Skipping School

Yesterday, I decided that we would skip school. We did chores, but no "schoolwork" and then went to Green Bay to the Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary. What a blast we had! The indoor nature center had lots of little exhibits with information about animals, classification, skeletons, habitats, etc.

A short walk took us to the Wildlife Observation area which included a Birds of Prey exhibit. Ga'hoole Girl was in heaven! One of her favorite sets of books is the Guardians of Ga'hoole series which is about owls. Ga'hoole Girl has never seen owls live before, so this was a new experience. (One of other favorite book series is about dragons, but I don't think we'll be seeing them up close and personal anytime soon.) The last exhibit was the Eco-Trek. They have a cougar, coyotes, wolves, and otters, just to name a few. We went inside the building where they had some snakes behind glass. (Of course, since Wild Man and I have been reading Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, he and I both kind of freaked out when we walked in the reptile room and saw snakes behind glass. We both had an irrational fear of the glass disappearing and snakes making a break for it!)

Now, this might sound suspiciously like a field trip, but I need to assure that it was absolutely not. The children were completely forbidden to learn anything. All we did was have fun - no learning! Of course, being children, they couldn't follow our instructions completely, so I'm afraid that they did come away with a few nuggets of new information and some new insights into Wisconsin wildlife. But I did my best to prevent it. Truly.