Pages

Monday, September 28, 2009

Field Trip #3

The Scenic Route

We're on a roll. Apparently we will be adventuring about on many field trips this school year. Last week we registered for the homeschool day at Evergreen Aviation. We attended one of the monthly classes last spring, and I decided we would go ahead and enjoy the classes this coming year.

Evergreen is a bit of a drive so we had to get our sleepy heads up a little earlier than usual, but the scenic route is incredibly gorgeous. This particular morning we enjoyed the glowing sun as it rose in the sky and pockets of morning fog hiding in the rolling hills, fields, horse farms, orchards, and vineyards. Happy sigh.

I knew my plans were slightly ambitious, taking all 3 boys and having no friends or family along. (Y'all are coming next month, right? Right?!) We did our best as the boys started out in a class, and then moved on to (even more ambitious) group engineering projects. Whew! A bit much for this introvert to juggle, I'm telling you, but we survived. Luckily we had an hour for lunch al fresco. The boys spent every moment on the incredible play structure while I soaked up some sunshine.

Rocketry Class



Team Engineering Challenge

After lunch, our group met up at the IMAX theater to watch a 3-D movie about astronauts landing on the moon. Leif cracked. me. up. with his little 3-D glasses, snatching them off with wide eyes whenever something appeared to be coming straight toward him. The boys got a little antsy toward the end of the documentary, but they did well over-all.

Next up, we headed to the side lawn to launch our pop-bottle rockets and our 'eggstronauts' (we each got an egg for an astronaut, and the purpose of the exercise was to use various supplies to protect our egg from breaking when the rocket landed). It was suddenly very, very warm and blindingly bright.

Flight Testing

The boys needed to let off some steam before we headed home, and I didn't feel like corralling them inside the museum, so they worked up sweat again on the play structure with a new friend.

Blast Off!

We had a lovely drive home, stopping at a roadside produce stand and store for ice cream cones. I'm looking forward to our trip up next month (though I might be leaving little Leif-man with his grandma...).

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool. Actually...A friend from Portland and I are thinking of attending these monthly homeschool classes. It's nice to know I'll see you there! ~Tera and the 3 monkeys :)

Sarah said...

We were thinking of attending these this year as well...will have to look up when/what,etc. Thanks for the reminder :) Looks as though there's much to do and enjoy there!

Heidi said...

The line-up of classes is linked in this post under 'classes this coming year.' Evergreen finally got the info up on their website. The next class is balloons and gliders on Oct 15th. It would be awesome to see you both there!!

Anonymous said...

Okay, it's on my calendar! Thannks for the link Heidi!

Anonymous said...

Oh, one more thing Heidi... I couldn't find anywhere on their site that stated the suggested age/grade for the classes. Is it totally up to our discretion? I know my 6yr old would probably want to be included, but not sure if it would be too intense. Just wondered if you knew since you've already been to a couple. ~Tera

Heidi said...

There were lots of 5-6 year-olds in the grade-school group. I think your guy would be just fine. I think the classes vary in difficulty. Luke did fine with the classes/presentations last spring and he wasn't even 5. He didn't participate much in the projects this time, but it would have been fine if I could have worked with him without Leif running around and in a group of people that I wasn't familiar with. So, yes, 6 would be fine (and there were lots of families with younger kids in strollers, I just found that difficult to juggle personally).

Anonymous said...

Heidi, thanks for sharing your fieldtrip day. I was hoping that it would become a post! Busy day, possibly too much for my 3 however we love the playground and have even gone there with a brown bag lunch...it would be fun to "lunch" and play with your family some day! ~Connie in Tualatin