This week we had ‘THE’ day. The one day a year my children look forward to more than any other.
Once a year, the Monterey Bay Aquarium opens its doors to homeschoolers at no charge. This is a big deal as the tickets can really set you back and frankly we wouldn’t be able to go if it weren’t for the homeschool day. Getting tickets for those homeschool days is no mean feat! You are given a day and a time to log in and request a ticket and you must be patient. This year I sat in the virtual queue for more than two hours! The tickets go so quickly that if you miss it by even half an hour, you probably won’t get in. But this year we made it.
And on Monday we trekked off to the aquarium. There are so many great displays and exhibits there. This year they have a special exhibit with fish and animals from Baja California and the Sea of Cortez. I am kind of an aquarium connoisseur, given that I worked at the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences as a volunteer all the way through high school and on a drop in basis through my college years. I learned about life and working and (of course) fish from a fantastic self-proclaimed “fish janitor” named Lloyd Gomez who mentored me more than anyone else in my life and I miss him every day. The Sea of Cortez was Llyod’s favorite place to go collecting, and so walking through the exhibit and looking at the senorita fish and puffers was like a trip down memory lane for me.
But back to the Monterey Aquarium field trip. . . and their web cams that give you a virtual field trip.
My kids have learned to skip past the displays which don’t suit our worldview. They focus on the animals, and there are gobs and gobs of those.
In fact you can see a lot of the fishes in the Monterey Aquarium just by looking online!
There are educational videos, live Web CAMs of sea birds, and jellyfish and otters and, of course, fishes from the Sea of Cortez. If you live in a cold part of the country, this is a wonderful way to spend some science time with your children.
And here is our virtual gallery of our visit
Click the hearts on the pictures you really like so I can see your favorites!
[huge_it_gallery id=”5″]
Now, what is your favorite field trip to take with your kids?
Friday Funnies, Flops, and Fails Link Up
Our week had flops and funnies and fails as well, but the biggest adjective that describes our week is ‘fantastic’.
If you had a Funny or a Flop or a Fail in your homeschooling life this week please consider linking up here to share it with us.
Did you have a flop or a fail in your homeschool this week? Maybe something happened that was just too funny!
Share it here in my blog hop – let’s show all those homeschooling moms who think that homeschooling has to be that Pinterest-perfect activity ALL the time what homeschooling really looks like!
Homeschooling can be messy and there may be tears, and your laundry absolutely never, ever, gets done! But it still is the absolute best thing you have ever done and the best life you could possibly imagine for your kids and for you, right?!
Places I linked up this post
Drop by and read the posts of some great homeschooling families at this week’s Homeschool Highlights hosted by Kym @ Homeschool Coffee Break! And read through the great posts at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers’ Link Up as well! Another place to read great posts is the Homeschool Blog Link Up at the Homeschool Review Crew! I also linked up with the Mommy Monday Blog Hop!
14 Responses
it surprised me at how much it looks like Ripley’s Aquarium
I haven’t ever been there. I guess it is one to put on the bucket list! The Monterey Bay Aquarium is extra interesting because they do so much research there.
My kids love aquariums, but the closest one is like 3 hours away. We don’t go often, but we did travel to GA this year and took them to the GA aquarium and they LOVED it!
I have heard of the GA aquarium! I would love to visit it sometime. (I wanted to be a marine biologist until my husband convinced me physics was the place to be 🙂 )
What a great field trip. It sounds like a cliff hanger event to get the homeschool tickets. I am glad you got in this year.
Blessings, Dawn
Thank you Dawn! Yes it is always a cliff hanger – one year I forgot to get in line at the start and was a few minutes late to log in – there were only a handful of spots left. We were lucky this year!
What a great field trip!! My daughter and I both LOVE when we have a chance to visit the National Aquarium in Baltimore for a field trip. Our favorites are the dolphins and the jellyfish exhibit – talk about opposite ends of the excitement spectrum. lol The jellyfish are oddly mesmerizing and calming. I’m sure I wouldn’t feel the same way if there wasn’t any glass between me and them though. 😉 Thanks for linking up!
Those are my daughter’s favorites too! (only there aren’t any dolphins at this aquarium) You are right about watching jellyfish – it is so calming! Thanks for hosting!
Such a fun field trip! I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite but we did go to a buterfly conservatory this week and we were amazed at all the butterflies. Such pretty colors and varieties and my boys were thrilled when more than a few landed on them.
Oh, that sounds wonderful! I hope you got lots of pictures!
Oh how I wish we could visit this! It looks like such a beautiful aquarium. Thank you for sharing the information about the web cams. I just saved the link, so that we can take our own virtual field trip. 🙂
I wish you could visit it too! The gossip when it first opened was that a lot of Hewitt family money (from the Hewitt Packard Hewitt’s) went into it. Everything they do there is first class, top of the line.
I’m going to bookmark this for the online cams! What a great day you all had.
Yes, it was a perfect homeschooling day! I am glad you are going to try the online cams. They also have tons of free downloadable worksheets and science lessons, you just have to pick through them to find ones that will suit your family.