Update

Well we are at the end of our 6th week. Aidan got his first two certificates of completion. Awhile back I found packages of award slips in the dollar bins at target, each package has something like 20 awards in it. So I decided that whenever we complete a workbook, or a new concept is mastered, or a theme is finished Aidan will earn a certificate. Then when he gets a certain number of certificates (number is undecided as of yet) he will get a prize (also undecided as of yet). His first certificate came on Thursday when we finished the first book we were using for Bible School. He got the second this morning for finishing up the alphabet in English. He's got all 21 consonants plus the 5 short vowels sounds down! He's also starting to put together some digraphs on his own but we don't officially start those until next week.

I somehow managed to get us so far ahead in math that technically we don't have to do any work until Thursday of next week. I don't know how I accomplished this as it certainly wasn't on purpose... So after finishing up the alphabet with the letter X in English this morning we headed out for our first field trip. We had planned this outing to be the zoo since we have an annual family pass, but of course it was rainy and icky out. So, we ended up at the Children's museum to see the butterfly exhibit. I had planned on getting a family membership for $80 anyway and so it seemed like a good day to go ahead and do that, seeing as if we had just visited for the day and seen the butterfly's it would have been $40.

The butterfly exhibit was ok, I wasn't that impressed with it to be honest and we've heard quite a few people go on and on about it. I mean there were plenty of butterfly's and they were flying around but after you climb around inside a 40 foot child, well a few butterfly's don't seem nearly as exciting.

Yep, we were inside Eddie today. You can climb EDDIE'S vertebrae to his brain, crawl through his heart, bounce around inside his stomach and slide out his intestines. As a model of learning through immersion, EDDIE allows children to use their gross motor skills to discover what’s inside their bodies.

The only problem was that the boys were frightened by some of the sounds Eddie made. When you were in his intestines/stomach I guess the noise was to imitate digestion? Of course you heard the heartbeat when you were in the heart, but the part that really got them was when we got up to the brain, it was very loud and I guess the noise there was to simulate synopsis... that's my theory anyway. There was also A LOT of climbing involved, and a lot of dark tunnels, both boys found this pretty frightening and intimidating the first time through. Then after seeing the butterfly's Aidan asked to go back through, promising not to fuss, so Darren sat with Asher and Aidan and I climbed back through Eddie. Not a peep from Aidan, it was like a completely different kid. When we were finished Aidan was begging to do it again. So he did, this time with Darren.

We also explored a bit in the body works exhibit. They talked about the different types of joints in the body, had a skeleton the boys could control by pulling ropes, a game that determined what/who had the fastest heartbeat: bird, elephant, child or adult. Aidan guessed child, it was acutally the bird. We learned how many bones are inside the body-206! There was also this computerized volleyball thing that put your pictures up on the screen and you had to try to move your real body to hit the computerized volleyball, it was quite difficult actually. The also had an x-ray station, which was perfect since we had gone over the letter x in the morning!

Darren and I were both VERY impressed with the museum, and thought that just the few exhibits we explored were so neat!!! Can't wait to go back!

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