Chichen Itza

On our last full day in Mexico, we traveled by bus to Chichen Itza...
(the kids in front of "El Castillo")

I have to say that it was amazing to see. You truly are just in awe of this civilization that established this city around 1,000 years ago.

Here is a shot of one of the hoops from the ball court...
another part of the ball court....
In the information about the ball court that I linked to above, it mentions how sound travels through the court. Our tour group tried it.... and it works. Simply amazing.

Here's Alex in front of something (perhaps a time where a shallow depth of field was not a good idea :-) ....
The observatory....
(the information above references that you can go into most of the ruins.... this is no longer true)

The nunnery...
Aren't the carvings amazing?

The backside of the ball court....
The temple of the warriors (back) and the snake on El Castillo (front right)....
The top of El Castillo....
El Castillo was pretty amazing itself. Did you know that it has exactly 365 steps? 91 on each side and one more into the doorway at the top.

Also.... if you clap in front of the pyramid...

the echo comes back as a birdlike noise. Alex was obsessed with this and tried it a bunch of times.

The place was absolutely incredible. I just wish that we hadn't been so hot and tired so we could have seen more of it. Perhaps being back here in Chicago has turned me into a heat wimp! :-)

Oh... before we left for the trip I had checked out a bunch of books about the Mayas from the library. I had intended to read them together for school.... but we ran out of time. Alex ended up reading most of them himself at bedtime so he was well prepped for the trip. Also, we were on the upgraded tour so our bus had tv screens.... on the way to the site they showed us a National Geographic special about the Mayas which was great.... it wasn't specifically about Chichen Itza but it had lots of good background information. Alex used his spending money to purchase a book about the Mayas and read it cover to cover in a couple of days. It was a comic book style book.... I'll have to look through it myself.

Educational Cancun?

You know.... I honestly wasn't expecting much in way of educational value out of our trip to Cancun. I thought of it more as a spring break beach destination rather than a place with any substance or depth. We had studied about Mexico in general before the trip... but to me Cancun was more beach town rather than real Mexico. However, I was pleasantly surprised!

First of all... because it is a very touristy area, most of the people you come in contact with do speak English. This took the pressure of us to speak Spanish to survive.... but rather to have fun and explore the language. Most people there spoke to us first in English but Alex would generally answer in Spanish if he could... the person he was speaking to would usually smile and then gently lead him and Clara through some basic conversation in Spanish (name, age, etc.). It was fun for them without being frustrating.

Second... even though we were at a resort, there was quite a bit of wildlife about.... birds, iguanas and coati mundi.

Third.... I was pleasantly surprised by our outing to Xcaret (it was included in our travel package). I honestly was expecting it to be cheesy but it really wasn't.

Here are the kids on the Jungle Trail...
Winding our way through the park we ended up in their aquarium which was a nice small aquarium. One the features that the kids enjoyed were the magnifying glasses for you to look through at each of the tanks. There was also a touch tank inside.

Once we were back outside we found our favorite part of the park, the sea turtles...
We all fell in love with the babies... I personally could have stared at them all day :-)

And then we were amazed by the size of the adult turtles...

After lunch we decided to snorkel down the underground river...
That was cool... but not as cool as I had hoped. We all enjoyed it though and it was neat to see the rock formations.

After reaching the end of the river, we only had a little bit of time left for the kids to play on the beach (maybe 30 minutes) before we needed to get our stuff out of our locker and head to our bus. We missed so much of the park.... there was quite a bit more to do that we just didn't get to.

The most amazing educational part of our trip was by far the Mayan ruins.... but I'll save that for it's own post! :-)

Hola!

We're taking a little break from Story of the World right now to do a little mini unit on Mexico. Later this month we're taking a family trip to Cancun so we thought it would be fun to learn some things about Mexico before we went. Last year when we took a trip to Hawaii, I was really prepared and did a lot of research regarding our unit on Hawaii... this year, I'm not so organized. Thankfully I had some things on hand that are helping bring things together very quickly.

The key element? La Clase Divertida (specifically Level 1)....
I had bought this a couple of years ago at a homeschool conference. We worked our way through it for a while, but we moved back here to Chicago mid-year and Spanish got lost in the shuffle. The kids really enjoyed it but I just wasn't sure how to get back into it... so it sat in a cabinet for the past couple of years.

I decided to bring it out now because what is so fabulous about this program is that it is not just a foreign language program but it is a cultural program as well. This level is specifically about Mexico. Yesterday we watched the first language lesson which the kids really enjoyed (and seemed to enjoy it more now that they're a little older than they did when we tried it a couple of years ago). That lesson was followed with a puppet show segment on the story and meaning behind the elements on the Mexican flag. The kit includes all of the craft supplies for two kids, but since we had started this program a couple of years ago, we had used up the flag making supplies. I went online and found a coloring sheet to print out for them to color while they watched the story.

Here's Alex's flag...
and here is Clara's...
I'm excited to be using this program again! This time I'm able to really see its value as cultural study program as well as a foreign language program. I can't wait to do more! (and the kids can't wait either!)

it takes a village :-)

Today was one of those blissful homeschooling days.... a day where you sit back at the end of it and really realize just how lucky/blessed you are. We truly are. We no longer belong to any formal homeschooling group but we have this good solid circle of homeschooling friends that surrounds us. A group that gets along well... both parents and children. A group where each individual member is active in either coming with field trip ideas, organizing outings or teaching classes. There's no pressure to do it all... just opportunities available.

Today was the capper... but it had been a really good week. Tuesday was our last day of a science class series at a local museum. The older kids really truly loved the class and really had a great time together. Clara and her friend (the younger sister of one of Alex's friends from class) had a great time hanging out together each week during class time. They explored the museum, played the play area, collected sticks outside or sometimes just sat at their own table in the cafe and talked girl talk. All the while, her mom and I got to have some much needed adult conversation. It was good for everyone.

So... on to today. One of the families from our circle I mentioned earlier, invited us over for a science class. The dad had picked up a box of supplies from the Adler Planetarium and wanted to teach a class on space for the kids. How cool is that? The kids and I went over to their house this morning for the class. The kids all went off to the kitchen with the dad for the class while the moms hung out in the other room and chatted. It was wonderful!

The kids had such a great time and really seemed to learn a lot. Their favorite time of the class though was rocket time :-)

Here's Clara waiting to launch her rocket...
ready for liftoff...
The "class" ready for a group launch....
(the mom of the girl on the right didn't want her daughter's photo posted, I hated to crop her out since she was part of this group.... so I covered her with a cute little flower by Emily Merritt)

I love this series... just look at their expressions as the rockets go off (click on the photos to see them larger)...


After the class, the girls went inside the play and the boys stayed outside to continue launching film canisters into space!

A wonderful homeschooling day! :-)

I have more stuff to ramble on about.... but I'm tired and this post has taken me longer than it should have so I'll try to catch up next week!