Aliza's Field Trip...

***Warning: This post has excessive pictures of Aliza, so if you are NOT wanting to read a post about our field trip and see lots of pictures of my beautiful daughter, you might just want to move on!

Let's start out with this: Is she cute or what??

I just have to say that the field trip yesterday was one of the coolest I've ever been on, and I have been on A LOT of field trips! Our field trip guide at the University was so good with the kids and did a great job of educating them and explaining, and I am not sure they even knew they were learning! We started out doing an experiment to determine how fast water moves in different areas: waterfall, stream, wetlands and a pond, and how much oxygen was in the water. Aliza had to gather water from the stream and put in a tablet and shake really hard until it was dissolved, and the color of the water told the oxygen levels.

See how fast she is shaking that tube!?
The other children are measuring how fast the stream is moving. Then we went back to the room and each of the 4 groups shared their data and they recorded the info in their science journals.

Next we saw the sky show in the sky theater. It was dark, therefore, no pictures...awwww! But that was one of Aliza's favorite parts. She loved to see the constellations and learning about seasons, weather and water cycles on the big planetarium ceiling. We got dizzy when the stars moved all around to show that the North Star always stays in the same place!

We ate lunch and then learned how to be archaeologists and how they dig on a grid. They learned how important it is to document what they found and where it was found, then they got to go on their own dig:

Stay in your own grid and always kneel down so you don't accidentally step on an artifact and break it!

Look what I found!!

When your partner is digging, watch her and make sure you document properly!

We also took a couple nature walks and documented the "wildlife" (bronze statues) that we found. But the kids all loved this mossing pond thing where several turtles sat in the middle, probably terrified of the chaos around them! Look close on the rocks and you can see the cute turtles! I felt very lucky that we did not have one child fall/get pushed in.

Here is Aliza's class:

But Believe it or not, Aliza's very favorite part of the whole day was going into what she called the "toy room" where there were all sort of fun educational things...like math puzzles and this:

We just might have a little weather girl on our hands! She also loved standing behind the camera and saying: "In 5, 4, 3 ,2 1" and then pointing at the child doing the weather, cuing them to start. On the map she knew right where Texas and Utah were, and what the weather was!

It was a very fun trip and Aliza, Ben and Carter, along with their mom's, got to ride home with me! After a little difficulty determining if we were heading north or south (no mountains) we stopped for slushies and asked directions back to 380. When we got back to the school, the rest of the kids were all outside releasing their red balloons filled with anti-drug messages into the windy sky. (It is red-ribbon week.) Aliza is convinced that her balloon is going to be found in Australia. There was a pretty good south wind going, but I think they will be lucky to make it to Dallas. And Dallas could use some pretty strong anti-drug messages! I'm sure that about 1/2 of the balloons got trapped in the greenbelt behind our house...those trees in the picture go all the way down the creek.

It was cool to see the sky filled with balloons.

We had fun at Pack Meeting, and Tyler had fun at YM. Unfortunately, Parker is not loving being there so much anymore because by just after 7 it is dark and I won't let him run around outside the church! I need to figure out something else they can do while Ty is in YM so that they don't start hating to go. Any ideas?