HOME SCHOOL FIELD TRIP?

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One of the blessings of teaching your own children is that you can vary things from the typical "sitting at a desk in a classroom" style learning. Looking at a photo of a pond in a text book and admiring some artists illustrations of what some of the animals that live there look like is one thing, but having your teacher jump in the swamp in front of you and pull out a 20# Snapping Turtle is another thing completely.

Obviously we want the @little-peppers to be able to read, write, do math, and the rest of it, but we try to connect learning these skills to real life situations. The @little-peppers will often take care of our financial interactions to learn about money and math, and we use other real life situations to teach them real life skills.

Today, part of the learning experience was in the form of a trip to a local lake to learn more about the ecosystem there, and the animals that play different roles in it. Whether it was the Great Blue Heron hunting a meal or Largemouth Bass waiting for something to eat to flow downstream, we observed a lot of the food chain just waiting to happen.

Because of the amount of turtles that we saw, we admired some of the variety within the turtles. This young Red-Eared Slider has a beautiful shell and skin pattern.

This "Stinkpot" or Musk Turtle is a very different turtle, though it is still a turtle. These little guys almost look like tiny Snapping Turtles with smooth shells, but they mature to a much smaller size than Red-Eared Sliders or Snapping Turtles.

This larger Snapping Turtle was a male. We discussed some things about how turtles reproduce. Though turtles like this can be scary, they play a vital role in the ecosystem and often act like the "vultures of the pond," helping to clean up carrion by eating it.

Even tiny 2 year old @little-peppers got in on the action. You are never too young to learn, and knowledge is power. We believe that being a little closer to the world that we live in helps us to appreciate it on a different level than just admiring photos in a text book. Obviously we can't experience everything first hand or see it all for ourselves, but there are certainly some things that are within our reach.

Life is truly a miracle and we appreciate every moment of it, not wanting to take any of it for granted. Today was a big day for us for many reasons, and this was just a small part of it. @Papa-pepper will be sharing more about some of our other activities later.

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This amazing @little-peppers logo was generously provided by @rigaronib.