Dolphins, Drumming and Dinner

These are a few pictures of two Homeschool outings.  The first was held at our friends' villa.  There were about 30 kids crammed in a big open room (her sewing room!!) and they all had drums.  It was really loud, but very cool. The instructors did a good job with keeping the kids focused.  They started with simple rhythms and built on them.  The sound of all the drums beating in unison was exciting, thrilling, even if you rather wanted an Advil afterwards.  I don't know why I don't have a picture of Jess.  I have Makenna and a few of her friends.  And Isaac sitting between Timothy and the twins.

A couple weeks later we went to the Dolphinarium inside Children's City.  This is the same area as the good Children's Science Museum.  We had a bit of down time waiting for things to start.  Isaac tended to drift away from me and the girls to seek out the older kids.

We had an hour lecture about dolphins, where they live, how they are similar and different to humans, which species of dolphins live in this area.  I learned several new things. It made it much more educational than just seeing the show.  Then the staff played some games with the younger kids.  Afterwards we were joined by a bunch of other kids on school trips for the actual show.   I have several pictures of the high flying swimmers.  Oh, and there were seals at the end too, but they were a little anti-climactic after the dolphins.

We don't usually read during dinner, but every now and then someone (or more) is just really into a book that they can't put down.  It happened this night.  I had made a super yummy salad, but it got eaten v e r y  s l o w l y because they were all reading machines.  I gave up reminding them to chew and swallow and took a couple pictures instead.