Super Saturdays

Highlands Museum has the following description of what they are calling Super Saturdays on their website.

“The museum will be holding science and history workshops at the museum every Saturday at 2:00pm. We are calling it Super Saturdays! The workshops are geared toward elementary and middle school aged children, but would be a great thing to do with the entire family!

Each workshop will be held two times so hopefully you can make it to your favorite one!

November
5th and 26th   Wings of WWII
     Students will learn about the evolution of aircraft as weapons during WWII and how it changed the war and brought about an American victory. Students will get to make models of planes to take home and will finish off their day by flying a scale model B-25 Bomber across the Mezzanine of the Museum!

With some of the workshops, we provide supplies for each child. To help us cover the cost, it will be $3 per person.”

This sounded really interesting, so we took our boys to it. Here are some pictures of what they got to see & do while at the workshop.

I’m extremely happy that the boys had a great time and want to go back to more of the workshops held at the museum. We’ll be more than happy to take them to future outings. Although I have some real concerns about the way they describe the workshops and the cleanliness of it.

This one wasn’t very well planned. We stood around where we were told that the instructor would meet us and finally just happened to see a couple of guys fooling around with a plane. Well after having to ask about it we were told that was the instructor and to go on upstairs. I don’t think it would have hurt to let us parents know that the class was upstairs to begin with and they really should have introduced themselves and said come on. Something. Anything.

After that was sorted out … they had a great time talking with the guy doing the presentation, but there was a lot of time wasted with the airplane they were “flying” across the Mezzanine. It was a plane on a string and there was something wrong with that string so the plane wouldn’t “fly” right. So there was some down time between kids getting a turn. Most didn’t mind as they ran off doing other things or looking at other stuff. They were super cute when it was their turn to fly though! They also got to drop a “bomb” on a floating boat (brag inserted here ... Walter was the only one to make it into the water & bomb a boat! LoL many of the kids got it in the water but he was real happy about actually hitting the boat ... that's my boy!)  … well if you pulled the string at the right time you would hit the water … but it was hard. That certainly would take some practice … hit or miss though it was fun for the kids.

Then it was downstairs to “make models of planes”. It was a large sheet of paper. They made a big paper airplane. What!?! Yes a big paper airplane. That is so NOT “Students will get to make models of planes to take home” … It’s not a bad thing … what kid who likes planes doesn’t like to make paper airplanes? Especially a big one! I just think the wording on the website is very misleading. I didn’t expect a real good model of an airplane, but I sure as heck didn’t expect they would just give them a piece of paper either. Ah well, my boys have been playing with their's all weekend ... they aren't planes anymore though! hahaha

Something has to be said for them trying to draw in people to their workshops, but fudging the truth about what is going on doesn’t make a real good impression and a little prep work would go along way for the workshop to run smoothly. But like I said, the boys had a ball with it and we’ll do it again mainly because it’s of interest to them and when you’re homeschooling you want your kids to be interested in all kinds of learning.

Of special note to parents … I wouldn’t let my children play around downstairs unless you have looked it over pretty well. I understand it’s an area for children to play and learn and that it wouldn’t be spotless, but there is a huge cleanliness issue going on down there. All the clothes and shoes need to see a washer immediately! The toys and such need to be thrown into a sink full of soapy bleach water. The phone at the McDonald’s station was just plain nasty … for one it’s broken and should be thrown away … after picking it up though … ew … you can tell it hasn’t even been wiped off in forever. The dispensers with the hand sanitizer in them were empty too.

I so dislike having to give this a not so great review. We love taking our boys out and about to places like this that having a potential for such learning. Finding local places is an extra plus. So anytime I can find a local place that if offering something like this we love to go and I so wanted to be able to brag about our local wonders!

I believe in second chances though, so ... here's hoping we just caught the museum at a bad time and we have a better experience with the next workshop!

Apples Apples Everywhere

Apples ... everybody (at some point) does a study on apples. If you Google for a study on apples you'll have an endless supply of information, worksheets, activities, ideas ... and on and on it goes.

Well, we too did a unit on apples ... and this isn't our first time. : )  Apple units are always fun to repeat. Well ... not so much repeat as in we study the same thing over & over again. There are a few things that you have to go over each time, but with apples ... there is just so many things you can do ... you just have to choose a few to do each time. If you didn't just choose a few you'd spend a month on apples easy!

One of our wonderful libraries has a homeschool program that meets every other week & they recently did a apple theme too. They had apple tasting, learned how apple trees were planted & how they crossed the different apples to make a new kind of apple, colored apples, went over the seasons of an apple tree, apple nutrition, what foods are made from apples, and made apple pots (pictures below - these are little flower pots that have been painted to look like apples). This library has an awesome homeschool program leader! She comes up with some great ideas & my boys just love going to the homeschool program!

Our homeschool group also got into the apple spirit of things and went on a field trip to an orchard.

We went to Fuhrmann Orchards in Wheelersburg, Ohio. Paul & Leanne Fuhrmann are the owers & Leanne was our guide for the day. She was a really great guide. She had a book about apple trees that she used as a visual while telling our kids about what apple trees need to grow, went over how they pick apples (did you know that once an apple hits the ground they leave it?), showed us the basket they use to collect apples & how you load & unload it, explained what happens to the apples once they are dropped, and went over the different kinds of apples they grow & what the differences there were between the apples. It was educational even to me & I found oh so interesting!

Look at the faces of those kids. You can just see how they are listening and wanting to learn!!! : )

After that we took a tour of the packaging part of the operation. They sink those large crates full of apples into water & the apples float up out of the crate ... who would have thought of that ... well someone apparently did ... I wouldn't have. I'd just have apples that looked like they've been in a fight!  

Here we are being told how the apples are cleaned, sorted, and packaged. Look at those faces again ... don't you love it when you can just see their brains soaking up all that info!?! : )

 Stacked crates full of apples - this is inside a giant cooler - so the apples will keep ... oh my it smelled soooo good in there!!!

At the end of our tour they gave the kids a sticker (and a few of us adults were lucky enough to get one too!), coloring book, a pumpkin, and an apple of their choice. Sammy seems to think he's going to keep his pumpkin forever ... I'm planning on having them use the smaller pumpkin for our Pumpkin Seed Count online project! Then they can carve them or paint them or draw on them ... however they want to decorate their pumpkins.

Nana went with us on the field trip too ... she loves this sort of thing ... and before leaving she bought 3 bags of apples, a gallon of apple cider, and one of those apple cider slushies. I would recommend the apple cider slushy to everyone! I didn't think I'd care for it, but it was really good!

Some more random pics of our field trip ... we had planned on doing a corn maze too, but the weather wasn't on our side (it was rainy & cold) but still well worth the trip. 

Here my hubby is talking to Paul (owner) about selling their apples & fruit to Wal-mart

I'm glad we finally got to go to the orchard that is close to us! We go to one that is much further away. I knew there was one around here, but until now I had no idea what the name was or how to get there. We'll be visiting the Fuhrmann Orchard again!

As far as I know they don't have a website, but you can find them on Facebook by clicking here.