Pirates and Whales

When we decided to take this journey into home schooling this year we did it with lots of concern about if doing this would make the kids miss out on social opportunities and having friends.  This is what you always hear as an argument against home schooling so of course we weren't going to take that lightly.  As we researched over the summer and made our decision, we heard more and more from families who do home school that social opportunities were not only possible while home schooling but in fact, with so much extra time, could become too much if not kept in check because there were countless opportunities out there.  It took awhile for us to find a group of people to do activities with but we have found one and we are so thrilled!

I wrote about our Valentine's Day party back in February.  With that same group of people, we went on our first group field trip this month and it was a huge hit!  We went to the Science Spectrum Museum in Lubbock for a day of pirates and whales.  All in all, about 70 people came with kids ranging in age from 1 year old to 17 years old and it was amazing.  We started out the day seeing a movie about Humpback Whales in the theater there.  The theater was unlike anything I have ever been too.  It was a dome shape which meant that not only could you see what was happening in front of you, it happened above you too which made it seem like you were actually there in some ways.  The kids loved it and we learned so much about whales which fit in perfectly with our study of the oceans.

After the movie we all ate lunch together which gave us an opportunity to meet some of the other families.  After lunch we had a private tour of the new exhibit at the Science Spectrum which is centered around buried treasure and pirates.  It was great to get some information from the tour and then we were able to walk around the exhibit and learn all about the treasures they had on display and about pirates.  There was a pirate ship for the kids to dress up and play on, a puppet show area for them, live animals to look at and all sorts of things.  It was so much fun!

 
After the pirate exhibit we were able to explore the rest of the museum which was awesome and it is definitely a place we will be going back to!