Thursday, January 8, 2015

Hands On Learning

My friend, Mandi, is so good for me. She reminds me that learning - the BEST kind of learning - is not found in books. I try to integrate a good combination of books and hands-on learning, but sometimes get stuck in the icky mire of record keeping and hour logging. Today, we busted out! We took off to the Discovery Center for a day of hands-on learning, and the kids had a blast!




We played on a bed of nails, and the kids tried to see the differences of laying on them, sitting on them, and standing on them (not really sure if this was a good idea, but nobody got on to us!) Castle's favorite thing was putting the scarves in the wind tunnel and catching them when they came flying out - he didn't want to leave! Then dancing in front of the heat sensing screen was pretty fun, too. The kids had been at a water exhibit just before this, and some had gotten pretty wet. So when they were all blue (cold) in some areas, it was pretty funny! We asked our buddy Cooper what he'd been eating to turn his gut blue! ;)

Chloe had a voice lesson today, so she, Cas and I had to take off and leave the boys with Mandi. I figured they would go through the whole place before we got back, but I was wrong - they stayed in the same room the entire time...the kapla block room, which is where I left them and had already spent over a half hour! The time was well spent, however. They made an amazing creation - a castle complete with bridge and wall.

"Birds-eye view"


Fortified Bridge

An "inpenetrable wall"
The builders

They worked for over 2 hours and used approximately 2,500 kapla blocks. I could sit down, write a synopsis of what skills they used, what subjects were covered, and what lessons were learned...but I'd rather just show off their creation and say, "That is awesome, guys. Great job!" Yep, school's been more than covered today! :)

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