Disney and Homeschool

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. When I first told Collin that I felt like the Lord was leading me to consider homeschooling Mak, his very first response was “If you do it I’ll buy you a Disney Annual Pass.” 🙂 This SHOCKED me. Seriously, I thought Collin would look at me like I had three heads when I told him I was praying about homeschool. Instead? I learned that he was also praying about it and was even Excited about it. He really really wanted it to happen. At that point I wasn’t quite there yet. I was still in the “Seriously, Lord? You want me to teach this kid that has the ability to drive me crazy faster than anybody else in the world?!” phase. But then he sweetened the deal with Disney and I moved right into the “Okay I’m there, let’s do this thing” phase. Just kidding. There was still a ton of prayer involved before I fully committed to the homeschool idea. But having a supportive husband was absolutely vital and something I will always be thankful for.

So last week was our first experience with homeschool at Disney. At first I thought we would just take the week off and not do any school. But then I was talking to another homeschool mom who did our curriculum last year and she told me about all of the stuff at Disney that relates to what we are learning at home. For instance, Science. The first month or so of Science was all about animals. We learned about black and white Rhinos, giraffes, elephants, and about a hundred other animals. It was a lot of fun and we learned some pretty cool facts about animals. But then it also tied into geography because we would always locate on the globe where these animals live. Mak and CB love science. So Disney has this little park you may have heard of called Animal Kingdom. Enter…DISNEY HOMESCHOOL!!! We had so much fun and it was so great to see in person these real, live animals that we have learned about. And I’m not gonna lie, it did my Momma-teacher heart good to hear my little pupils rattle off animal facts when we would pass the animals on the trail.

Do you know the differences in these Rhinos? What type each of them are? I didn’t even know there was more than one breed of rhino before homeschool. I do now. And so do Mak and CB. 🙂

I’ve never seen a hippo out of water before! He was so cute!

We took a little time out from school while we pretended to be dinosaurs. 🙂

And then…POOP!!! Elephant, hippo and rhino poop. Mak loved it.

She wasn’t so into touching the poop. Oh, and the teacher didn’t touch the poop either.

Any field trip where Jiminy Cricket shows up around the corner is a good one in my opinion.

He touched a ball python! He was very disappointed that his favorite snake, the black mamba, wasn’t there.

We brushed some farm animals…

And even had Disney bathroom homeschool. More about poop. 😉

I have to say that our first experience with field trips was a fun one.

There were opportunities all over the place for learning at Disney. In History we have been studying about hieroglyphics and papyrus and the way Ancient Egyptians used it. We have also learned that our alphabet comes from the Phoenicians. We saw examples of both in Epcot. And my parents took the kids to the American Adventure. There were a ton of things to do and I can’t wait to find more. Maybe in December…;)