Fieldtrips, Darts, and Rocks - Just Another Week in Homeschool Land

We started our week off with a bang!  We headed to Birmingham for a field trip with some of our friends.  We were all meeting up at 7:30 a.m. so that we could caravan and carpool up to Birmingham.  Our first tour was scheduled to begin at 9:00 and although the trip usually only takes about an hour, we wanted to make sure that we had plenty of time.  So anyway, 7:30!  Wow!  Seriously - wow!  We were driving to meet everyone and the traffic was pretty bad and one of mine said from the back seat, "Why are there so many cars on the road this early?"  Bahahaha.  I was like, "Well, honey, people have to go to school and to work."   Ha!  You know you're a homeschooler when you have to be somewhere at 7:30 and that just seems really really early!  So back to the fieldtrips.  We started off with a tour of Bud's Best Cookies.  It was a really neat tour.  We all got to ride on a little train around the factory and the leader was fantastic.  He did a great job of pointing out how every single job at the factory was important and that the cookies couldn't get made, packaged, shipped, delivered, and sold if every single person didn't do his/her job.  They wouldn't allow any pictures inside the factory, but here we are outside by the sign!

We headed straight from Bud's Best Cookies over to Golden Flake Potato Chip Factory.  This was also really cool and informative.  I have never seen so many potatoes and potato chips in one place!  Golden Flake did allow pictures inside!  *Sidenote*  Blogger is acting some kind of funky for me and it is incredibly difficult to arrange my pictures.  I apologize for the very chaotic arrangement!



The lady giving our tour said, "Moms - You know how when you boil potatoes you get that white milky liquid.  We do too.  Just a lot more."  Um, I'd say so.



After we left Golden Flake we went to a park for a picnic and playtime p.e.  They had such a great time running around and playing freeze tag!

Okay, so that was all on Monday!  The rest of the week was spent at home doing our regular school stuff.  However, I heard loud cheers, followed by the name of a state and it's capital coming from the playroom one afternoon.  Apparently, my boys developed a new geography game.  It's called "Nerf Geography."  It's really simple, actually.  You take your Nerf gun and aim it at the wall map of the United States.  You have to name the state (and it's capital) that your dart lands on!  Boys will be boys!

Tuesday night, my stepmother came to watch little man play baseball.  She came bearing gifts.  Okay, so maybe she was cleaning out her attic and found some old stuff of my dad's that she wanted to get rid of.  Same difference - at least to my kiddos!  She brought rock and mineral samples from our state.  The boys could not wait to open the box and see.  I made them wait until the next morning!  It even came with a map of Alabama telling where each of the rocks and minerals were found within our state.  They were so excited.  I think I see a salt dough map in our near future!

  



On a side note, I finally heard back from the speech and hearing people about getting an evaluation for Dalton.  He used to receive speech therapy when he was younger, but has since "tested out."  However, I am just not convinced that his speech is that of a normal 8 year old, so I called about getting him reevaluated.  Apparently, this is more difficult than I had expected.  Anyway, finally heard back and I will have to pay $93.00 for the evaluation and then if he needs therapy they will let me know the cost of those services. 

Don't forget to head over to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and see what everybody else has been up to this week!