our troops! This was carved into the walls at the World War II Memorial.

 

Lincoln Memorial

 

Jedi and President Lincoln

 

Korean War Memorial

 

While we were there, there were only two other people. They were a couple from Korea who are now US citizens. Every week, they lay new flowers on the memorial. They also hand out flags to anyone who was there. The kids loved the Korean flags and were very interested in learning from the couple.

 

Haunting carvings at the Korean War memorial.

 

My very favorite of all of the DC memorials--the brand new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. Not only do I absolutely love Dr. King, but his memorial was very well done. It was gorgeous and powerful and really symbolizes what Dr. King means to the country and world.

 

All around the memorial were famous quotes by Dr. King.

 

Another beautiful quote.

 

One of my favorite quotes, from a true hero.

 

Still so relevant today...

 

In the next few days, I’ll get the pictures up from the museum portion of our trip.  And I think I have like 3 weeks worth of posts for Jedi and the girls to put up on here!

Washington DC Day 2: National Zoo

On day 2, we hopped on the metro bus down to the Smithsonian National Zoo.  Jedi, Monkey, my husband, and I have been there once before, but this was Bug’s first time.  While she did manage to sleep through most of it, she did get to see her favorite animal–an elephant.  She was so excited to see them so close-up!

This little guy kept splashing around! The kids loved him!

 

Beautiful peacock

 

Jedi getting a lesson from a zookeeper about feathers

 

Bug admiring a feather

 

Bug's favorite--an elephant!

 

One walked right under the boardwalk! Bug was thrilled!

 

Monkey on a panda

 

A gorgeous Giant Panda

 

Zebras

 

Cheetah pretty close to us

 

Cute little meerkat

 

Jedi's favorite...the jellyfish!

 

Washington DC Day 1

I have pictures from a few weeks ago when we did work in the homeschool room, but I’ll post them in a few days.  Last week, we were in Washington DC (my husband was doing some training for work, and we decided to tag along).  We had a lot of things lined up for the week, so I have quite a few posts coming with pictures.

Day 1 was very interesting.  We are pretty rural kind of people so being smack in the middle of a big city and needing to navigate it is pretty interesting.  Add in the fact that the GPS on my phone wasn’t working well, so I was going at it old fashioned (walking without a GPS!  LOL!), and we’re going to call it an adventure!

So, before I get to the pictures…a little riddle.  Take 2 kids with autism and plop them in the middle of Washington DC right where all the fun is.    Now, tell me what they thought was the most interesting part…..the part the couldn’t stop talking about….the part they OBSESSED about, begging our tour guide to let them see it one more time…..  Wait for it…..

 

 

The escalators.  Yep.  The older two were absolutely obsessed with escalators (so lucky for them, we encountered them a lot–on the metro, in the Capitol building, etc.).  Goofy kids!

Anyhow….  Day 1, we went to the  National Botanic Gardens, the Supreme Court building, and then our state representative had one of his staffers, Abby, give us a tour of the Capitol building (we even got to sit in the Representatives’ Gallery…we weren’t allowed to take pictures in it, and there were no Representatives in it, but it was still very very awesome.  This is the room that is on CSPAN a lot, and it is the one where the State of the Union address is given each year.)

 

The capitol building from the street

 

Supreme Court building

 

The kids in front of the Capitol

 

Beautiful Washington DC in the fall

 

There are several carved replicas of DC buildings at the National Botanic Gardens

 

Bug loved looking at the replicas!

 

Pitcher Plant

 

One of the statues at the pool in back of the Capitol

The kids climbing the Capitol steps (they actually didn't go into the Capitol from here. We had to go across the street to our state representative's office and from there, we got to take a really cool underground tunnel into the Capitol!)

 

Jedi found the Ohio office! Huge thank you to Mr. Tiberi's staff for setting up a really awesome tour for us!

 

Inside the old Supreme Court chambers before the Supreme Court moved from the Capitol to its own building

 

This is what is inside of that huge dome!

 

Monkey going up the stairs at the Supreme Court--almost all the stairs in any DC office building seemed to be marble! Beautiful, but I bet it's pretty slick in the winter!

 

If you look carefully, you can see the justices inside the chambers talking!

A gorgeous spiral staircase at the Supreme Court building

Montessori Monday November 1, 2011

 

Heeey, made it under the wire this week! 😉  But at least I am posting Montessori Monday on the right day this week…

This past week has been a whirlwind at our house.  Both Jedi and Monkey are in the middle of their IEP process, and so there are a lot of appointments, meetings, and evaluations going on.  Monkey had an occupational therapy evaluation this past week as part of her autism diagnosis and we learned a lot of really interesting things…a lot of it gave us some insight into some of the difficulties Monkey’s been having.  We still have a few more questions, but at least now, we’re on a good path.  It is forcing us to look ahead to next fall when Monkey starts kindergarten.  We will likely be transitioning out of the pure Montessori-based homeschooling and get into a little more structure, simply because we not only need to accurately assess where Monkey is due to some deficits and difficulties she has, but she needs a bit more structure.  So, if anyone out there has a really good kindergarten curriculum, let me know!  We need it to have a strong multi-sensory and hands-on approach (as little verbal information as possible since one of her main deficits is auditory processing).  We are also Roman Catholic, and so if the curriculum is not secular, we’d like it to at least be Catholic-friendly. 🙂  Let me know any suggestions you might have!

And on to the review of Monkey and Bitty Bug’s week!

One of Bug and Monkey's favorite works--using tweezers to pluck the kernels off of the Indian Corn

 

Using the dot markers to make orange, yellow, and red "leaves" on the coffee filter tree

 

The girls using watercolor paints

 

Matching the mineral to the card

 

I found these cute little bead sets at Mich@els. Bug and Monkey loved stringing the Halloween beads onto the elastic to make their own necklaces!

 

This clay is some black sand clay I made for Jedi to use for one of his projects. Monkey took the rest, pretended to knead it into a loaf of bread, and then practiced her cutting.

 

Bug beading her necklace

One last post for today…our Montessori work October 26, 2011

I’m almost completely caught up on posts!  I have a couple more to get to, but I’m just going to attempt to get one more post out today.  Bug & Monkey’s week (or two) in review!

After the pumpkin patch, the kids get to do their two favorite works--the first one is scrubbing pumpkins! The kids love sitting on the porch cleaning all of the new pumpkins.

 

Their second favorite work of the year is to hammer nails in pumpkins. This year the older two wanted to make actual designs with their nails as well.

 

Monkey working hard!

 

Jedi and his Frankenstein design

 

Monkey and her face design

 

Bug and Monkey collecting leaves at the park

 

Jedi collecting leaves

 

Their stash of leaves!

 

Monkey and Jedi with their bag of leaves

 

Pinning clothespins to foam pumpkins

 

I made a spider web out of pipe cleaners for the kids to put the spider rings on.

 

Monkey threading the spiders on the web

 

Sorting the Halloween rings by shape (skull, spider, bat)

 

Bug working with the fraction skittles

 

Spiders in the sensory bin!

 

Monkey learning to weave using strips of paper

 

And finally.... This is what happens when I give Bug a brand new box of crayons. She loves to break them all and peel them. I probably should have just given her the old ones!

Field Trip: The Wilds

The Wilds was in the national news quite a bit a week ago, as they were one of the organizations called to assist with the escaped African animals in Zanesville, Ohio.  Just a couple days before that incident, we visited The Wilds.  The kids always have a great time seeing the animals and going on the safari bus.  This time, it was really windy, so the animals weren’t as active as they had been in the past, but the kids still were able to see a lot of them (I just wasn’t able to get many good pictures).  Here are a few pictures from our trip!

Beautiful fall day!

 

Bug on the bus and ready to go

 

It's always an amazing sight to see herds of African and Asian animals just grazing here in Ohio

 

A camel...this little guy kept trying to eat the trim off the bus!

 

Przewalski's wild horses

 

One of several gorgeous lakes on the property

 

Sichuan Takin

 

One of the many native Whitetail Deer that roam the fields

 

Bug and her daddy (the other kids were here too...not sure how they neglected to be in front of the camera. 😉 LOL!)

 

Banteng...I think?

 

One of the new arrivals...an ostrich

 

Another shot of the beautiful scenery

 

There were a lot of animals that didn’t make it into the pictures–we saw rhinos (including a little baby one!), some zebras, bison, etc., but they weren’t close enough for a clean picture. 🙂

 

Field Trip: Ohio Historical Society

The Ohio Historical Society was on the list for our week of field trips.  While we were just at OHS a few months ago, they were debuting a couple new exhibits, so we went to see them.  As always, the kids had a ton of fun at the historical museum.  OHS really does a nice job of making Ohio history interesting to even the youngest kids!

 

The kids in front of the mastodon....they love this thing!

 

A side shot of it...it is absolutely huge!

 

An artifact from the archeology exhibit

 

A petroglyph from the archaeology exhibit

 

Bug and a reconstructed bowl

 

Jedi finding where he was born on the map

 

One of the exhibits was called "Controversy", which was an exhibit of things that have caused a controversy in Ohio. The exhibit was very powerful and lead to some fantastic discussions with Jedi. However, we didn't take many pictures of the exhibits simply because of the nature of the exhibit. One of the most powerful pieces was the KKK robe....we had a good discussion with the kids on the consequences of hate after viewing that. This was something a little less difficult in terms of choosing something to photograph--the electric chair, which has now been banned from use in Ohio.

 

Jedi thought this was interesting--a contraption used to keep infants from sucking their thumb (notice Jedi's nervous thumb position.... LOL!) He thought that was horrible...I had to tell him that you can actually still buy similar devices today, which is pretty sad. 😦

 

OHS did a fabulous job in compiling articles on each of the pieces on exhibit, so we were able to show Jedi how the pieces were used and what the significance of each was.

 

Hieroglyphics.... Since Jedi had just learned about these, he found them very interesting.

 

"I have no clue why a mummy is in a museum about Ohio history!"

 

Jedi and a spinning wheel

 

Monkey and Bug pretending to prepare a meal at the pioneer house

 

Bug churning pretend butter

 

Bug & the Bell. 😀

Field Trip: Santa Maria & Cosi

As I mentioned a few posts ago, our week and a half off school was filled with field trips.  One of the field trips we had planned was to visit the Santa Maria replica in Columbus, Ohio in honor of Columbus Day.  However, that plan didn’t really come to fruition.  We went to it and were able to see the ship, but due to various circumstances, we weren’t able to tour the ship that day.  We did decide to head across the street and visit Cosi, the children’s science museum in Columbus.

Bug walking by the river

 

The Santa Maria replica

 

A display of various knots.

 

Bug at the Dora exhibit at Cosi

 

Working in the animal rescue center.

 

Monkey with Diego

 

Jedi making a giant metal dinosaur move

Jedi and Monkey are in this submarine...

 

Playing with the water bells

 

Jedi forming a pipe system

 

Bug operating some moon robots

 

Bug loved the exhibit where you could make a short animated video with the astronaut pieces.

 

Pumpkin Patch #2

I’m still working on emptying the camera of the hundreds of pictures from the past two weeks. 🙂  So, here are pictures of the second pumpkin patch field trip!

 

Some turkeys at the farm

 

Cute little goat

 

A camel that was at the pumpkin patch

 

Bug on a giant rocking horse

 

Jedi rock climbing

 

Bug & Jedi driving a train

 

Monkey and Jedi as human hamsters

 

The kids were having a blast at the pumpkin patch!

 

It was a beautiful fall day too!

 

The kids went through a corn maze, and then little Bug led the way through the mini maze.

 

The mini maze was so cute--a little soybean field!

 

Bitty Bug's not so bitty!

 

She may not be bitty anymore, but she's still obsessed with tiny things, so she wanted a pie pumpkin to carve.

 

Jedi wanted a huge pumpkin of course.

 

Monkey using all her muscles to lift that pumpkin!

Field Trip: Pumpkin Farm #1 October 24, 2011

As part of our weeks off from school not so long ago, the kids went to two separate pumpkin farms.  One was part of a field trip with our homeschool co-op and the other trip was a family trip.  Here are the pictures from the first visit to the pumpkin farm…

The kids jumping on a hay bale mountain

 

The kids all attended a lecture on rings on a tree

 

Getting ready to ride the barrel train

 

Jedi on the train

 

Monkey on the train

 

The kids listening to a lecture on pollination

 

Trying to find the queen bee

 

Learning how grains from the farm are used in different food products

 

The kids pretending to drive an old tractor

 

Bug liked this one!

 

I told Bug, Jedi, and Monkey to try to navigate out of the corn maze...I went in with them, but they were the ones responsible for getting us out before dark. 😉

 

Jedi apparently making corn angels

 

Driving the tractors and bikes

 

Monkey burying Jedi in corn