In the School of Zoo

Most of you know that we moved out to California late this past summer. And most of you also know that we had an eventful first couple of weeks. Needless to say we did not have time to put much thought into preschool for Olivia. Honestly, that was a relief for me because we really had not come to a comfortable decision about what we wanted to do for school. Though the way is growing clearer by the day, we are still doing a lot of research and asking a lot of questions. In the meantime, we have decided to have Zoo School. Essentially, it involves spending a lot of time at the zoo (which we all love) and using that as our jumping pad for learning. Over the past couple of months I have filled a box full of puzzles, games, magazines, animals, etc. An animal Go Fish game as been the instigator of Olivia being able to recognize the entire alphabet in uppercase and about 1/3 of it in lower case. She also recognizes the sound most letters make and is asking how to spell things. I'm not sure how much of the alphabet she can write, but letters are showing up daily around here. Now, I have now idea how that compares to other kids her age - but I don't really care because she is loving to learn and asking a lot of questions. That is far more important to us at this stage in the game.

Here is another example of how this is working. Olivia and Joseph both insist on carrying a map around the zoo. At first I would say no, they didn't both need one, blah, blah, blah. Then, duh, I realized they were learning how to read it. As you know my struggle with patience, I was getting frustrated with the time it was taking for them to fold and unfold the maps and put them in and out of their bags, and Joseph running into people because he had a map bigger than he is in front of his face. It wasn't efficient! Aaaggh! I kill myself sometimes! So we were walking the other day and Olivia says, "Mommy, we are right here (pointing to the picture of the animal we were by), because that (pointing to another animal) is on our left." What?! She knew her left!! and so she knew which side we were on and where we were headed!

So that is how we are learning right now. And there are a million other things playing into it. And there are a million other things I am reading about. And I would love it if any of you want to discuss this at all. I think I will probably start posting some Educational Installments on here - including the different things I am reading, asking questions, etc. I don't know who still reads this blog, but in the past I know it has been people from many different kinds of schooling approaches. I would covet your feedback.
But for now here we are - zebra gazing. And sometimes we stop and draw pictures, or eat our lunch, or pick up trash (Joseph). But now to the animal fun facts we (me) all love. This is a harpy eagle. He kind of looks like a mix between an owl and an eagle. Blow up the pictures - it is beautiful. They eat monkeys...that they catch as they (the monkeys) are swinging in the trees! Incredible.

Baby
Joseph's trash

I had no idea!

Did you know that deer grow antlers every year?! Olivia got My Big Backyard magazine from her Uncle Doug for her birthday and the feature this month is antlers/horns. Every spring the antlers start to grow and they are covered in something called velvet that actually looks like velvet that eventually dries up and sheds. Then they fall off in the winter I guess. I had no idea.

Animal fact for you.