Out to the country for a field trip

I can't tell you enough how much I love the country. I feel so calm and peaceful as I drive among the fields and trees with houses scattered about here and there. Cows and horses oh my. One day , one day I too will be a country dweller.

Well today we went to the Mcdufie Enviromental Educational Center for a homeschool field trip. We started off the morning with a hike looking for bugs - 100 of them

These little(and big)guys :

plastic ones nailed about the trail. It was clever I thought. They recently had a controlled fire to clear the area so it was looking rather ragged. Thus the plastic bugs to get the kids excited. Ryan found 85 of them - they had a board where they kept tally of what they saw.

We also admired the pine trees growing around the area - Georgia is famous for their pines!


And where you have pine trees - you have pine cones ! Check out this one as big as Ryan's head!
Little miss Adeline enjoyed the pinecones as well, after all she is my little nature girl : )
Then we headed to the classroom and while Adeline looked at the fish
Ryan and his fellow homeschoolers learned about the Monarch butterfly life cycle. They made a cool project showing the cycle and then they headed outside
To make a butterfly
complete with proboscis!
Then all the little butterflies fluttered across the field trying to get each other with their proboscis's
After lunch - back to the classroom to learn about the frog life cycle!
Make a cool mask and bugs
and the fun part - catch the bugs with their tongue.
Last stop was to the discovery room - cool stuff there!

It was a great trip - just the right amount of learning, crafts and play. They kept the kids engaged and moving! The cool part you can go back anytime and fish as well ! I think we will be doing that soon.