Art Car Museum and Discovery Green

Since we are now a homeschooling family, I promised my kids that we would have more outings and field trips to keep things fun. I hate to admit this, but I have a hard time giving them a day off from our regular school routine. The task master in me wants to keep plugging through our curriculum so we'll finsh. But that is silly... we will never really finish! I need to keep reminding myself that the goal is to learn every day and that there are many different ways to learn. Keeping our noses in our books all the time is not necessary. So here's what we did last Thursday:


We met my friend Joy and her kids at the Art Car Museum in the Heights! I was pleasantly surprised to find that admission was free! Here is my Emily with the crazy mosaic car parked in the front.


And here are Lily, Noah, and Emily on the crazy car bumper seat.

Of course my Lia very happy to pose with this BEAUTIFUL pink cadillac.

And the phantom car was "a little bit scary!"

The art car museum is pretty small. There were only 6 art cars to see, some artwork on the walls, a streaming video of the various art car parades, and finally, this crazy digital kaleidoscope displayed on 9 TVs stacked on top of one another. Yes, I think my kids liked this digital kaleidoscope the best because it made them "dizzy".

And the seashell car. It was hard to follow the "please don't touch the car" rule. But thank goodness I was allowed to take pictures this time!

So we were done with the museum in under 30 minutes and the kids wanted to play. We headed to Discovery Green next. I have only been on the highway side of the convention center so I didn't know anything about this area. Discovery Green is a large green space for outdoor concerts and for play. There were grassy hills for the kids to run on and sculptures they could explore. The kids loved this one here... they called it the crazy house and had a ball running in and out of it.

In addition to a great play ground, there is a huge fountain play area. We pretty much had the place to ourselves... The kids got to run around for over 2 hours which gave me some much needed time for girl talk with Joy. Thursday night is definetly the time to come out play! Discovery Green also has concerts in the park every Thursday night as well. A Zydeco band was setting up and we got to hear them play as we were leaving. The kids danced their way back to the car. Everyone had a great time.

Back to School Mass

Our homeschooling group hosted a beautiful Back to School Mass to celebrate the start of another school year. Father Tom called all the kids up to the alter for a special blessing and graciously posed for pictures. We had a great turn out!

After mass, there was a reception with a cupcake rosary. All the kids came together to say a decade of the rosary and sing Happy Birthday to Mary - the church recognizes her birthday as Sept 8. And then (of course) the kids ate the cupcakes and ran around like... kids do.

Museum of Fine Arts

While Daddy and David went to the Texas game, the girls got to hang out with Nana. We were able to have lunch with Grandpa and then we were all off to the Museum of Fine Arts for our girl outing.

After taking this picture of a beautiful stained glass window, I was informed I shouldn't take pictures... so this is all I got at the museum! However, we got to see an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and mummy which was really cool because we had just covered that chapter in our history book. Excellent timing!

Little Longhorns

The first Texas football game was last Saturday. My husband could not have been any happier. He took David to see Texas play Rice... Lia didn't get to go but she sure was excited to support the team! If you ask David, his favorite part about going to the game was the "best snow cone ever" he got to have during the third quarter. I heard it was rainbow flavored. Lucky kid.

More Science Experiments - Mixtures

I guess we can call this one, Will it Mix? These combos (like oil and water) certainly did not.

The layers that formed looked really cool.

W=Water, O=Oil, J=Juice, M=Milk, B=Butter

But if you add a litte soap (which has an oily part and a water part) it ends up mixing a lot better.

Story of the World - Cuneiform Carving

We are studying Ancient history using The Story of the World (Susan Wise Bauer). The activity book has all sorts of fun things to do... we chose to carve our own cuneiform messages into clay. Here is my little ancient Sumerian hard at work!
Can you de-code what she wrote?

More Lia Baptism Day Pics...

I love these pictures. August 17, 2008 was avery special day. I'm so glad Uncle Te Tee got to be there for it. We still LOVE her rose petal rosary and use it often!