ALL ABOARD!

I've been reading a book by Rebecca Rupp called "Getting Started on Home Learning, How and Why to Teach Your Kids at Home". She is an unschooler and suggests that parents keep journals of what is going on in the homeschool in order to clearly see what is being learned. I've enjoyed reading samples of her journal so I think I'll try to be more detailed in our homeschool journey through my blog.



Wednesday was a lovely day, despite being a bit cloudy, so we decided to get out of the house. Ray invited our friends Tina and Shawn to go on our little outing with us. And of course Trent tagged along. Nehemiah was at school.



So we started out by driving up to the Carrollton Transit Center to catch the bus downtown. We rode together in the back of the bus...all 9 of us. Isaiah pointed out that this must be what it's like in an RV, except there would be beds, a kitchen, a couch, etc. How observant! (It was kinda hard to imagine an RV while we are looking at rows of occupied seats.) When we arrived downtown we caught the DART train to Plano. Here's a picture of the kids on the train.

When we got off in Plano, we were all starved. We saw a small burger joint across the street called "Ye Ole Butcher Shop" so we headed over. The kids and Trent waited outside at the outdoor picnic table, while Ray and I went in to order. There were some Plano officers inside the restaurant who had just finished eating and as they walked out, they stopped by to talk with my kids and give them some "Jr Officer" stickers. Seth has his hand over his sticker and Samara's head is blocking Isaiah's.
We took the food back across the street to the park and had a lovely picnic. The hamburger was delicious. The kids played for almost an hour at the park. Here's a picture of Samara, Malachi, and Seth sitting on a large horse that was between the train station and the playground.


Isaiah wanted to take a picture by himself on the horse. He amazed me at how he can use his body to imitate anything he wants to. Doesn't he look like he's racing that horse?
We also went to the Interurban Railway Museum that is located near the playground. It's a small museum that's housed in a building that served as a primary stop on the Texas Electric Railway that ran from Denison to Dallas beginning in 1908. It stopped running in 1948. We were the only guests and the guides were excited to have us. They gave us an individual tour. First we looked at the model train exhibit. The kids were facinated with the small scale of everything there. Seth loved the pond with the man fishing. Isaiah wanted to know if the "water" in the model was made of glass. Malachi spotted a model man lying on his back in the grass looking up at the sky. This was something that even our guide had never noticed before. Then we moved on to another model train exhibit that had actual moving trains. The trains had lights on them and the windmill was turning. We watched this for a while as the kids asked more questions and pointed out their favorite parts. Then we moved on to a life size model of an engineer and it had sound, you could hear the engineer talking but he didn't move. Then the guide enlisted the help of the kids to press the buttons to light up a large replica of a train motor. The guide explained how it worked. Then he allowed us to make our own electricity by turning a crank that provided electricity to a light bulb. We talked about what it would be like if we had to stand around and turn that crank everytime we turned on a light at home. We also held some railroad ties and talked about what a big nail it has to be in order to hold down the rails. Finally, the guide took us outside to tour a real train that used to stop at this railroad station. We learned that the tracks went through a lot of countryside since Dallas wasn't near as built up at that time. The front of the train had a "cowpusher" on it, that removed anything off the tracks that might be in the way. The back of the train was a mail sorting and delivery area used by the United States Post Office. The front of the train was used for passengers. Above the passenger seats were several antique ads. The guide asked the kids to see if they could recognize them. Malachi recognized "Heinz" as ketchup, even though the ad was for Heinz vinegar. Each of the kids took turns sitting in the engineer's seat. Samara climbed on one of the antique passenger seats that were roped off and not to be sat on. She didn't understand why she couldn't sit on it. It looked similar to the seat she sat on while on the DART train! Malachi was laughing when we learned that the bathroom on the train had no holding tank. When one flushed it, the toilet opened up and dropped the waste on the tracks!

We thanked the guide for our tour and headed off to catch our train ride home. We were all tired by the time we boarded the bus and every one of us dozed off before we arrived home.