Field Trips and Pigeons

We live in a city and have a view of cement blocks out our window. Not very appealing. There is very little green anywhere in site, even off in the distance. We bought some plants for our balcony and they died. But we have found one way to bring nature to our home. We fed the pigeons. We threw corn out on our balcony and soon enough we had a nest and now a mama sitting on two eggs! The kids took the week off of learning about Middle Eastern countries and researched pigeons instead.

By the way, we had a mishap last week from the kids searching for info on Iraq (graphic war images), so this week I gave them this link to use for their research. It’s Ivy’s Internet Search Engine Resources. There are several search options all designed for kids.

Mama on the nest -- taken through our dirty window so as not to scare her away

We’re counting down the days until the eggs hatch. Yes, eggs. The picture was taken after the first was laid. There are two.

Living where we do has some good points too. We happen to be able to do field trips actually in the Middle East. We visited a fortress which doubles as a war museum.

Next door was a money museum. It always helps to have lots of cute kids and we were welcomed in free.

Despite what the picture looks like, the kids and myself, found this really interesting. Tons of money from around the world and from different times.

Turkmenistan, by the way, wins for the prettiest money.

There was a “Kitchen Museum” across the street, but it was too much for one morning. Another day. We did walk past this excavation site, though.

Lots more to see, hopefully before the weather gets too hot to be outside during the day. We’re already wearing some of our summer clothes and the locals have on coats. 🙂

A little Kahn Academy update: one month in and the kids still enjoy doing math. Yeah! I let them both start at basic addition. My son has already earned the “Master of Arithmetic” badge and is doing the pre-algebra math. I started doing it to. I should be a “master” in a week. You can go pretty quickly if you want to. You just need to get 10 right in a row to be proficient at something. My son did extra to earn more points and badges. Actually, he asked to do math for an hour instead of just half an hour. So far so good! (Oh, and he says there are word problems, but I haven’t seen any yet.)