Acquara Independent School

I love this website, Stag Beetle Power. We have benefited several times from her (a homeschool mom’s) free and low cost events list she does every month. I am also always amazed at how far and wide she travels with her kid. Car people, I know. I keep thinking that I’m going to call her up and see if we can hitch a ride. Anyway, today we went to one of her events on her list, “BugFest” at Tualatin Hills Nature Center, and it was a lot of fun. Aaron called it “the bug convention” which made me think of little bugs lining up to check in at the Doubletree. And in fact, one of the buildings was called, “Fly Inn.”

Anyway, this is another example of how Portland homeschools your kids for you, you just have to get them out and about. I know nothing of bugs and have very little interest in them. But Aaron especially likes them a lot. And so having them talk to volunteers/park workers who actually know their shit and are enthusiastic about what they are doing is so much better than anything I could teach them here. Where I would just go around and sort of look at stuff, both kids get into active, interesting and relevant conversations with these people. They have these entire conversations that just blow me away. They share what they know, ask good questions, repeat and apply what they just learned. I don’t have to do a thing, I just basically show up.

I remember once trying to help Nik find things for the older kids to do in Tennessee and we found a small science museum. I thought this was a great find. But K and R totally groaned and nixed the idea. The only time they had been there was on school field trips, and so they associated it with school and learning and boredom. They wanted to go see movies and run around at the mall and stuff. I don’t know, maybe the place was totally lame…but I just couldn’t help but think that if it hadn’t have been killed by school, they would just naturally enjoy a place like that. I remember going to different museums and events for school. It was cool to get away from the school routine, but other than that, it was just a bunch of boring management and stifling rules and listening to a boring tour guide or whatever. When you have no control over exploring, it becomes very not fun to explore these places. I like that my kids still have that joy of discovering everything around them. It makes it fun for me, to even spend a day looking at bugs. I’m even giving us a PE credit for this one, because once we get off the max, we have to walk a mile through the forest to get to the interpretive center, and then a mile back. It is a nice, shady nature walk, though.

Filed under: Art, Fieldtrips, Language Arts, Music, Physical Education, Science, Social Skills | Tagged: Bugfest |