Habitats at Morningside Nature Center

[taken in part from a friend's blog]


Our group took a lovely field trip this week to Morningside Nature Center. They’ve been doing programs for both public and home schooled children for years, and it shows. Their presentation was well-organized, engaging, and really reached the kids.

The title was “Animal Homes.” There was a brief discussion of animals’ physical adaptations which give them advantages in their environments (complete with skeletons and taxidermy for illustration), then the focus moved to habitats. The kids learned that the 4 necessary components of any habitat are: food, water, shelter, and space. Then the fun part began.


Each student was given a small plastic animal and a laminated sheet with information about it. Then, with the presenter’s guidance, they built a habitat for the animals in a big wading pool filled with sand that included all the necessary elements. The presenter talked them through the food chain and how it influenced the spacing and placement of different species. One of the children was feeling contrary and refused to place his frog in the habitat, but instead of derailing the lesson, the presenter used the frog’s absence to demonstrate how the entire ecosystem could be disrupted by the destruction of one species. It was really quite ingenious.

Then she used a toy bulldozer to level some trees and build a “house” by the lake, and she talked about all the various ways that humans dwelling in that particular spot were likely to cause damage. She guided the kids through ways that humans could more thoughtfully establish their own habitat within the system to minimize environmental impact, and the kids really got into it. It warmed my heart, I have to say.

Then we went on a nature walk. It was quite cold, so we didn’t see any animals, but our guide pointed out many signs showing where they’d been.

Circle Camp Finale

After two weeks of our peace talk-themed summer camp, the kids put on an amazing performance complete with drumming, dancing, singing, and skits. Lots was learned in terms of talking with others compassionately and getting to feelings and needs instead of blame and hurt.

Amazing Butterflies

Went to Butterfly Rainforest and Amazing Butterfly Exhibit.

NUU Years Eve

On New Years Eve, P and K participating in an arts, crafts, and activities evening. P played chess, and P and K took turns playing dress up. Crafts includes collages and making representations of themeselves by having someone draw their outlines on oversized sheets of paper which they then colored and decorated

PK City

P and K spent much of today creating PK City. Copious time was spent perfecting animal life locations, arranging buildings, walkways and train tracks in relation to existing roads, and having nice spiders around to catch bugs.

Farm animals are found in pens, with guard dogs:


Water animals are located on the largest body of water:


A small lake is populated by a sailboat:


Traffic includes car, train, and pedestrian:


There is a town square, complete with a clock tower:


Even fictitious creatures, like dragons, have a home here -- lying in wait to destroy!!:

Number Love and Workbook Fun

Today, P decided on the way to go swimming to count from 100 to 200, and did so with no problems. After returning from swimming (where we spent about 2 hours in the pool with both P and K learning to kick), P started turning over pairs of Uno Hearts cards and adding them together with the use of Math-U-See manipulatives.

We then started looking through the stack of Brighter Vision Learning Adventure workbooks we've collected, and both P and K started working through pages of them. K stuck mainly to coloring via a color-dot method and practicing letters. P followed a chart to color images, worked some 2-digit equations, some word finds, decoder puzzle (where you use a code and then write the word based on it), logic puzzle, mazes, and search and find pictures. We also did a word page that emphasized the consonant digraph "wh". P did skip-counting by 10s and by 5s (using nickel examples).

1+10=11

July 14th

P used his National Geographic flash cards to answer true and false questions. He divided the cards between mammals and others; carnivores and herbivores; warm and cold blooded; by geographical region; water versus land; and by fur, feather, or other.

K practiced her writing today, doing free form copying of written words. Her letters are far better formed than P and easily read.

P found Madagascar on the map and identified it was larger than New Zealand.

Peace Camp: Day Four

P's activities today were: Board Games, Marbles, and Chess.

In addition, P is learning typical "socialized" behaviors, including lunch sharing, name calling, and general potty talk. We discussed in depth the importance of being Kind First, thoughtful and respectful of all, and that some language just are generally inappropriate for people in general (and kids in particular). We also discussed healthy food options based on nutritional values, and made sure to get more input on what we included in his lunch.

Today's theme: "It Matters What You Do!"

Peace Camp: Day Two

P's activities today were: Lawn Bowling, Kickball, and Chess.

Today's theme: "It's a Blessing You were Born."

Peace Camp: Day One

P is participating in Peace Camp again this year (last year it was called Chalice Camp, and it was where he learned chess, which is still a passion). The premise of the camp is to teach non-violent communication, or at least have an exposure for the children.

During the day, the campers get to pick three hour-long activities taught by volunteers. Today,“Decorate a Paradise Cookie”, “Fun with Electricity and Magnets”, and Chess.

Today's theme: "It's a Blessing You were Born."

Global Domination Risk

Today, P and I spent several pockets of the day playing Risk, for 2 players. We took turns placing our armies and later applying new armies and attacking. Adding is required a lot (P referred to it as a counting game!), and then we consulted a chart we created to determine what the total number of added countries we each controlled was when divided by 3 and rounded up (such that 1, 2, 3 = 1; 4, 5, 6 = 2; 7, 8, 9 = 3; etc.).

Strategy is the point of the game, and that was used to determine whether or not to attack an opponent. Comparisons of army totals (for example, 5 armies on Congo is greater than 3 armies on North Africa, and therefore more likely to succeed) and learning the Roman numerals (I, III, V, X) for the pieces representing the army numbers also was used. Figuring out how to win an entire continent to get the bonus number of armies as well as matching up cards to get more armies was another aspect of the game.

Although we did modify a few of the rules (like the increasing value of the cards), P was very amenable to the rule modification from the sample run with Jeff the day before. P quickly controlled Australia, and my attempts to maintain South America were repeatedly assaulted by P taking over North Africa and attacking from there. I had him read/sound-out/say all the country names, which is hard when Irkutsk is one of them! Near the end, I briefly held North America before he invaded from Asia, and he had Europe for a while before I took out Western Europe and swept through from there. We ended up stopping the game because it was very late, and he definitely was well within a position to completely win.

Dinosaur Dominoes

P and K playing Dinosaur Dominoes, matching the different dinosaur types as Parker tries to sound them out.

Chess Practice

Early Morning Chess