Lessons at Shedd Aquarium

Yesterday we (a friend with three girls and me with my two) took a much needed break and went to the Aquarium in Chicago for the day. Now I need a break from the break, but we did learn some valuable things:

• Do not attempt a field trip into Chicago during The Taste.
• The Taste of Chicago continues even when the fourth of July is over.
• It is not in any way easier, cheaper or more fun to take the train into Chicago.
• A single adult's definition of "not far" is not the same as that of an adult with small children in tow.
• By all means, pay the extra money for the ticket that gets you in to see everything, but be prepared for the child with Asperger's to be more enthralled with the fake trees and rocks than what you actually paid to see.
• Why do they always have to play the "Jaws" music in the shark exhibit and creep the little kids out?
• It is not wise to put an unsecured fruit cup in the backpack to save for later.
• Make sure you prepare the four-year-old for the fact that the dolphin show in Chicago is not in any way similar to the Shamu show in Orlando.

On a more positive note:

• We saw "Granddad", a lung fish that has been at the Shedd since it opened in 1933.

• The seahorses and frogs were really neat.
• We found almost all of the characters from "Nemo".
• The lizard and Kimodo Dragon exhibit was cool and M made a new friend. This little bearded lizard followed her back and forth around the cage and had her laughing quite hard.
  

"Sting"rays look like pancakes when they are sleeping.

The morray eel was bigger than me!

There are 36 species of dolphin and J wants to learn about them all.

We got to touch live sea stars and anemones!

Two four-year-olds and a plastic shark with a squeaker in it can entertain a whole train car of people with no effort whatsoever.

Planning next trip for after school starts!

Note: I refrained from posting alot of pictures here. I'm fairly certain that just about everyone has an album somewhere filled with the same blurry images from trying to take photos of cool things in fish tanks.

*originally posted July 7, 2006

The Non-confrontational Approach

I had the privilege of attending the ICHE homeschool convention this year, and now that my brain has had a week and a half to process the flood of information, I think I’m ready to share some of what I learned.

Some of the best sessions were with Dr. Jeff Myers from the Myers Institute for Communication & Leadership (http://www.myersinstitute.com/). He is a very engaging speaker and I think it would be well worth purchasing the recordings of his workshops. I believe that they can still be ordered from HERE. I particularly enjoyed his lecture on Discernment: Raising a “Thought-full” Child. Dr. Myers spoke about training your children to think with a Biblical worldview and gave several good tools to help develop and defend that perspective. The easiest tool with the most immediate results is a series of questions that you can use when discussing an idea in our culture that clashes with Scripture. Dr. Myers laughingly pointed out that we seldom need to arm our children with more questions.

• “What do you mean by that?” Just because a person uses the same terminology that Christians use does not mean that their definitions are the same. Be sure to clarify. This also gives you a chance to voice your Biblical understanding of a word for their clarification.
• “How do you know that is true?” This is the point that worldly ideas begin to fall apart at the seams.
• “Where do you get your information?”
• “What happens if you are wrong?” Dr. Myers stated that this is the question that keeps on asking even when the conversation is over.

These questions can be asked more than once and not necessarily in this order, but the key is to ask them in a non-confrontational manner. II Timothy 2:25, 26 tells us “And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel. Rather, he should be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”

Obviously, this is a two minute summary of an almost hour-long talk. There is really no way that I can effectively duplicate everything that Dr. Myers had to say. Nor should I. I would really encourage you to consider purchasing the session for yourself. No matter your style of homeschooling or the state you live in, you could benefit from it. And no, I’m not getting paid to say that!

*originally posted 5/30/06