Whale Watching Field Trip

My kids go to the best school ever!  The school hosts a number of field trips every  year. All of them are fabulous!

The field trip protocol is this:  You sign up, pay the fee (which is the school group price plus a few dollars more and the extra goes to a playground supply fund), you transport your children to and from the field trip, and you chaperon your children too. They also encourage you to bring friends, especially friends who might be good recruits. There are no buses, no asking parents to volunteer as chaperons, it's just set up so that if your child attends the field trip, so do you. Easy as that!

Since I'm a stay-at-home mom, this field trip thing totally works for me. And, I get in on the fun! Gotta love that!

Yesterday, we went on a Whale Watching Excursion with the school. We went in May also. It was fun then, and this trip was fun too!

I brought recruitable friends! My friend Kristin and her two little girls came with us, in fact, she drove. I guess that means I went with her.  It was great to have our good friends along with us because the downside of these field trips is that each child is with their family and the families tend to stick together and not mingle much. I don't know very many of the students and families well. It was great to share this day with our awesome friends! The four girls really enjoyed their outing together. I think being with friends adds a lot of value to the experience. Libby's favorite Kindergarten friend went too. She had her family and they brought friends too.  Of course, Gracie knew everyone on the boat by name. She probably knew the full price passengers too, she's overly social like that.

The boat ride was great! We left from the dock right on time and returned promptly too. Nobody puked! I consider that a great success!

We saw seals or sea lions, I'm not sure which even though the captain announced what we were viewing and what the differences are. I still forgot.

We saw a very large pod of common dolphins. That's actually the name of that kind of dolphin, "common dolphin".  There were hundreds of them!  The captain again made announcements and described life as a dolphin. There was a mother and baby pair that swam close to the boat. So cute!  All of the dolphins were swimming and leaping in and out of the water, they were really neat to see!  Especially such a large group of them.

No whales were sighted. I am glad.  Sure, I like these whale watching trips, but I am secretly afraid of whales. They are huge! The boat we're in isn't huge. I'm terrified that the whales will bump the boat from the bottom and put all of the passengers out to sea. I'm pretty sure that I am very yummy.

We came upon another pod of dolphins and the captain slowed down the boat, he was very excited. Instead of his scripted announcement, his voice was exuberant. We saw Pacific White Sided Dolphins. The captain said it was a rare treat to see them.

After we docked, the kids were hungry and antsy. I'm not sure which was worse, but my friend and I decided to let them play on the beach before we fed them. That way, we can lure them off of the beach to eat, otherwise they'll want to play all day and the whining will be nonstop. It's a good trick, they'll leave playtime if you offer them food and they are hungry.

Once they were on the beach, they completely forgot about being hungry. They played for two hours! The same children who were freezing cold on the boat, they all wore two jackets each, and three of them wore winter hats, were now in swimsuits and dashing in and out of the waves. They built sandcastles, chased seagulls, looked for seashells and had a grand time.

The clouds were weird and strange and interesting and beautiful! There was a curved break in the clouds that looked like a tornado in the photos.

Finally, at 3pm they were ready for lunch. We walked down the end of the pier to Ruby's and we ate well. It was delicious! The kids ate plenty (except one kid). The portions were generous. My friend picked up the tab and the tip. She's an awesome friend! I'm keeping her!

We stopped in the beach bathroom before hitting the road for home. Gracie came out of the stall and said "Mom! Someone forgot their phone!" She was very concerned. We asked around a bit but nobody claimed it and then I looked and it had two missed calls in the last few minutes.  I called that number back and said "We just found this phone" and the lady on the other end was very excited! She said to stay at the bathroom and she'd be right back. I told her we would be right next to the bathroom on the playground. We waited a while and just when we were starting to wonder how far away this lady had gotten, she showed up. She had already driven away. She was very happy to get her phone back, and she recognized Gracie from the excursion! Didn't I tell you Gracie knows everyone? She said her daughter goes to the same school. Then she handed Gracie a dollar bill and said she wanted to show her appreciation by giving her a reward and that's all that she had. We thanked her kindly, but Gracie was rewarded plenty just by seeing this lost phone returned and the lady was obviously happy to have it back in her hands. Gracie also didn't know anything about rewards for finding lost things. The lady hopped back in her vehicle and off she went.

Gracie looked at the folded dollar in her hand, unfolded it and found that there were two $20 bills. What!!! Whoa!

Gracie's little friend was jealous that Gracie got cash and she didn't, so Gracie gave her one. I thought that was just fine since it was an accidental finding and no matter which one of us had gone in the stall where the phone was, we would have still done our best to return it.  Both of the girls understood that it was something very important to someone and it needed to be returned. They both have big hearts. So, sharing the reward was a good idea and I'm glad they thought of that on their own.  I don't know if either one of them realizes that $20 is more than $1. Their mommies are credit card swipers.

We ended up leaving Newport Beach just at the right time to be part of the five o'clock traffic on the 91. It was slow going and my friend was driving, so I just relaxed and enjoyed the visit.

Could the day have been better? No. Not possible. It was so great! A day with my girls, friends, dolphins, beautiful weather, good food, a good deed, and I didn't have the stress of driving in heavy traffic! It was amazing!

Whale Watching - Best School Field Trip Ever

When I was a kid in a little town in Montana going to public school, we didn't go on any field trips. Or, if we did, I don't remember them. My sister's class all went on a field trip once, they walked across the street to our house to see a live turkey in our backyard. His name was Fuzzy and we ate him for Thanksgiving dinner. She should blog about that someday. Anyway, that's the only time I can recall anyone ever going on a school field trip.

My older two daughters went to elementary school in South Dakota. They went on one field trip. Every year the fourth graders went to an event called "Ag Day" and they went somewhere that the 4-H kids had set up convention style with booths. Booths of livestock and farm information.

Gracie's school has totally blown me away. They have a field trip every month and this month: Whale Watching Cruise. Oh yeah!  Montana and South Dakota have got nothing on California! This school rocks!!!

For a two hour whale watching cruise, the cost per person was $11. The museums cost more than that!

We got up early and left early because the cruise was out of Newport Beach which is a little over an hour away in perfect conditions. But on a weekday morning, we had to battle the commuter traffic on one of the busiest freeways in the state. This means we were traveling at top speeds of 20 and sitting parked on the freeway when it would come to an unexplainable halt. So boring!  We squeezed Gracie, Libby and Charlie in the back seat and with them squished together the ride seemed even longer. It took us two hours to get there, but we made it on time.

We checked in and waited for 45 minutes to board the boat. The kids have now been bored to death for 3 hours.

The people who paid regular price for their tickets were boarded first, and they were sent to the upper deck. The school group was loaded onto the main deck.  The boat looked smaller than it was. A long line of people boarded and there was still room for us. Everyone was choosing just the right spot to sit, little did we realize that everyone would shuffle around and trade places over and over again.

My first thought while on the lower deck was that if anyone on the upper deck were to lean over the railing in the midst of sea-sickness, the puke will land on the people below. That'd be me.

Newport Beach Harbor is beautiful! The weather was awesome too. Even the kids enjoyed the harbor and seeing the boats and homes along the shore with the Los Angeles skyline on the horizon. Very pretty!

So far the ride was nice and smooth, but the kids were hanging onto the railing for dear life. Libby already didn't like the motion of the boat on the water and we were going slow on the easy stretch. Might be a long cruise for the kid.

As soon as we were in the ocean water, we saw sea lions on a buoy. All of the kids on the boat were super excited!

And.... now the kids are bored. And cold. And feeling queasy.

We went into the cabin and sat in a booth. Now they wanted candy and crap from the snack counter. I brought snacks, but they want overpriced sugar from the boat guy. No. 

This is going to be a very long two hour cruise.

After a while we came upon a pod of dolphins. We saw several pods of dolphins, one group after another. It was great! The kids loved seeing the dolphins swim alongside the boat. They jumped and squealed and waved their flippers and tails. I'm sure they were very happy to see the boat full of school kids!

Everyone wanted to see a whale, but the dolphins were very fun to watch. We never did see any whales.

Actually, I was glad that we didn't see any whales. The thought of whales made me nervous. What if they bump the boat and tip us over? I know, these whale watching cruises run multiple times a day and they didn't mention that whales tend to tip over the boat and eat the passengers, but that thought was prominent on my mind.

The teacher asked me if I heard the safety announcements at the top of the cruise, and it occurred to me that I hadn't.  But I did a quick scan earlier to look for marked storage places where floatation devices were. Someone else said they heard the safety schpeel, so I must not have been paying attention when it was announced. Not that it mattered, the idea of whales still made me nervous.

More dolphins! Yay!

Libby didn't care about any of the dolphin watching. She was queasy and cold and miserable. She really didn't like the motion of the boat.

Charlie was feeling confined. The boat wasn't big and he wasn't allowed to run amuck. He's two! He must run around! Poor kid. Gracie wanted to run with her friends and swing on the railings and jump over people and squeeze through others. One hour to go.

More dolphins! Look kids! Dolphins!  They didn't care any more.

At this point, the whales could come and put us out of our misery. Yes, that's how much the kids were enjoying the cruise. 

At least Gracie was having fun with her school friends. I was so glad she was having a good time and hanging with her friends! She had been doing a lot of recent complaining about fitting in socially and idolizing some other kids in her class, all of that finding her place in the social construct of the playground sort of thing. This was great to see her interact with her peers and I found out first hand that she exaggerates her social woes. She's just fine and her friends treat her well and she has nothing to complain about. I was actually worrying about her. This cruise was good for that anyway.

Libby and Charlie fell asleep. Yes!!! They won't give me that "Can you make this super disappointing boat ride end already" look anymore.

When we were returning to the harbor, we saw a huge swarm of seagulls attacking the water. The Captain said they were eating anchovies. It was kind of creepy and weird.

Just like that, the whale watching cruise was done! Yay! It was great! Ok, I am just trying to convince myself that it was great. It was boring and the kids were too confined for their enjoyment. The school kids loved it, but they are old enough to get a bigger thrill out of it than the two littler kids. Gracie had a great time. I was so happy to get off of that boat with the kids!

We searched for a playground near the dock or anywhere near, actually. These kids were as well behaved as they could have been and they had 5 hours of pent up energy, and were recharged by short naps. A two hour drive home would not be easy if they don't play.

There are no playgrounds at Newport Beach.

None.

Luckily, it only took an hour and a half to get home and that included a stop for fast food lunch.

Now if you ask the kids, they will say how much fun they had when we went on a big boat in the ocean. They saw dolphins and birds and can't wait to go again!  I love that their memory of the day is so much happier than the actual cruise was. That makes it worth the hassle.

None of them puked. And nobody on the top deck puked on the people on the lower deck (specifically, me). Nobody fell overboard. Whales did not tip us over. 

With that, I declare the whale watching trip a total success! Let's do it again!

Homeschooling Meltdown

Is there anything worse than doing worksheets at home? According to the resident first grader, No. Nothing on earth could be worse than sitting at the table with a pencil and a worksheet. Nothing!

I've been following the school's guideline to the tee. Worksheets for Language Arts, Math, Handwriting and other subjects. I've been super-nagging and making the kid do them all. Then I've been topping it off with spelling lists.

This is not working.

I've lost track of why we are homeschooling. The child is not a worksheet girl, she's a hands-on girl. She learns best when there is something to manipulate, touch, or experience. She's a tangible learner. (Is that a legit educational term?)

After our parent/teacher conference in February where I expressed my concerns about our weekly worksheet wars, the teacher said "so, don't do them". Really? I love her! She's right! Why didn't I think of that?

I made her do one day of worksheets because I really didn't know what to replace them with. How do I do homeschool without the worksheets? It was a horrible day. Fine, I give! The teacher is right, if she hates worksheets at home then they are not teaching her what she really needs to learn. The lessons will be lost in the madness and she will hone her skills in whining, rebellion and arguing. Yeah, we don't want that.

Besides, I don't like being called "Evil".

I looked over her worksheets carefully. Let's see...  this month's worksheets are covering contractions, plural vs possessive spelling, and in math: measurement and time. We can do these in other ways. We have to!

First rule: Read anything you want anytime you want. 

The monthly project is to write a healthy recipe. So, we need to learn about nutrition and cooking too. I'm lucky enough to have a helpful friend who is wonderful with concocting recipes and has her own child in the kitchen often. These are two things that would make my brain implode, so I enlisted her help.

I gave Gracie an analog watch for her birthday and I am constantly asking her what time it is. This is helping to teach her to tell time. She can look at a digital clock to check and see if she was right. It's working! Not only that, but she is grasping the concepts of how long is a second, minute, hour, etc. I also downloaded a free time telling game to my Nexus and I told her she had to play for ten minutes before playing Angry Birds.

Disneyland turned out to be a wonderful place to learn about time. What time is it now? What time is the next show? How long do we have to wait? What does 20 minutes feel like? 

I put one of my sewing measuring tapes in my purse and had her measure anything she wanted to at the park. She had to measure 5 things before being allowed to go down the big twisty slide. Score! I let her choose to measure in inches or centimeters, in her decision making she would flip the measuring tape over and look at both before deciding. Yay! She's doing it! 

I was reading one of my favorite sewing blogs, Indietutes, and the blogging mom "unschools" her children. This is a new concept to me; basically it is as she describes it, "project-base, interest-led, home learning".

I'm not sure how to unschool on homeschool days, but I think it's totally worth a shot! I want this to work and it's up to me to make it work or find a way to succeed. Success is learning. With that in mind, I'm trying my best to unschool this homeschool thing!

So far, I think we're doing a pretty good job. She asked to go to the Dinosaur museum, so we went! I've taken her to many places but this month on our outings, I've been trying to see what she is learning. She's also been having movie-nights with her dad and learning lots of pop-culture. This fills her with questions and she's learning a lot.

Right now, as I type this, she's watching Spongebob and not learning a darn thing. But, it's Sunday.

I have to figure out how to account for her homeschool days without the worksheets when we turn in her next homeschool folder. I have no idea how to do this, so I'm going to wing it and hope it works out.

Mystery History

October's school project was called "Mystery History". The assignment was to research a historical figure, report and present to the class information learned. The grand finale of this project was a big event at school where each student dresses like the historical figure they chose, and the other students try to guess who it is.

When I read the assignment description to my first grader she didn't get very excited about it until the word "costume" came into play. Apparently, that's the only thing she heard. The kid has selective hearing just like her father.

Once again, choose a person from history and find out all about that person.  "History? Does that mean a long time ago?"  "Yes."  Cue the flailing of the arms, stomping feet and the extra loud whining. "I don't wanna dress up like an old person! I wanna be a princess!" I decided to just let her get it out of her system and I didn't press it further.

She settled down and said, "Mom? Were there any princesses in history?"  "Yes."  She bolted up from her super slouchy position to sitting on the edge of her seat with wide eyes. "Really?" "Yes!" "Was Cinderella a real princess from history?" "No." "Were any Disney princesses real?" "Yes: Pocahontas and Mulan. But there were a lot of real princesses." "Any real princesses in history named Gracie?" "Yes."

Exuberant jumping up and down and happy squeals.  I think we found our historical figure!  "Mom! Let's google her right now!"

I helped guide her through picking out important facts about Grace Kelly that she could use for her presentation. She just needed some talking points, not an essay, but she needed to know about her life and so we read all about her. It was kind of fun.

Gracie made her list of "clues" and I made her costume. Ready!

Gracie chose the dress that I would replicate for her; to my delight she chose the black and white gown from "Rear Window". It's so pretty!  Since my Gracie is a child, I made a few alterations to the design of the neckline. I didn't think she needed a swooping Vneck exposing a lot of bare back, nor did she need to have her dress barely hanging off of her shoulders. Don't get me wrong, I love the dress and it's lovely lines! But, the costume needs to stay on an active six-year old for an entire day.

To finish the costume, we purchased long white gloves from the Halloween aisle at Target, and topped her head with her sister's tiara that she bought at Claires  years ago for prom. Perfect! In the movie, Grace Kelly did not wear a tiara with that dress, but it added to the princess aspect of the character. In total, the entire costume cost around $10.

I omitted the detail work on the hips of the movie star's dress. I desperately wanted to add it, but I ran out of time. The dress looked great without it, and so I just let it go at that. Not a perfect copy, but close enough.

The event at school was great! Organized costumed chaos at its best. There are four classes of approximately 30 kids each. The teachers had all of the kids stand in a large circle and one class plus all of the parents were to mingle around as if they were at a wax museum. The museum subjects stood still (supposedly) and gave the museum guests clues as to who they were. The museum guests then tried to guess who the mystery history figure was. And, on to the next. Every now and then, the teachers would switch the mingling class for a standing class.  But, with all of the mingling, the kids standing still found this a great opportunity to talk amongst themselves as did the parents. Wandering through the crowd, the conversations were all about the kids history characters, so even though it seemed like chaos, the purpose of the event was right on. There were a lot of great historical figures in the room, very cool! In fact, it reminded me of the movie, "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" when they gathered so many people from  history together.

The teachers: Cleopatra, Albert Einstein, Maria Montessori and Mona Lisa

Historical characters acting as wax figures waiting to give clues to the museum guests.

Educational Chaos

Princess Grace with Princess Diana

Betsy Ross, Princess Grace, and Amelia Earhart

Walt Disney, Shirley Temple and others try to guess Princess Grace's name

Hybrid Homeschooling

Gracie goes to this really amazing school. It is a charter school that is run by the school district, so it is a public school, but has that private school feel to it.

The school has two programs, well three actually.  The third being a full time homeschooling program where the student does not participate in a classroom. The other two programs are homeschool/classroom hybrids. The first program they offer is called Classical Minds. The kids in this program attend class on Mondays and Tuesdays and homeschool on Wed, Thurs, and Fridays.  The second program, the one we chose, is Montessori and meets in the classroom on Wed, Thurs, Friday and homeschooling is on Mondays and Tuesdays.

So, Gracie is in the first grade and goes to school three days per week. She has homeschool when she's home. Homeschool work is no different than homework. In fact, if she went to a five-day school, she would still have this much homework.

At home, she does Language Arts, Math, Handwriting, Spelling and a monthly project. It seems like a lot of worksheets to do, but she's managing to get them all done, so I guess it isn't so bad. It was overwhelming at first though. I got her a storage clipboard and I load it with a few worksheets at a time. She can take her clipboard with her in the van, or wherever we go, and work on her papers. I take out her finished work and put in fresh worksheets as the time goes by.

Last month her monthly project was a poster "All About Me" and this month her project is a history report. Upcoming monthly projects include a science fair project, art history, and a healthy recipe. They vary quite a bit, and you can put a lot into the project or a little. It can be tailored to the work level of the student too. I love how you can make it your own.

She also has to do two hours of online work each week. She spends one hour (all at once or a little at a time) on reading and an hour on math. The school provides the website information and keeps track of her progress. All I have to do is keep her on task. I'll admit, that's not always easy.

The only other thing we have to do for homeschooling is 100 minutes per week of physical activity. Per week, that's super easy!

In the classroom, she works on a lot of the same things plus she has music, art, French, science, history, and I'm not sure what else. She plays games, stands in line, socializes, and learns. They do all the traditional classroom stuff: say the pledge, calendar, weather, recess, lunch, wait for the bell...  They also have a behavior color coded chart. This is a hard one, she has to remember to stop talking! Some things are very hard to learn.

I'm so happy that Gracie is in a Montessori school. It emphasizes hands on learning and student lead learning, which basically means every kid can work at their own pace. No waiting for classmates to catch up and no holding others back while trying to catch up. The kids are very sweet about working at different levels and not making a big deal about it. Gracie is super competitive at home, so I figured this style of teaching might either work or be an epic fail. So far, pretty good. She's saving the competition for home I guess.

One of the best things about Montessori, and I don't know if they do this in the other program or any other program, but I love it: the classrooms are mixed grade levels. They have "Lower Elementary" which are classrooms mixed with kids grade 1, 2 and 3. And "Upper Elementary" which are grades 4, 5, and 6. Gracie is always surrounded by smaller kids, and in school she finally gets to experience being social with kids her own age and kids older than her. The older ones help the younger ones and I'm sure Gracie is learning more than just the curriculum with this experience. Plus, she's not the tallest kid in her class. She might be one of the youngest, but when you see the kids all lined up, there are a few that are taller than her and she doesn't stand out one bit from the other kids. She blends right in. I think the older kids also motivate her to learn more too. I don't know what it is like for the oldest kids in class, but I sure do like having her in class with some older kids.

The classroom doesn't have rows of desks. They have a couple of group tables, but mostly the kids work in small groups or pairs on the floor. They have little rugs that they lay out and work there, or on the big rug in the center of the room. Looks so casual and laid-back.

Another amazing thing her school does is they communicate! I know, that sounds like it should be a normal thing that all schools do, but no. Not true. Gracie is my third kid, I've been through the whole "oh, I assumed school and parents would communicate effectively" thing before. I'm always wrong about it. But this school, they really do communicate and they seem to enjoy it! One of the best tools we have is the syllabus. Yup, a first grade syllabus for the entire year. There is a curriculum map and a project outline complete with expectations, project details and due dates. All the way to the end of the school year. Guess how much this helps a mama plan? I love this!

The knowing ahead of time thing works so well, because you never know when inspiration for an assignment might strike. Gracie was inspired to learn about a piece of art, now half of her May monthly project is done. If we hadn't known about the assignment, we wouldn't have known which way to guide her learning about this piece of artwork and to save pictures and resources.  I am loving the communication!

Since we only have to send her to school three days a week, we have two weekdays to play! We try to do the homeschool work on the weekends so that we have Mondays and Tuesdays to run around and have fun. I prefer to go places during the week to avoid the weekend crowds and traffic. Plus, weekends are "Daddy time" and I like the kids to be home when he is so that they can get all of his extra time that they can. He works a lot, so we might as well go on our outings while he is at work rather than when he's home.

We go all kinds of places. Museums, parks, Seaworld, the zoo, beach, shopping, playdates, just anywhere and everywhere. Gracie usually brings her clipboard and gets a little bit done on the go. Three days of school: four days of fun! Love that class to homeschool ratio!