What a good time

On Friday we visited an aquarium. It is actually a few hours away but so worth the drive. Last post I talked about how I am trying not to add in too many things. I feel that what we have put in our schedule is quiet enough and though some things have great value I am trying not to just do something because of the opportunity but instead choose wisely what we pursue. So I did not know about this trip to the aquarium we are doing science but not animal science right now. However they were having a homeschool day and the price was right. I love this aquarium and had been twice but not yet with Lars. We decided to go with some friends (she was kind enough to drive) I was a little afraid he would want play around. I was also not sure it was the right time to take a day out of our current curriculum.

Boy was I wrong. He was completely interested, engaged, and excited about everything there. He especially loved the sharks. I had rented a movie on Amazon that was about sharks and downloaded it for him to watch before we went. That gave him some background knowledge and he went to town with it. There was no tuning out or quickly running from one display to another. No he enjoyed each thing examined them and digested so much of what we did. He is now very interested sharks and penguins. We are going to go to the library tomorrow and get some books on them. He was so interested that when we had walked through the whole thing he wanted to do it all again. Over and over he would come get me and tell me a fact that he learned. "Mom, mom did you know that the (insert the name of the fish) actually is born a female and later becomes a male?!" That was also a huge difference from past visits to places such as this. He wanted to know more and more about what he was seeing. He read each information plaque on what he was looking at. If there was someone who worked there he would ask very intelligent questions. I do not know if this is a result of homeschooling or just an age thing.

I am so glad that I grabbed this event and we went. Lars is not a lover of non-fiction now he is wanting to read anything about sharks. I am going to jump on this and tweak our lessons to accommodate this new interest. I am not sure what that will look like or how it fits into the middle school science curriculum but we will put it in there. I think that it will at least fall into the categories of research, non-fiction writing, and general science. In general perhaps I do need to seriously consider add ins and how they can spark interest in learning. We will definitely be returning to this spot. We may even look at the year long pass. I am unable to drive after dark so I will have to find a way around that, but now that I know his love for it I think we can arrange something.