Bat Caves!

Our final Planet Earth field trip! We finished studying caves a while ago, but just last weekend were able to do our field trip. This one was great fun because we not only got to go with friends, but most of our extended family went as well.
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This was on property that is owned by friends of David's parents. David explored these caves as a child. David's dad grew up just down the road from the property and spent his childhood exploring them as well. We did a lot of wading through creeks to get to our destinations!

The caves were long and narrow in some places!

Here we are after getting all the way through the first cave.

To say this was not a clean field trip would be a huge understatement.

Grace's OU headlamp.

Deciding where to go next...

Taking a roasted hot dog and s'more break!

The water cave...

It was a perfect day! We saw only a few bats, which was ok with me. We had so much fun exploring and experiencing REAL caves.

Fresh Water!

We are still wrapping up our Planet Earth studies. We wanted to wait until it was really warm to go to Turner Falls, a 70 foot natural water fall in the Arbuckle Mountains, to end our Fresh Water study. It was fun!

Mountains

We have been learning about mountains with our Planet Earth DVD. This week we wrapped up our research and papers with a trip with friends to the Wichita Mountains. We went to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. It was great! They have a museum there that we weren't even expecting, and we did a lot of exploring.

lunch on the lake.

We found a log beavers had chewed on.

Mountain exploration!

Checking out the museum.

Riley and Cole did the Five In A Row book "When I Was Young In the Mountains" by Cynthia Rylant to go along with our mountain study. In the book the little girl talks about hearing a bobwhite. At the museum they had a stuffed bobwhite and you could push a button and hear its call. Score!

The story takes place in the Appalachian Mountains, so we learned a lot about them. I got an idea from the Five In a Row message boards to make this cake, complete with tiny chocolate Appalachians. I don't think any of us will ever forget where the Appalachian Mountains are! We are moved by chocolate, we are.

We also made a mural of the mountains and animals that live there.

Good times!

Ice Worlds

We have finished up Ice Worlds from our Planet Earth DVDs. Garrett and Tyler ended up trailing off into an iceberg and shipwreck study. We went to the shipwreck exhibit at the Science museum.

We saw some great artifacts recovered from shipwreck sights.We got to play with the mechanical arm they use to retrieve items when they explore shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean.And we got to get inside the "hurricane tunnel." It simulated hurricane winds. It blew all of my kids' curly hair STRAIGHT!

We also learned a lot about different arctic animals and did some activities and crafts.

You can find the directions for these cute little guys here.

We even got a little ice and snow during our unit so we were able to look at some snowflakes through our tiny portable microscopes (these things are so great for nature walks) . Have you ever done that? Snowflakes are amazing! What a fun unit.