Journey to Excellence

 This weeks letter at Blogging Through the Alphabet is "I". In a timely fashion, I is for "Ice Age". Ice Age is one of our favorite family movies. When we went on a Yellowstone trip a few years ago (60 hours in the car, for 9 days, through 7 states, with 4 kids, thank you very much ), I think we watched that movie at least 20 times. It's one of our favorite quotable movies. On July 13th, our family will be front and center, with our large box of popcorn and contraband candy, watching Ice Age 4: Continental Drift . And because there is no way to turn off my teacher brain (yes, I have tried), I thought I would do a unit study the week before the movie to prepare us for it. That way, when the characters are throwing around terms like "continental drift", "plate tectonics", and "Pangaea", my kids will have some background information, instead of just watching the movie to see what kind of trouble Sid the Sloth is in this time...

Do you live in Oklahoma, or near Oklahoma? Our state has a FREE educational opportunity through Oklahoma's Oil and Natural Gas (OERB). And I found out today that their kits and classes are available for home educators as well. The OERB site for Educators says: The OERB is committed to education in Oklahoma. Providing free training, materials, educational trips and in-class presentations, the OERB is helping Oklahoma teachers reach their students through entertaining activities and experiments. From safety at well sites, to seismic activity and energy conservation – OERB gives teachers the tools they need to teach students about the oil and natural gas industry. Petro Pete is the mascot. There are curricula for Little Bits (K-2), Fossils to Fuel (3-5), Petro Active (6-9), and CORE Energy (9-12). To receive the free educational materials, you must attend an all-day workshop. The workshop is free. There is a workshop in Yukon, Oklahoma, on July 19th, and one in Tuls...

Today is National Fossil Day . A couple of weeks ago we received a notification about a FREE event being held at the Tulsa Geoscience Center . I didn't know this place existed and am now so glad to know that it does! We signed up for an 11:00 a.m. time slot that would allow us to do as many fossil activities as we could in one hour. We met our good friends there, and were pleased to find out that there were only two other children signed up during our time slot with us. They are a new family in our Co-op, so it was nice that they were in our group. The group before us was quite large with lots of little ones. The geologist who led our group was very informative and great with the kids. He allowed them to touch so many fossils. They got to make a cast in plaster. They got to do fossil rubbings. I even had to get in on the action. Fun! They got to make fossil casts in magic clay. They saw how small they were compared to a dinosaur footprint. They got to dig ...