Redhanded Homeschool High Fives ~ Our 2017 Crew Favorites

It's time once again, as the Homeschool Review Crew year comes to a close, to choose our Redhanded Homeschool's High Fives for 2017.  I can't believe another year is behind us.  There were about 75 vendor "runs" this year.  My family reviewed 47 products to share with you.  Plus two single reviews for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.

For the 2017 Homeschool Review Crew Blue Ribbon Awards, voting is very difficult in some categories.  We must choose *just one* vendor or product in each of the Crew's categories.  I've relaxed that rule for my blog.  'Cuz it's my blog, natch!  So where the punks or I loved more than one thing, I'm giving them all High Fives.

As usual, there are old favorites, new treasures, and things I've "had my eye on" for someday.  These favorites are all products that I would, actually have, or might again really pay money for it.  I think it's important that you can trust that when I tell you we absolutely loved something, I really mean it was *that good*.

Malachi's High Five
Carole P. Roman.  We really like her If You Were Me and Lived In... series, but Mal especially enjoyed our first fiction book from Carole, Oh, Susannah: It's in the Bag.  Actually, they all did and we have since read the second book and they're hoping for more.  The reading level is a bit below the older punks, but they love the stories, just for fun.

Xavier's High Five
First, Xav tried to choose Stopmotion Explosion again.  I told him he had to stick to products we reviewed in 2017, so he voted for The Brinkman Adventures - season 4 (see Merrick's High Five below).

Merrick's High Five
The Brinkman Adventures - season 4.  The Crew reviewed season 2 in 2014.  Since then, I've purchased seasons 1 and 3.  These fictionalized versions of real life missionary stories are always a hit.  They have a curriculum out for season 1 that I want to check out at some point, too.

My High Five for Moms
Homeschool Rescue from Only Passionate Curiosity.  I only managed to get through part of the program during the review period.  Now, I'll have a bit more time and I intend to finish it through once.  Then I want to work through it once each year to update our homeschool plan.
SchoolhouseTeachers.com is way more than just classes for the kids, though it certainly is that.  We've used this off and on since, I think 2011, when it started.  Back in those "olden days" if you had a subscription to the print Old Schoolhouse Magazine, you were given SchoolhouseTeachers.com access until your subscription ran out.  I had over a year of it.  About a year after it expired, I won another year in 2013.  In 2014, 2016, and 2017 I received access as a reviewer for the Homeschool Review Crew.  Hey, we're all family.  :)  I have decided to not return to the Crew in 2018 for various reasons, so I purchased two years during the BOGO sale last week.

These curriculum favorites are products we are still using, have completed this year, or will continue to use in 2018 and beyond.

Language Arts High Fives
Crafty Classroom's Learn to R.E.A.D. program - Merrick loves having his own school stuff that no one else does and the notebooking pages are so much fun for a Kinder.
Channie's Handwriting and Math Workbooks - I only reviewed the one handwriting workbook for littles, but I liked it so much, I ordered handwriting journals for the bigger littles and several math workbooks.
Reading Eggs - We've had Reading Eggs before.  I liked it so much, I was willing to pay for it when the bigger punks were littler.  Now Mal and Merrick are happily using it.  Merrick also likes to dabble in MathSeeds, though it placed him lower than I thought he should be.  I consider MathSeeds "just for fun" school.

Math High Fives
CTCMath.  Always.  And it's now a complete math curriculum for grades K-12. Another curriculum I have happily paid for and will again.

Science High Fives
Think Like an Engineer from Innovators Tribe is so much fun with all the hands on challenges.  I love that we are encouraged to include the whole family in this subscription.

Social Studies High Fives
Drive Thru History - The Gospels.  The Drive Thru History series is fantastic.  We're also using the American History videos for part of Xav and Mal's history this year.
Heirloom Audio ~ In the Reign of Terror and Captain Bayley's Heir.  While I have reviewed other Heirloom Audio titles for the Crew, I have also purchased copies of other titles in the series.  These audio dramas are crazy good.

Extra-Curricular High Fives
Creating a Masterpiece.  I wish we had been able to fit more of Sharon's lessons in before our subscription expired, but we really enjoyed learning how to make real art while we had it.
Doctor Aviation with Daryl Smith.  This one expires pretty soon and we enjoyed it a lot, though we didn't get through as much as we would have liked.

My Bonus High Fives
Lamplighter's The Secret Bridge.  While this wasn't the best book I ever read, I enjoyed it and it opened up a whole new world of literature for us.  Since this review, we toured the Lamplighter Ministries Book Bindery and purchased five or six more books and three audio dramas.  I especially recommend Sir Malcom and the Missing Prince and Teddy's Button.
Northern Speech Services' Color My Conversation was one of those "didn't know I needed" kind of curriculum.  We did set this aside, but will be picking it back up and starting over after the holidays.


Check out the *Official* Homeschool Review Crew Blue Ribbon Award winners and look in the Linky to read about my Crew Mates' family favorites.

Innovators Tribe ~ A Homeschool Crew Review

When Innovators Tribe showed up in the upcoming vendor list for the Crew, I sent Dad the link and asked if he thought Xav would be able to use the course in any meaningful way.  Xav's my STEM guy.  Well, minus the "M" - math.  He loves experiments and hands on work.  Thinking Like an Engineer looked like something right up his alley.  Dad said he thought Xav could do it, but he knew he would definitely LOVE the course.  Wayne Kroeplin's (Mr. K) courses are for grades 6-12 with some wiggle room.  My punks are in 5th and 6th grade, but math is a struggle.  *So far* math hasn't been an issue at all.  They haven't needed it for anything.  Not even to succeed in the challenges.  The best part about this class is that you are *encouraged* to invite everyone in the family to participate *together*.  This has given us some fun memories of supporting and working alongside each other.  (And believe me, those moments are few and far between.  We seem to be in a very competitive stage.)

Thinking Like an Engineer is a pre-recorded online course.  Pacing is decided by you and your family.  We took a pretty leisurely pace and generally watched one lesson or completed one challenge each week.  Certainly, your students could work at a faster pace.  I think a video/slide show lesson plus a challenge (or more!) in the same week is completely doable.  At one lesson and one challenge, you would spend about 2-3 hours on the course for the week.

Each unit has a "journal" to fill in with the information found in the videos, sort of a guided notetaking page.  The lessons also have assignments.  We've had various amounts of success with the journals and assignments.  One assignment is learning about an engineer that is involved *somewhere* with a topic in which the students are interested.  Well, Mal is only interested one kind of "engineer" and that's a *train* engineer.  I have directed him to transportation engineers and we've looked up how engineering is used in the design of trains and railways.  It isn't quite the same, but he was willing to learn a bit about it.  Xav was interested in engineering as it applies to Lego toys.  While we found listings for job openings in engineering for Lego, they were in a foreign language.  Most of what we found was about designing Lego sets.  So, the researching engineers part didn't go great for us, it was good practice at online researching and we did learn a bit.


The units include:

• Intro to Engineering
• Intro to 3D Design
• Engineering Rollercoasters
• Engineering Bridges
• Nano Engineering
• Thinking Like an Engineer - Course Conclusion

I thought I'd tell you about some of our favorite activities and challenges to give you a feel for the course.  Lesson 3 is called Engineering Clean Water.  While I watched the lesson and the associated outside videos, I remembered the PlayPump.  Does anyone else recall the water pump that was run by children playing on a Merry-Go-Round?  I always thought that was genius.  Unfortunately, when I looked it up recently, I found out it didn't end very well, for the most part.  Throughout the Thinking Like an Engineer course, we were encouraged to be innovators and try new things.  Even though the PlayPump doesn't work well in all situations, it was definitely innovative.

In lesson 4, you receive the 3D Design software that you will use to create bridges and roller coasters.  We aren't using this yet (so close), but I know Xav especially is going to love it.  He eats that kind of thing right up!

The challenges have been a blast!  Some times we don't handle failure very well, When we have worked on the challenges, there has been an "Oh, rats!" or three, but no one has been angry about starting over and rethinking the processes.  We have had so much fun completing these tasks together.

Our first hands on challenge was to try to construct towers using regular copy paper.  Well, the punks were a bit disappointed, because Mr. K said some students had built their towers a couple feet taller than they did.

His class also stacked more books than we did in the second challenge.  We used one sheet of paper and had two feet of masking tape for this challenge.  We tried fan folding, circles, and concentric circles.

This happened a lot.

 And this.

But through all the challenges we faced, we brainstormed our way through to make the best of the assignment and to figure out what we could do differently or better to improve our results.  Eventually, we got to this.

If I had made just three or maybe four rings, even though they were super tiny, I would have had more stability and been able to stack books higher.

Our third challenge was creating a crude water filter using information from an Environmental Protection Agency video.  We didn't complete that challenge here at home, because a class in our co-op recently did this.  (Hmmm... As co-op yearbook creator, I thought I had taken a picture of that lesson, but it appears I did not.) 

The one thing I really wished for was the "solution" to the challenges.  How did Mr. K's class get 200 POUNDS of books on the single sheet of paper?  HOW?  I need to know!  Maybe gEEk Dad can tell me.  The punks and I absolutely love the hands on quality of the coursework and they really like the videos.  They've learned a lot of information seemingly unrelated to engineering.  I think they especially liked the clean water challenge and we could tell that it was an important problem to Mr. K.

I also enrolled in the free Think Like an Innovator course.  I think the punks are going to like it, too!  Mr. K offers another course, Thinking Like an Architect, also for grades 6-12.  Some of my CrewMates reviewed that as well.  So please click below to read some of the other reviews.

Super Teacher Worksheets ~ A Homeschool Crew Review

Super Teacher Worksheets' supplemental printables added a nice variety of activities to our school day and enabled me to shake things up a bit for boys who are bored of the same old thing.  The Individual Membership, which is valid for one year of access to the entire website, allows family use of thousands of worksheets, with new ones added weekly.  I've used several of the free worksheets available on the Super Teacher website previously.  I knew I would be able to find things to enhance learning for all three punks.  There is just a little bit of everything to try on this site!

The section headings include

• Math
• Reading & Writing
• Phonics & Early Literacy
• Handwriting
• Grammar
• Spelling Lists
• Chapter Books
• Science
• Social Studies
• Holidays
• Puzzles & Brain Teasers
• Pre-K & Kindergarten
• Teacher's Helpers
• and Worksheet Generators

Most of the available content is for Kindergarten to 5th or 6th grade.  There are some sheets for older students as well.  Many of the lessons cover a grade range rather than one specific grade (i.e., 2nd-4th or 5th-7th)

I had some fun finding ways to use the Super Teacher worksheets.

• Anything that fit in with our studies in some area.
• Reading comprehension for books we had on hand or had recently read.
• Finding activities to accompany songs from Schoolhouse Rock.
• Using pages that dovetail with current events.

I worked with Merrick on CVC words and the D word wheel.  This one was pretty easy for him and he didn't even need help cutting out these circles.

He also had some fun building sentences for Grandpa.  This activity was a little difficult for him, but once he had figured out the bulk of the words, he seemed to really enjoy building sentences.  At first, he was serious, but after a while he became quite silly.  This one was definitely an enjoyable project.

Xav was excited to answer some questions I found on the book Bunnicula, which he has read several times.  I also printed some assignments for comparing a book with its movie, and a comprehension file for The Boxcar Children.

We would watch an episode of Schoolhouse Rock, which takes only a few short minutes.   After that, the boys would work on a printable which coincides with the song.  There are grammar worksheets galore, for various ages.  Merrick was excited to complete this fun activity.  All through it, he sang, "A noun is a person, place, or thingamabob."

At the beginning of our time as Super Teacher Worksheets members, I found hurricane printables to help the punks understand exactly what was happening in Texas, then Florida and Puerto Rico.

I used the calendar generator to create something I could use for morning time.  I used to have that nearly every day with the bigger littles, but until this year, Merrick has been left out of that sort of thing.  The generator offers a few different options.  You can have small numbers in the upper right corner of each day's box.  I did that, but I remembered after making them for September and October that I need to leave the boxes blank for Merrick to fill in himself each day.  The dropdown selector allows for that.  You can choose the full word for each day, or the abbreviated name.  Weekends can be shaded or not, and you can list US or Canadian holidays, or no holidays.  I entered US holidays, but there were a few that were not important to me.  It is as simple to delete a marked holiday as it is to enter new content into the calendar.  Even though while entering the data, it looked like the top line wouldn't fit, when I printed it I had three full rows of typing available in each square,.  Unfortunately, the top and sides of the calendar are right at the edge of the print area and the tip top of the month/year were cut off.  That might just be a setting issue, but I never did get to look into it.

Though I haven't used the Worksheet Generators yet, they look great.  I will definitely be diving into those in the near future.  The set up is similar to the calendar generator.  Using dropdown menus, you answer questions to create the worksheet format, number of questions, and other things.  The three types of worksheets are word search, fill in the blanks, and multiple choice.

I found a few things I couldn't use or didn't need that may be useful to some homeschoolers, but I'm guessing only public educators would have the required equipment or specific need.  A Promethean Whiteboard isn't something you would typically find in a home.  I admit to being curious *and* a bit disappointed that I couldn't access those files myself.

I also found an elementary level gradebook which can be used in Excel (or OpenOfficeCalc).  All you need to do is enter students' names and grades.  The cells are formatted to average everything for you.  Pretty nifty, actually.  A similar PDF gradebook is available in the Teaching Tools section for those who would rather just track grades.

I have a virtual "file cabinet" on the website which I *really* like.  If I find something I think I can use down the road while I'm looking for this week's worksheets, I simply put it in my file cabinet for later.  I can also save any worksheets that I generate in the file cabinet.  Each worksheet shows a blue bar under the description.  That bar has an icon to see the common core connections, a preview of the file, and your file cabinet.  Just one click files it away.

There is so very much available for a low yearly fee, especially if you have elementary children.  I was pleasantly surprised (and maybe a bit overwhelmed at first) with the *many* options on Super Teacher Worksheets.  I do wish that I could easily search for a specific grade, though.  Be sure to take a look at the assignments the rest of The Crew handed out to their children, by clicking the banner below.

Social Media Links:

• Facebook   
• Twitter     
• Pinterest   
• Instagram

Steamtown Part 1 ~ Field Trip Friday {AKA V is for Vacation}

A couple of weeks ago (or way more now!), I told you about the trip we took to Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, NY.  While we really enjoyed seeing April the Giraffe, Oliver, and Tajiri, and the other animals, the main vacation destination was Steamtown in Scranton, PA.  I may have mentioned a time or two that the punks [warning: understatement ahead] like trains.  Dad planned the whole trip as a surprise.  And happily, Xav is a fourth grader and Steamtown is managed by the National Park Service.  That means we all received FREE admission through the Every Kid in a Park program.  Truthfully, admission isn't that high anyway.  The entrance fee was, surprisingly, only $7 per person for ages 16+.  Extra charges applied only to the Scranton Limited train ride which was $5 each, ages 6+.

Today, I'm just sharing the basics for this destination.  There was FAR too much to cover in one post.

First, we drove to Scranton on the 4th of July.  It was not as terrible as you might imagine and that was probably due to the fact it was a Tuesday.  We stayed at a hotel with a pool and that is basically enough to keep the boys happy.   HOWEVER, we were able to see multiple firework shows throughout the town from both the pool and our room.

The punks didn't actually know in advance where we would be going.  We told them before bed that night and, let's just say the response left a lot to be desired.  They were so "meh" about the whole thing.  All I did was hope they would be way more excited when they actually got it.  Merrick also got a little surprise that night.  He got a cute little indoor tent in which to spend the night.  Three boys in a queen size bed is a no go.  Two in the same bed leads to plenty of kicking, pushing, and growling until sleep is finally reached.

In the morning, we had breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts just down the road, then we headed straight to Steamtown.  I wish I had a video of the punks' reactions!  My preteen boys, literally, squee-ed when they got the first glimpse in the parking lot.  "It's the Big Boy, the Union Pacific Big Boy!"  Sadly, I thought the Big Boy was in pretty rough shape.  The boys thought it was the most incredible thing they'd ever seen.  Maybe it was... so far!

We didn't stay outside for long, though.  We had a train to catch!  Xav got his official "every kid in a park" card, we paid for our train tickets and headed inside.  We didn't have long to wait for our train ride and since that was almost the first thing we did there, I'm including it here.  Everything else we did will be in next week's Steamtown Part 2 post.

First, let me tell you, I was *shocked* to learn that, until the 1980s, Steamtown was located in Vermont!  Then the funniest thing happened.  Our guide turned out to be from Vermont and, until a few years ago, worked for the same company Daddy did.  Small world.

This is what happens when you wait too long to write up your post, you forget details.  I could research these details, but since I'm not finding them quickly, I'm just going to have to let them go.  *tries not to sing*  You can thank me later.  Anyway, we learned about the family who ran the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.  This was one of the earliest rail lines in northeastern Pennsylvania.

This Ramada Inn used to be the Train Station.  We didn't go inside, but did see some pictures online.  The family certainly believed in doing things up lavish-like.

We need a Part 2 post because I took so many pictures of our day, it wasn't even funny, but I knew I'd need them for the Train class at our co-op.  *justifies*



Homeschool Discount -Discount for 4th graders and their families, but not for homeschoolers specifically.  Reasonably priced, either way.
Educational - History, Science, Technology, Art, Math (in the gift shop!)
Family Oriented - Yes.
Duration of Visit - 6 hours+.

Doctor Aviation ~ A Homeschool Crew Review

When Doctor Aviation showed up on my radar (couldn't help it), I was really excited because we were able to view the first video in the online six month aviation video training course in its entirety.  It looked like so much fun!  The boys declared it to be "AMAZING."  Even though the full course is intended for ages 16+, I requested to review the program with my punks.

When we watched the first video lesson, I did not get the feeling it was just for high school.  Then I discovered there are some pretty heavy lesson plans included that contain guided notes, To Learn More document, and exams.  I really thought the video was appropriate for upper elementary and middle school.  They definitely enjoyed it and got a lot out of it.  By adding in the various other elements, this course is credit worthy for high school.  Some lessons could easily take two weeks.

Each of the 15 lessons is made up of the available documents (listed above) and a video of approximately an hour long (some longer, some shorter).  They aren't flashy and "exciting," but are filmed more as a lecture, like you would receive in any course intended for high school or college aged students.  There are some slides or video clips, but for the most part, Doctor Aviation stands near a plane (different throughout the videos) and lectures.  That was fine for me, but thankfully for the punks, the videos are divided into three sections;

• Technical Trivia, 
• Notable Innovators, and 
• Legendary Aircraft/events.  

This made it easier to break up the viewing and spread it out a bit.  It wasn't my original intention, but it helped to better keep the punks' attention.  I do wish there was a more notable break in the videos, though so I could easily go back to the segment we left off from.  When we finished a lesson, we could mark it complete and the program would open at the appropriate lesson the next time.  I actually rarely did that because we broke up the videos by segments and it was easy to get where I wanted to be right from the dashboard.

My personal favorite segment was Notable Innovators.  I loved learning about The Wright Brothers, Chuck Yeager, and Amelia Earhart.  Some of the people we'll learn about in future lessons are Neil Armstrong, Nate Saint (we actually studied him earlier this year), and Charles Lindbergh.

It was really fun to be learning specifically about Amelia Earhart just when the information about her possible fate, determined via a "lost photo" came out on the news.  You can read Doctor Aviation's blog and see what he thought about it.  He has a lot of interesting posts on there about many aviation related topics.


This is the course overview.
Session 1 Course Overview: The Aviation System
I. The Aircraft
Session 2 The Major Components of an Airplane
Session 3 Axes and Forces
Session 4 Why an Aircraft Flies: The Secret of Airfoils and Lift
Session 5 Why an Aircraft Turns, Pitches and Slides: The Flight Controls
II. Air Traffic Control
Session 6 How We See an Aircraft Miles Away: The Secrets of Radar
Session 7 The Air Traffic Cops: How Air Traffic Control Works
III. Maintenance
Session 8 Keep ‘Em Flying: Aircraft Maintenance – Propeller Engines
Session 9 Keep ‘Em Flying: Aircraft Maintenance – Jet Engines
IV. Airfield Operations
Session 10 The City in and of Itself: Running a Large Airport
Session 11 The Small Airport and Running an FBO
V. The Aircraft II
Session 12 Flying in the Clear and Not so Clear Air: VMC and IMC
Session 13 Important Pilot Instruments – Attitude Indicator
Session 14 Important Pilot Instruments – Airspeed Indicator
Session 15 Other Aviation Ships: Gliders, Helicopters, Airships

Guided notes follow the video pretty closely and are pretty easy to fill in as you go.  I rarely needed to pause a video for that purpose, so things kept flowing nicely.  I printed the notes and To Learn More documents and put them all in a handy folder.

The "To Learn More" document lists book, website, and video suggestions to enhance the learning from the video lesson.  It also includes hands-on activities, films, and research and writing assignments.  I actually borrowed *grown up* books from our library for this course.  Crazy, I know!  The best part was finding books for the punks that were suitable for their age and ability.  There were a few picture books for Merrick and several biographies in the juvenile section of the library for the bigger littles.



Dr. Aviation Intro Video from Daryl Smith on Vimeo.


We watched - rather than read - The Right Stuff, which I found out was really Not Kid Friendly.  Ahem.  That's no fault of Doctor Aviation.  I made the call.  PG back then, was way different from PG now that there is a PG-13 rating.  Lesson learned, hopefully.  A lot of it was very interesting, though and it led us down some rabbit trails about the speed of sound (supersonic and hypersonic) and that in November, 1961, Air Force Major Robert White reached speeds over Mach 6 in the X-15 research airplane.

Climbing the stairs into Air Traffic Control.  There's an old tower that's accessible to the public at a local airport.  I've taken the boys into it a couple of times.

When it's time for an exam, you'll be prompted to contact the administrator in the Action Steps section of the applicable sessions.  Easy Peasy.

Daryl Smith, AKA Doctor Aviation, has some pretty impressive credentials.  You don't have to wonder if this guy is qualified to teach you or your students about aviation.  Doctor Aviation has logged over 2,000 flight hours with 24 years in the Air Force.  He also was an instructor at the United States Air Force Academy, is a published author, and currently a college professor.

I think this is a *great* course for interested middle schoolers, older students, a fun way to earn a high school credit, continuing adult education, and even useful for boys and girls in Civil Air Patrol.  I have one punk I think will be very interested in that in a few years and this course is giving him a peek at what's in store.

Social Media Links:

• Facebook   
• Twitter  

Animal Adventure Park ~ Field Trip Friday {AKA Z is for Zoo}

This week, Dad surprised us all with a little three day trip.  One of our stops was Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, NY.  Yep.  Home of the infamous giraffe, April, who gave birth live online this spring.  All Malachi wanted to do was get a drink, see April, and go.  He was a bit disappointed that we saved April for nearly the very last stop.  That was intentional on my part.  If we saw April first, I'd have to hear, "Can we go now?' the whole time.  As it was, once he was able to get a drink, I only intermittently was reminded we needed to hurry over to the giraffe barn.  Only slightly less annoying, but less annoying all the same.

So, we avoided the giraffe barn by heading right once we went through the gate.  There we checked out the many other exotic and not as exotic animals.  Most of them had signage on the fences telling all about each critter and it's conservation status.  Quite a few of these first animals were members of the bovine and a couple of the equine families, goats, sheep, deer, and some kind of short cattle I didn't see a sign for.  One of my favorite enclosures housed the tortoises.  If you watched many of the April videos this spring, you may have seen the tortoises overwintering in the loft in her barn.  Some were quite large and we loved watching them nosh on lettuce leaves.

We watched Alyssa (April's keeper) and a friend go fishin' for a gator.  There were two in the tub and the water was fairly clear, but the second the keepers entered the pen, under the water they went, stirring up the murk.  (I was afraid this young man might be trying to lose some fingers.)

Jordan records a Tuesday/Thursday educational video and we watched live as the American Alligator segment was filmed.  Standing in the tortoise enclosure is apparently dangerous, as Jordan was nearly tripped by a pair of the shelled critters fighting over some romaine.  Don't worry, Alyssa separated them off camera so the littler guy got to keep his treat.

We were able to see lots of little monkeys, lemurs, a honey badger, wolves, bears, hyenas, and a ton of other critters.  The boys asked lots of questions.  Xav decided if he was a bear, he would spend all day in their "pool."  It was pretty warm Thursday.  Pretty birds were everywhere, on the grounds and in enclosures. 

We did, indeed, eventually get around to the giraffe barn.  Oliver's door was closed and as we came around to the side of the barn, we saw that outer door was open and April and "little" Tajiri were also coming in.  We all popped in there and fed April and Oliver some of the carrot sticks we had purchased onsite for them.  Every time I saw Merrick, a different woman was handing him a carrot stick and lifting him up so he could feed one of the giraffes.  He and I even received one of April's famous "hay showers."

The following morning, we got the sad news that Maxx the Camel had died in his sleep that night.  I am so terribly sad for the AAP family.  I'm not even telling the boys.  They fed Maxx some nibbles while we were there and Xav and I had a photo with him. (While I sang Alice the Camel Had One Hump and Dad looked at me like it was an odd thing to do.)

I wish they had sold postcards and souvenir spoons (I'm up to 33 or so right now).  I think a giraffe spoon where the handle was a neck would have been perfect.  (Patent pending?  LOL)  Maybe they did, but the shop was pretty chaotic and I didn't see either item there.  I think they're experiencing some growing pains, but they're doing a great job and I was very happy to get to see our famous giraffe friend.

They have a couple of small buildings set up to accommodate nursing moms, diaper changes, and kiddos with sensory issues, which was very thoughtful.

Homeschool Discount - Only during the traditional school year or as a group of 20 or more.
Educational - Absotootly. - Zoology, geography, ecology.
Family Oriented - Yes.
Duration of Visit - About two hours.  (I could have stayed longer, but it was hot and Malachi was *done*.)

Crazy Contraptions Co-op Class (I promise, no more intentional alliteration.)

Dad taught a class this past year at our co-op called Crazy Contraptions.  How our co-op works is that right after we finish the school year, each family completes an end of year survey.  One of the sections on the form asks what the students would be interested in learning about and what classes the parents would be interested in teaching the following year.  Those suggestions are turned into a prospective class list and sent back out to families for a first round of voting, each child choosing up to five courses.  That's the step we are at right now.  Soon, we'll get the second round and will probably have to choose a top three.  I do admit, there has been a time or two I've pretended I couldn't count and selected four classes for a kid.  That usually happens when one of the older punks really wants to choose a class, I'd rather they not take.  I include their list and my preference with an explanation.

Anyhoo, an unsuspecting parent is sometimes asked to teach an instructorless class.  Enter, Micah.  LOL  In the end, the students in the class ended up being younger than anticipated (he had ten boys twelve and younger), so the projects became a bit easier after the first one.  Here are some of the Crazy Contraptions the boys ended up making.

A walking robot thingy.

A do nothing box thingy.

A working catapult.

Rube Goldberg machines.

Paper and duct tape rockets.

Hovercraft.

They also made the rattlesnake egg pranks (remember those?).  The boys were so excited the next time we met to tell us all about who they frightened.  And Micah took in a Jacob's ladder he made.

Mrs. A and I helped with class almost every week.  We also invited Mrs. M, Mrs. P, Mr. R, and Mr. C to help out once or thrice (the punks are loving that word lately).   Co-op is a great example of gaining knowledge for our kiddos from people outside of our home (though, in this case, it was Dad).

What are some ways you share your talents with others or borrow from other adults and older kiddos for your children?