Jill’s Blog

random rants and raves

August 29, 2007 from 10-3, the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin will be having their homeschool day. That means that general admission is free to homeschooling families, and there are discounted rates on the movies. We’re definitely going to try to make it over there sometime this year.

Even though it’s not part of the official La Salle Odyssey exhibition, the first floor of the museum is dedicated to the exploration of Texas, especially encounters between European explorers and their interactions with the native Texan tribes. It also houses many of the artifacts from La Belle.

You can download a museum guide for more information. If you’re visiting as a field trip, you’ll want to visit the education part of the museum’s site and download the cards that go along with the exhibits.

If you’re going to Austin, there are lots of places to visit, in addition to the Texas History Museum— so many that I’ll have to dedicate a complete post to that subject later on. For now, I’ll just say that the museum does have a cafe, and it seems to have a pretty decent assortment of choices. Since our trip to the museum is probably just going to be a day trip, we’ll probably just eat there. But look for my future post on Austin as a multi-day field trip.

The Calhoun County Museum is in Port Lavaca, Texas. The museum is open Tuesday and Wednesday 10:30-4:30; Thursday and Friday 10:30-5:00; and Saturday 10:00-3:00. The address is 301 S. Ann.

The museum looks like it’s pretty small, so we will most likely combine this with one of the other museums in the area— probably the Texana Museum in Edna, Texas. The museum’s website does have some educational materials on it, including a vocabulary list and a timeline. The museum has other exhibits, covering Matagorda Island, the Karankawa Indians and a couple more items that may be of interest in our studies.

It’s likely this trip will also include some birding, since Matagorda Island is a great place for seeing some rare birds. We’ll also check out Indianola, which had the La Salle monument. We may also see Half Moon Reef lighthouse, which has been moved onshore and is no longer in use.

This will probably be a picnic day, since I haven’t been able to find any really interesting, appealing places to eat. There is a Pizza Hut and a Sonic, so we won’t starve Maybe we’ll take a picnic to Matagorda Island or if we go to the Texana museum, we could have lunch at Lake Texana.

I don’t know if this is going to be our first field trip, or not, but it’s the one I’ve started researching, so far. The Museum of the Coastal Mainland is located in Victoria, Texas. This is about two hours from NW Houston.

Here are the basics on the museum:

Open: Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Cost: Adults $3.50; Children $2; under 2 free

The La Salle portion of the museum consists primarily of an exhibit about Fort St. Louis and 7 cannons brought from France by La Salle (my 2 year old’s favorite part of the Alamo was the cannons, so this should be right up his alley). There are also some artifacts recovered from La Salle’s ship La Belle.

The museum website contains numerous learning activities, as well as a page which lists extra resources for learning more. Most of the additional resources for kids are concentrated on archaeology, but it’s still a start.

I don’t really expect us to spend a whole day at the museum. Generally, my kids are only happy in one location for a couple of hours. But it seems a shame to travel four hours roundtrip for two hours at a location. So, I’m looking into other things to do in Victoria.

The forerunner is the Texas Zoo for two reasons. 1) We have a zoo membership at the Houston Zoo that will get us in to the Texas Zoo for free. 2) It’s a zoo, and my kids (like most kids) love zoos.

Other possibilities are The Children’s Discover Museum, a walking tour of Victoria’s historic homes, McNamara House and the Nave museum.

We’ll be eating lunch there, which provides even more choices. The most economical choice is packing a picnic lunch. There are a couple of nice places where we could go to have a picnic. One is Riverside Park. If we go to the zoo, that would be really convenient since the Zoo is located in Riverside Park. Of course, if we decide not to pack a lunch but still want to picnic, we could stop at Fossati’s delicatessan, the oldest deli in Texas (in operation since 1882; at its current location since 1895; still operated by the Fossati family). If the weather prohibits a picnic, there are many restaurants in Victoria. If we go that route, I’m leaning towards Furr’s. It may not be the most historical choice, but it has a buffet, and I’m almost assured that my somewhat hard to please when it comes to culinary matters children will find something that they will actually eat. Of course, we might have to stop into the Rosebud Fountain for a milkshake before heading home.

Other Victoria attractions:

The Old Mill
De Leon Plaza

Links about Victoria’s history:

City of Victoria
The Handbook of Texas Online
Texas Escapes

Okay, I’m about to start a new little series here. I’m in the process of working on field trips for my kids’ homeschooling for the year. I’m planning to teach Texas History through field trips. At first, I though how am I going to cover the entire history of Texas this year? After all, we don’t live in Rhode Island. It’s a LONG way from here to El Paso. And then it occurred to me. A) I don’t have to cover ALL of Texas History. B) I certainly don’t have to cover it this year.

So, this year I’m planning to concentrate on 7 museum exhibits dedicated to the explorations of La Salle. These museums are Museum of the Coastal Bend in Victoria, Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History in Corpus Christi (naturally), Texana Museum in Edna, Matagorda County Museum in Bay City, La Petite Belle in Palacious, Calhoun County Museum in Port La Vaca, and The Texas Maritime Museum in Rockport.

We’re going to do basically one per month. My husband may join us for a few trips, but many of them will be day trips with my Mom (Corpus Christi is the farthest museum at 3.5 hours, so a day trip is doable). Anyway, I’ve decided to report my planning here— you know admission fees, hours, where to eat lunch, etc. So, if you’re interested in homeschooling, or Texas History or just are curious to see where we eat lunch, check back often.

This You Tube video is making the rounds on some of my homeschool lists. It shows the weaknesses of some math curriculae being used in Washington.

Now, I agree that some of what is being taught in those curriculae is pretty goofy. BUT I taught special education, and the ideas taught in Everyday Math would have been PERFECT for my students. They could have used more instruction in calculators, as they really had learning difficulties that made memorizing times tables and learning long division practically impossible.

Obviously, I think that the average student should be able to learn to multiply and divide. But I think Everyday Math could have its place.

Perhaps someone can explain to me WHY this happens…

If you try this at home, let me know if it works. I’m planning to try it tomorrow.

I know my website recently has been a bit heavy on You Tube content, but really wouldn’t you rather watch one of these videos than listen to a lot of my drivel? I think this video is great to demonstrate that yes, Physics really does have real-world applications. If you’ve got a child who loves martial arts, as well— so much the better. Plus, it’s just plain cool to see how far these guys can jump.

If you haven’t ever seen Animal School, you really must take a look at it. It was originally posted on Raising Small Soul’s website, but I’m posting it here from You Tube. If you enjoy it, please do stop by Raising Small Soul’s website for more great information.

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is that my children get to be children. They don’t have to enter the ranks of teens at the age of 8. As you get older, it’s easy to look at today’s ten year olds and think, they act much older than ten year olds did in my day. It’s also easy to dismiss that and think that surely you must be imagining things. But in a recent USA Today article, experts are saying the same thing: 10 IS the new 13.

To me, that’s a scary thought. Corporations encourage the attitude, but really the responsibility for keeping kids kids falls with the parents. I remember years ago there was an episode of Full House where the twins were going away to kindergarten, and the Mom was having a hard time letting go. I was so struck by the quote, “Well, they have to grow up some time”. At five? Are you kidding me?!?

So, what do you think? What, if anything, should parents do to preserve their children’s childhoods? And does it really matter?

I hope everyone’s having a good Thanksgiving Weekend. I just wanted to take a moment to recommend a free homeschooling book about the humorous side of homeschooling. You can see the author’s YouTube preview below. It turns out there are quite a few interesting YouTube videos about or by homeschoolers.

I haven’t been writing much on any of my blogs right now because I’m busy putting up a brand new site. It’s a wiki on homeschooling. A wiki, in case you don’t know, is a community based website. Basically, that means that anyone can edit it and add content. The new site is called knowhomeschooing.com. So, take a peek over there and tell me what you think. There’s more information being added every day.

There’s an excellent article on homeschool marketplace about the different methods of homeschooling. It’s part of their series on choosing homeschooling materials. We definitely fall into the eclectic homeschooling category. If it’s a good teaching curriculum, process, method, idea, I want to try to use it. Sometimes I find that something that’s a great idea doesn’t really work for us, but I have a hard time letting go of it because I think it OUGHT to work for us because it’s clearly a great idea! Anyway, I thought some of you might find the article interesting and helpful, so I’m passing it along.