Elementary Adventures

The hands-on approach to learning is one of the ways Trilogy is different from traditional schools. The students often use games or other manipulatives to learn. In math, the "100 boards" are a fun way for the students to learn. During younger elementary thematics, the World rug helps the students locate the continents. Make sure to ask your child to sing the "Continents" song. 

 

There are many games and activities for the children to participate in throughout the classrooms as well as time and areas for the children to play freely. On this particular day, the children played dress-up and attended a tea party!

 



Biomes

This year in thematics, we studied American History. Next year, the focus will be on biomes. This will include the plants, animals, and climate from various regions around the world. The children will learn about deserts, oceans, rain forests, the arctic, and more. Already, plans are being made for many exciting field trips.

We have also been brainstorming classroom decorating ideas, since the class decor always reflects what we are studying.

Here is a picture of the igloo in the younger elementary classroom, six years ago, to give you an idea of the types of transformations our classrooms undergo.

The Wild Wild West

Today was "Cowboy Day" in the Trilogy elementary school. Many of the children dressed in cowboy hats, plaid shirts, and boots,



and they all had cowboy bandanas that they had colored yesterday afternoon.

















Our lunch-time reading was the first chapter of The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy



and we watched about half of the movie, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

This was the part of the movie that the children seemed to enjoy the most:




There was a special guest this afternoon, the amazingly talented Brinson Harris, who is a professional rodeo clown. He told us about his ancestors, who were real cowboys, and demonstrated rope and whip tricks.



The very impressive Texas Skip:



Here are some scenes from our cowboy day:



If you would like to order a DVD of Brinson and his father, find out where they are preforming next, or book them for a rodeo, they can be found at http://www.hollywoodandboogerhead.net/

Dudley Farm

Wednesday, we took the children on a field trip to Dudley Farm near Newberry.



This Florida state park, demonstrates what farm life was like from the 1850's through the 1940's (through 3 generations of the Dudley family).

We were fortunate enough to arrive on a day when there was a quilting bee going on at the visitors center. Costumed ladies demonstrated quilting and how to a crochet rug out of an old T-shirt cut into strips.







The children really enjoyed seeing all the livestock.















It turns out that we brought with us the perfect resource people. At the tobacco barn, Linda explained to us about what it was like growing up on a farm where tobacco was grown.





The sorghum mill:




It was a bit hard to see the vats for boiling down the syrup, because they were covered with trays of onion sets.



The general store:









Pumping water was fun!





The kitchen house:







The outhouse:


Laundry is fun with a wringer and wash tub, when it's not a daily chore.









The main house:















The spring house, used for cold storage:







The park service maintains beautiful flower beds in front of the house.







The blacksmith:





The gift shop:


It was a very warm day, so we ate lunch inside the screened-in back porch of the visitor's center.



Some of the children managed to stay "cool" despite the temperature,



but others...we're just not so sure about.




I would really like to thank this particular student, who helped me with the photography. We had an extra camera donated for the trip, so while I used the borrowed camera, she used my camera and did a fantastic job.