Field Trip: Topeka Symphony

Getting ready!

  We had another Thursday field trip this week.  The annual Topeka Symphony free school day concert!  We've been at least a couple other times and its been a treat each time!  Today they did "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky. 

The conductor did an awesome job of incorporating Viktor Hartmann's pictures that the piece of music was based on in a Power Point presentation. He also gave a brief synopsis of each picture.  The music was so good that Shorty sat still for quite a bit longer than I was expecting. :)
  The neatest part was the performance of Aaron Copeland's Our Town with a Power Point of pictures and video taken by local school children.

After a birthday celebration lunch with Ducky and Grandma, we took off for the Kansas Historical Society.  I had an obituary to look for for work and I bribed the kids with playtime if they were quiet, which worked except for hilarious giggles coming out of the back corner of the microfilm room.  One patron assured me that it didn't bother her :)  Then we were off to play! 

KSHS play area!

  I had to make a promise to go back soon and walk the trails!

Field Trip: Mahaffie Farm

  We were going to make it to Mahaffie Stage Coach Stop and Farm this spring, that's all there was to it.  I'd passed it too many times on the way to other places, my sweet cousin sent me a note highly recommending it, and then came the announcement about "homeschool days" and that settled it!  We registered and were ready to go!
  Mookie was rather blasé about the whole thing.  In fact, she's been in a little bit of a funk lately.  This was just the thing to get her out of it. Really, the whole family needed it.  It had been a crazy and stressful week and we needed a treat!  We grabbed Ducky and Grandma and headed out!
  When we arrived, we didn't stop in the little interpretive center at the main building.  Shorty was dying to "play!" so we were on the move.  The first thing we saw was an opportunity to plant corn - there were plenty of hands on activities for the kids.

  There was even a wheat planting demonstration with a horse drawn planter going on.  The big draw was the animals - baby pigs, sheep, goats.  My little farmer wanna be's were in heaven :)
  The next stop was the stage coach.  The kids' rides were free, but the adults had to buy tokens. We had debated on whether or not we should all ride, but I am sure glad we did!

The ride lasted over 5 minutes and thrilled young and old tremendously!
  The house that the Mahaffies had owned as a stage station was open.  In the basement they had cooking demonstrations going on.  The gals were cooking corn cakes on the wood stove and churning butter, both activities were ones that the kids could help with - and mine didn't have to be asked twice ;)

  The part they had the most fun with though were the old time outdoor games like Game of Graces and hitting the hoop.  Mookie excelled at the Game of Graces and was a pro.  What can I say, I think the kid was born 150 years too late.  In fact, she had so much fun, she smiled like she hasn't smiled in quite a while.

While the big kids played games, Shorty just wanted to run up the big hill...

King of the hill!!!

Of course, there were other things like grinding corn for chicken feed and then actually feeding the chickens!

Then we were tiredly and happily making our way out the door.  Posing with the Olathe boot, waving, "thanks for coming" (yep, that was Shorty).

Can you tell who I spent most of my time with?  Yep, the little guy.  Our unspoken deal is I will chase him and the older kids get to spend time at the things they want to.  Bubby is so meticulous, wanting to make sure he gets to see every. little. thing. on. the. map. and Mookie just wants to take her time at the hands on stuff.  When we get to take Ducky and Grandma along it makes it even more special because the older ones get to hang out with them for more one on one time while I ride herd on the little guy.
  We are definitely going back to Mahaffie someday.  While we were at Mahaffie we picked up this most awesome kids' passport (free) with places in the surrounding areas that you could gather stamps from.  Some of the places were ones we'd been to like Missouri Town and the Ernie Miller Nature center, but there were also so many more that now we need to go to!  Yay!

The One O'Clock Miracle (a review)

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   I LOVE a good read-aloud picture book.  My favorites are Dr. Seuss’ What Was I Scared Of? and Llama Llama Red Pajama, things you can really get into. Those books were what The One O’Clock Miracle by Alison Mitchell reminded me of.  The book is highly visual, and not just with the pictures, but with the strong descriptive words that are highlighted at times…

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With a pre-reader in my house who is very interested in words and what they say, this is a great way to draw attention to individual words.

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Of course, the most important thing about this book is its message.  The subtitle is “Trusting the Words of Jesus”.  How appropriate, that’s all we can do today, and it is such an important lesson to pass along to our kiddos.  We can’t see Jesus in the flesh, but we can see all of his promises in action!

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At the end of the book are Scripture references where you can find the original story of the One O’clock Miracle in the Bible, as well as the chapter and verse where the Bible tells us that we can believe in Him because of what we have heard.

  This is definitely a "keeper" of a book.  Thanks to Cross Focused Reviews for giving me a chance to review it.  The opinions in this blog are my own. :)

Field Trip Friday: Emporia

   I've been wanting to try the Emporia theme for a while.  Its about an hour down the road from us and just full of wonderful Kansas history!  Not to mention tons of free things to do.  Our first stop on this cool and breezy day was the Geology and Natural History museums on the lower level of Breunkelman Hall on the Emporia State campus.  Both are about the size of a large classroom, but would be great for enhancing a science lesson.  There are hundreds of species of animals in the natural history museum.  Not just adult specimens either, some have eggs, juvenile and adults represented.  Mookie's favorites were the little guys. 

Not quite the dioramas of the KU Natural history museum, but definitely worth a look.

I loved the geology museum!  Excellent fossils, florescing rocks, Native American artifacts, an exhibit on the zinc mines of SE Kansas, but it had one problem.  It was steaming hot!  It drove Mookie and Shorty out after only a short time.  I sure would like to go back and take more time in there.  Luckily Bubby got quality time in there, most of my time at these museums is riding herd on those not so interested.  Someday that will change, so I just have fun in the running around in the meantime. :)
  Our next stop was the David Traylor zoo.  It had a bunch of native species as well a few others. 

This zoo was not fantastic because of its selection of animals, but because it was absolutely beautifully landscaped and so cozy and up close with the animals it did have.  They even have a portion that is open at times for a drive though.  The kids are ready to go back again!
  Right across the road from the zoo is the Veterans' Day memorial. Did you know that Emporia was essentially the birthplace of Veterans' Day?  They had the traditional tank and helicopter to view....

with some excellent extras...

A Braille Pledge of Allegiance

And a Rainbow footbridge over the Cottonwood River

It was a great place to get out and stretch our legs a little more!
  We also went and tracked down some statues of famous Emporia personalities.  It is located right on the corner of the Lyon County fairgrounds, so we felt a little conspicuous taking pictures by all the traffic, but not too much ;)

The people represented were William Allen White, Preston Plumb (one of the founders of Emporia), a Native American chief, and Nathaniel Lyon (Lyon county is named for him and Emporia is the county seat).
  We took our packed lunch and sat by the train tracks to watch passing trains, to Shorty's delight.
  Our last stop was the Lyon County Historical Museum.  I had been dying to see its Civil War exhibit.  We walked in and Shorty started telling the staff about the trains he saw, to which the reply was "oh, you want to see the train?", and she led us to the train room.  And not just any train room, but one with a camera on the front with a screen on the wall so you could watch as the train followed the track, went through tunnels and you could even catch a glimpse of yourself on the big screen! Um, yeah, awesome!

To heck with mommy wanting to see the GAR button of Preston Plumb's in the Civil War room and read all the interesting placards.  Luckily I could see him in the train room playing at the Thomas the Tank Engine table from the Civil War room and bought my self some time.  Preston Plumb led the 11th Kansas (of which Burlingame's Company I was a part of) and I was so excited! The Civil War exhibit was also interactive and had a basket where you could chose a real soldier's name and find an artifact or mention of him in the room and then look up his name in a book.  The two older ones loved this.  Laura was excited because she got Plumb's name - we accused her of cheating ;)

Bubby looking for his soldier

The museum right now is really small, just one other room beside the train and Civil War exhibit rooms, but that will change after the first of the year.  They are moving to a building with 40,000 sq. ft. (where they have 4,000 sq. ft. now) and they are merging the research library with them too.  They are very excited about getting more of their fun stuff out, and I am too!  I'll make a trip back down for sure, the Gazette has some of neat sounding newspaper artifacts we want to check out too, as well as possibly his house - Red Rocks.
  The only thing we paid for today was the gas to get there and happy hour drinks at Sonic.  Not a bad deal at all :)