Our Family Learning Blog
Earlier this month my daughters and I spent a week in Manhattan, Kansas, and were able to watch part of the Mountain Sprout concert in the park on August 6th. This was some of the wildest fiddle playing I’d ever seen! These are certainly not “family values” themes, but the fiddle playing was extraordinary.
If you ever get a chance to hear these guys play in person, by all means don’t miss it. 🙂
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kansas, music, fiddle, manhattan, concert, wild
I’ve added 46 more photos and 1 more video from our trip last week camping in the Pecos. These were taken using Shelly’s camera, which is Carl’s “old” Sony DSC-H2. What a difference this good lens makes! I added these to the same Flickr set as our other photos and videos from the trip.
Too bad Alexander’s eyes were closed for this one. The kids has so much fun swimming in the stream Saturday!
A few quick photos as we packed up Sunday. Note the whiskers! 🙂
In all I think we caught about 10 fish on the trip. We ate 6. These were some of the best trout I’d ever tasted!
Does this girl look ready for fishing or WHAT?! They even checked out ReelChase to get their fishing essencials.
What lovely flowers!
Sarah took this photo of Shelly and Rachel. Way to go, Sarah!
The video quality on the Sony camera is not as good as the iPhone, but still better than not having video– in this clip, Rachel explains that we are camping and fishing!
Check out the entire set: 120 photos, 7 videos!
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camp, camping, family, mexico, new, newmexico, pecos, summer, vacation, fishing
Must be on the South Plains of Texas!
I think this is SO thoughtful. A parking sign at United Supermarket in Canyon.
Here’s a few favorite photos from the images we took this week in the Pecos wilderness area in New Mexico, and I uploaded to Flickr. I have more short videos to upload, along with all the photos from mom’s camera which I don’t have with me this evening. We had a GREAT time!
This was the best fish I’d ever eaten in my entire life. You can’t beat freshly caught and cooked trout.
We camped at Terrero Campground, since Holy Ghost campground was closed for bathroom upgrades. This was our tent and campsite early in the week. It REALLY filled up (unfortunately but predictably) for the weekend.
There were hundreds of hummingbirds outside the Terrero general store. I took some video of this as well I’ll upload.
This was the weather forecast for Edmond the past week: Highs every day of 104! In the mountains at our campsite, it got down to the 50s and up only to the upper 70s.
Good times!
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camp, family, new, camping, mexico, mora, terrero, pecos, newmexico, travel
We saw this license plate owner today at the Medieval Festival in Norman, Oklahoma. He is losing his plate, however, because Kansas is no longer issuing personalized plates by county. Someone has had Aragorn longer as their Kansas tag and will therefore get to keep it. This fellow will switch to Dunedein. Very cool.
Sarah created the following digital story today before school using VoiceThread about the book, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.” She role-played Annabeth Chase in a video we shot last Wednesday in St Louis using my iPhone. This is the first VoiceThread we’ve created which includes an embedded video and not just still images. Several of the photos in this VoiceThread were created using the $3 iPhone application Pano. She was required by her teacher to create some type of supplementary “teaser” about the book, which she also wrote about in a traditional book report she’s turning in today at school. All of the photos we used, with the exception of the book cover and movie poster, are included in this Flickr set.
If you’ve seen the movie version of The Lightning Thief, you know the writers changed the plot so Percy, Annabeth and Grover visit Nashville instead of St Louis. Sarah and I were VERY disappointed at this theatrical setting and plot change, since the scene at the St Louis arch was one of our favorites!
I’ve added links to this VoiceThread on both the Great Book Stories project wiki, and the Voicethread4Education wiki in the grades 3-5 category.
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jackson, percy, voicethread, lightning, thief
We rode The Heartland Flyer Amtrak train from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth today. Sarah gave this short tour I recorded on my iPhone just before we got in to the final station.
Video uploaded to Flickr with PixelPipe, mobile blogged with WordPress 2.1 for iPhone.
I took the following four, 90 second videos yesterday driving north along K-177 between Cassoday and Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, enroute from Wichita to Manhattan. This national scenic byway is one of my favorite roads in Kansas. The low clouds and lighting in these videos don’t do justice to the autumn colors of the prairie, unfortunately, which are quite spectacular even though the “peak” of the fall colors seemed to have already passed.
I added these videos to my Flickr set, “Manhattan Fall Colors,” which includes lots of amazing images of autumn colors taken later in the day in Manhattan. These include three panoramic photos from the day, which I linked and discussed in my post, “Beautiful Kansas fall colors and more iPhone panoramic picture fun with Pano.”
Yesterday Rachel and I gathered some acorns and acorn “hats” in the Sunset Cemetery in Manhattan, Kansas. She has been wanting to collect acorns for some time, and I remembered that the oak trees in this Manhattan cemetery produce LOTS of acorns each year, both large and small.
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kansas, manhattan, acorn, acorns, collecting, collect, find
Marco Torres took some AMAZING photos yesterday and today, when we were able to have dinner and hang out with some other great Maine educators. These are a few of my favorites, see more in his October 2009 Flickr set. My photos from today are also available in a Flickr set. 🙂
Sarah recorded these thoughts in the Baltimore airport enroute to New Hampshire and the ACTEM conference in Maine.
This video was shot with an iPhone GS and uploaded via email to Flickr. Mobile blogged with WordPress for iPhone.
One of our favorite October traditions here in central Oklahoma is going to “Fright Night” at Frontier City, a theme park located on I-35 in Edmond. Generally we go later in the month, but this year we needed to go early because of travel schedules. As usual we had a great time, especially watching the show, “Dead Man’s Party.” In the third video below, you’ll see Sarah get up on stage and dance as the construction worker in the song “YMCA” by The Village People. We stayed and danced after the 2nd show– we actually saw it three times! This was a lot of fun! It’s also great that when you order your tickets to Frontier City online in October, they are half price. It’s still expensive at $17.50 each, but much less than “normal” price.
Each of these videos is 90 seconds long, which is the maximum length permitted by Flickr. Some of these songs and the acting in the performance was a little scary, but “a little scary” in moderation can be fun and even healthy. It’s definitely a lot of fun to have a chance to dance like this as a family. We don’t get these opportunities very often!
I shot these videos with my iPhone GS. I apologize for the distortion in the audio at some points. The sound was definitely VERY loud where we were sitting!
This visit to “Fright Night” marked the first time both Sarah and Rachel chose to ride a rollercoaster! We actually all rode the “Steel Lasso” three times, and it was a lot of fun. This was the photo of Rachel and Mom on their last ride. Rachel was pretty excited by the experience!
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city, edmond, family, fun, oklahoma, frontier, october, fright, night, rollercoaster, halloween
For fall break I’m going to Maine! I’m going to Augusta,Maine. here are some links.
For Augusta, Maine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta,_Maine
for the conference:
http://www.actem.org
Today was our last day before school begins for the 2009-2010 academic year here in central Oklahoma. Our family spent several hours visiting the Oklahoma City zoo this morning with friends, and we took turns recording a series of NINE AudioBoo messages as we toured around. This was my first time to visit the zoo with my iPhone GS, which has 3G network connectivity— SO much faster than EDGE for mobile uploads like this! If you’re an iPhone owner and/or user and are not yet familiar with AudioBoo, you should be! AudioBoo offers a wonderful free iPhone application which allows people to take photos, record audio, and publish both online from “the field.” Now if you don’t have an iPhone, you can still create phoneboo recordings! I have more options listed on my wiki page for Geo-Storychasing.
Click on the direct links below to see the accompanying photo and Google Map from our locations, where we recorded each short (less than 2 minute) Audioboo. Enjoy!
Lions at the Oklahoma City Zoo (Rachel)
The cougar has a tail like Pink Panther (Rachel)
The deer’s antlers are in velvet (Rachel)
Mexican wolves on the move (Alexander)
Meet real Oklahoma skunks (Sarah)
Meet the American Bison (Wesley)
Grizzly bears in Oklahoma (Shelly, Sarah and Rachel)
Beavers and otters at the zoo (Wesley)
No swimming: Alligator Pond! (Wesley)
We LOVE AudioBoo!!!
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audioboo, oklahoma, zoo, animals
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