Resources for Georgia Homeschoolers

Atlanta Botanical Garden

~ shelli ~ 3 Comments

The strings you see hanging down are roots.

This post concludes my series of day trips that we took this summer, which also concludes our 2017-2018 school year. Day trips are some of our most educational and fun activities we can do as homeschoolers. I will try to write about some of the places we go this year too.

The photo does not do it justice, but I loved this statue of a toddler holding onto some frogs, and he’s extremely proud of his capture.
I had to take this photo of a nepenthes pitcher plant for my son who grows carnivorous plants.

My son picked the Atlanta Botanical Garden as his “birthday day trip.” I won’t lie — I wasn’t disappointed about this at all. I have been wanting to go there for a long time. My twelve-year-old has always been into plants, and lately, there’s been a kind of resurgence in this interest. Since I love plants and gardening too, it’s such a pleasure for me to witness this, and what a surprise that he’d pick the botanical garden on his birthday. I thought he might pick a science museum or aquarium like his brother.

We had never been to the Atlanta Botanical Garden before, and we were not disappointed. It was more beautiful than we were expecting. We have been to our state botanical garden, and we’ve been to the Chicago Botanical Garden, and both those places are lovely. (How can gardens not be?) But the Atlanta Botanical Garden was truly special. The boys loved all the plant sculptures in the garden, which was whimsical and made it fun for kids.

The greenhouses, which you see in the background of his photo, were fabulous.
A bloom among the plants of the desert.

It was so big, we didn’t even get to see it all, so we’re planning to go back. I will highlight our favorite spots in the photos. I hope you enjoy them. (And by the way, I was dismayed that I forgot to bring my Nikon with me. If there’s anything I love to photograph, it’s flowers. So there’s another reason to go back. These photos were taken on my phone camera.)

The orchid house was perhaps our favorite place.

Something I’ve never seen before — flowers growing on the bottom of the roots!

 

North Georgia Zoo & Petting Farm

~ shelli ~ 1 Comment

One of the day trips we made this summer was to the North Georgia Zoo & Petting Farm. We had been aware of this zoo for a long time, and we’d always wanted to check it out. My boys had a great time at this zoo.

This is a small and rustic zoo. Don’t expect paved walkways or cool buildings to walk into occasionally. The petting farm (and you can pay just to walk through the petting farm only) is fun. There were sheep, goats, alpacas and a cow to pet. Exotic chickens roamed the area too.

To see the exotic animals, you have to go on a tour, which is included in your admission price. Someone will walk you through this area, and there you’ll find all kinds of interesting animals from different parts of the world. We had a very friendly and knowledgeable guide. I do not remember seeing every animal on their full animal list, but there were plenty of animals to see. I know they have areas of the zoo that we were not permitted to go to because some animals were under special care. You can also purchase tickets for “animal encounters,” which we didn’t do.

At the end of the tour, our guide let us meet three small animals and get a chance to pet them: a small python, armadillo and chinchilla. That was pretty cool.

My husband and I were disappointed to see that some of the animals were in cages that seemed too small, such as the cougar and the New Guinea singing dogs. I realize this is an issue with many zoos, and I also know it takes a tremendous amount of money to care for these animals, which is why we didn’t mind paying the admission fee. However, the admission price is similar to the admission for Zoo Atlanta, which surprised us, considering how much smaller this one was. Perhaps Zoo Atlanta gets more donations, which allows them to keep their prices down?

If you are in the North Georgia mountains and you have children, I would say go visit this zoo. However, I wouldn’t make a special trip again just to see this zoo. The area around the zoo, however, was gorgeous. There are a lot of vineyards in the area. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to combine a trip to the zoo with a visit to a vineyard. 😉

P.S. Sorry there are no photos here of the petting farm. I was too busy petting the animals!

Tellus Science Museum

~ shelli ~ 1 Comment

Several years ago I wrote an informative newspaper column about the Tellus Museum that you can still read, but it’s worth writing about briefly again. Since that first visit, we have been to the Tellus many times, and one year, we had a family membership. But we hadn’t been there in a very long time when we went this summer. That’s the day we also went to the Booth Western Art Museum.

It’s great going back to museums as our kids get older.  Not only do we get to see new additions to the museum, it’s fun to see what our kids are attracted to at different ages. When they were younger, we spent more time in the dinosaur exhibit and with the hands-on kids stuff, especially digging for fossils and panning for gems. We looked through the whole museum back then too, but we couldn’t linger as long in my favorite area, which is the Weinman Mineral Gallery.

But this time we did. In fact, we spent the most time there, and it was great. The boys were much more interested in scrutinizing the beautiful rocks and minerals, and I even read a few of the signs to them. This is why most of my photos are of rocks and minerals this time. I hope you enjoy them, and if you get the chance, I highly recommend that you visit this museum to see them for yourself.

Booth Western Art Museum

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The Booth Western Art Museum is located in Cartersville, Georgia. We have been to Cartersville many times to visit the Tellus Science Museum, but we didn’t visit the Booth Museum until this summer because we thought the boys might be too young to appreciate the art. Now that they are a little older, they appreciate art more, and my eldest especially enjoys the museums. My youngest tolerates them well. 😉

We were expecting a much smaller “hole-in-the-wall” museum, but the Booth Museum is in a beautiful, modern building, and it was too big for us to see it all in one visit. Well, at least on the same day we promised the boys we’d go to the Tellus Museum too. In addition, we ate lunch and found a great ice cream place in the quaint downtown area of Cartersville. It made a fun day trip, and we are planning to go again sometime. I think the Booth Museum is going to become one of my favorite art museums, and it’s not just because I lived in the West for twelve years. There were beautiful works of art in this museum that I wanted to gaze at and savor longer than my young boys would let me.

If you go, I recommend watching the 15 minute introductory film and then make your way to the sculpture area. The sculptures (both indoor and outdoor) were breathtaking. There is also a Civil War room where you can follow the story of the Civil War through paintings in chronological order. Looking at their website, I see we missed the Sagebrush Ranch, an interactive gallery for kids too. (A good excuse to go back!)

If you live in Georgia, are interested in the West, or you are homeschooling and studying the American expansion, I highly recommend a visit to this museum. You won’t be disappointed. There is also a fun gift shop with many books and educational toys for kids regarding the West.

Michael C. Carlos Museum

~ shelli ~ 1 Comment

We love to take the boys on day trips to interesting places around this region, and this summer, we’ve been on several. I’m going to try to write about all the places we’ve been, and I’m starting with the Michael C. Carlos Museum, which is located on the campus of Emory University.

The Carlos Museum is an art museum that collects and preserves art and artifacts. At the top of this post you can see one of their Egyptian mummies. According to their website, they have about 17,000 ancient artifacts from Egypt, the Near East, Greece, Rome, the Americas, Asia and Africa. They also have works on paper from the Renaissance to the present day. (Not everything is on display.)

We will have to return to this museum again and again as we continue with our history lessons. The museum is not huge, but it was bigger than we thought it would be. This past year and a half, we have studied Ancient India, China, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, so it complemented our studies perfectly.

If you live in the area, I highly recommend that you check out this museum, and even if you don’t, be sure to look at their website. They have some interactive sites for kids as well as a podcast.

Have you been to this museum? Please tell me about your experience.

Noah’s Ark

~ shelli ~ 3 Comments

If you live in Georgia, I recommend you take a drive to the town of Locust Grove and visit Noah’s Ark. We’ve been there twice, but the first time we went, it was flooded, so we were only able to walk around the perimeter, although we had fun doing that too. This last time, we made sure it was open by calling first. My photos in this post are from both times we went. 🙂

Noah’s Ark is an animal sanctuary. The animals here were rescued from less-than-ideal captive situations, and none of them are capable of being released back into the wild. Some were injured. Some have come from zoos that were failing. Some were illegal and/or surrendered pets. Some have been retired from science laboratories. According to their website, they have over 1,500 exotic, wildlife and domestic animals and over 100 species of animals!

There were quite a few tigers at Noah’s Ark as well as bears and parrots and primates. You can see photos of all their animals here. I especially loved the peacocks who roam freely around the property, which is why I have too many peacock photos in this post. 🙂

Definitely related to the dinosaurs. 🙂

What I loved about Noah’s Ark is that the habitats are quite large, and most of them are under a canopy of hardwoods. We couldn’t see some of the animals who were probably sleeping somewhere in the tall grass, but I was okay with that. It was good to see that they had a nice space to roam.

It may look like these tigers are in a small cage, but they can actually walk out into a larger area too.

The admission to Noah’s Ark is free, so everyone can go and enjoy the animals. However, they operate solely on donations, and it’s quite expensive to feed all those animals, so you may want to consider donating, if you can. They have limited hours so that the animals can have plenty of quiet, which I like too. The Habitat is open Tuesday-Saturday from 12-3p.m. But you can visit the playground and visitor’s center (and walk around the perimeter) Tuesday-Saturday from 9-4p.m. 

You can never have too many photos of peacocks.

Dauset Trails Nature Center

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Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on January 20, 2016.

If you feel like an adventure, consider a drive down to Jackson, Georgia to explore Dauset Trails Nature Center, a private, non-profit center whose mission is to provide environmental education, outdoor recreation and an understanding of early farm life. It has 1400 acres of woods, fields, creeks and lakes, and it includes live animal exihibits, gardens, hiking, biking and horseback trails. Admission is free.

We took a day over the holidays to go down and see this place that we had heard about at a local nature center event. It was well worth the effort because Dauset Trails is beautiful and peaceful, and it offers so much to see.

The animal trail reminded me a little of Bear Hollow Zoo in Athens, and my boys loved viewing the wild animals such as the bald eagle who cried out to us, owls, hawks, otters, a cougar, bear, coyotes, a bison and more. All of these animals are non-releasable, and they have been either injured or orphaned.

Dauset also has a barnyard exhibit with chickens, pigs, cows, goats, a mule and a donkey. We walked through a barn and could see the smoke house, country store, blacksmith shop and other buildings, which I believe are used for events. On the day we were there, we had the place almost to ourselves.

Below the visitor’s center is a kind of classroom/reptile house where we found live turtles, alligators and snakes. Right outside the nature center, you can sit on the porch and watch the songbirds coming and going from the feeders – we had never seen so many different birds all at once. We spied chickadees, titmice, cardinals, bluebirds and two or three woodpeckers!

Behind the visitor’s center is a small lake, and you can walk over the bridge and purchase a handful of food (bring some quarters) to feed the fish and ducks, though there were no ducks the day we were there.

After walking the animal trail, seeing the barnyard animals, and walking through some of the gardens, we were too tired to hit a hiking trail, so we hope to go back someday.

I was impressed to learn that Dauset Trails was the dream of Hampton Daughtry, a man who had played as a boy in the woods where we walked. When he grew up, he made his fortune in the textile industry, and when he returned to his home, he put much of his money into the community. He was a big supporter of the Boy Scouts and youth recreational programs.

He and his friend, David Settle, dreamed of providing a place where people could learn about and enjoy nature without disturbance. Much of the land in Dauset Trails belonged to them, and the name “Dauset” was created by combining parts of their names. Mr. Daughtry is buried on the property in the Memorial Garden.

There is no food available at the center, but there is a drink machine and picnic tables. Camping areas are available for organized groups only and require a reservation. Facility rentals are available for special events. It is open Monday-Saturday 9-5 and Sunday 12-5. (No admittance one hour before closing.) See dausettrails.com for more information.

 

Natural History Museum at Georgia College

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Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal in October 2015.

If you have young children, they may not be old enough to appreciate Georgia’s history or the beautiful homes you can tour along the Antebellum Trail, but you may be able to sneak some of that in on a day trip to the Natural History Museum at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville. Our boys love fossils, so we spent a long time in this small museum, and then we enjoyed exploring the beautiful campus and viewed some of the historical buildings too.

The Natural History Museum is only a 2,500-square-foot room in Herty Hall, but it is jam-packed with fossils and exhibits that will teach you about ancient life forms. Georgia College holds one of the largest repositories of fossils in the southeast, covering the last 500 million years, and it’s the official repository for National Park Service specimens too. Though small, there’s still enough to keep you busy for well over an hour as you slowly make your way around the room.

My boys are excited about seeing any kind of fossil or bones, but some of the highlights were the large cephalopods, a crinoid and trilobites. There was a fossil of a large amphibian from the late Triassic found in Poland that looked similar to an alligator’s head. The fossil of a dinosaur egg was pretty cool, and a skeleton of a Smilodon, or saber-toothed cat, was a favorite.

After the museum, we walked to the Ennis Hall, the Department of Art, hoping to check out an art exhibit, but at that time, they were between art shows. We still had fun checking out the beautiful, old antebellum buildings that have been turned into office buildings and classroom space. The main part of campus has a large green area with beautiful trees to walk under.

We stopped by the Old Governor’s Mansion, which was the home of eight governors, their families, slaves and free servants from 1839-1868 when Milledgeville was the state capital of Georgia. (The capital moved to Atlanta in 1868 due to Atlanta’s superior rail service.) During the Civil War, General William T. Sherman’s army captured the mansion, and it served as his headquarters. Now it’s a museum, and you can take tours there too, but we didn’t think our young boys would be patient enough for that, so we just enjoyed walking around the block and checking out the gardens.

Downtown Milledgeville is also within walking distance. It’s quaint, and it has plenty of shops to peruse. We found some old comic books in an antique store that has kick started my nine-year-old’s enjoyment of reading silently to himself. (Score!) We even found a restaurant that served food my picky eaters would eat too.

Since it’s only two hours away, Milledgeville makes a lovely day trip. You can go for the fossils, or the history, or just a lovely stroll down some beautiful streets.

Find out more about the natural history museum at this website: http://www.gcsu.edu/nhm. It’s free and open to the public from 8a.m. to 4p.m. Monday through Friday. There is free 2-hour parking outside the building, which will give you plenty of time to see the exhibits. Large groups can make reservations for a tour.

The Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon, Georgia

~ shelli ~ 2 Comments

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on April 23, 2014.

Last week my family ventured down to Macon to visit the Museum of Arts and Sciences. This is the only museum in Georgia that focuses on art and science, and we had a fun time checking it out.

The main brick building is set on fourteen acres of beautiful wooded land with trails and several outbuildings. There are permanent exhibitions, including a three-story “Discovery House” for children and a mini-zoo. In the Discovery House, the boys and I enjoyed looking at their beautiful collection of butterflies, shells, arrowheads and other treasures. There was pottery, artwork and a collection of ship models that must have taken years to put together.

The Discovery House is very interactive for kids too. There were places where the boys could have created some artwork, but they preferred to dig for fossils. They had a blast in the Light Box, and we also had fun pretending we were weather forecasters, standing in front of a green screen and seeing our images on a screen with a weather map behind us.

The mini-zoo is small, but it contains more than seventy animals, including amphibians, birds, invertebrates, mammals and reptiles. This made my snake loving seven-year-old very happy. We were also able to catch part of a live animal show, which is a regular feature of the museum, and afterward my boys got to touch some of the animals.

The art exhibits were more appealing to my husband and me, but luckily the boys didn’t rush us too much. We especially enjoyed their large display of antique quilts, which is a temporary exhibit. Many of them were from Georgia quilt makers, and the details and craftsmanship were incredible.

By far our favorite part of the museum was its planetarium. We have been to two other planetariums, and this was the best. After reading the museum’s website, I understand why.

In 2012, the museum became one of the few planetariums in the world to install the Konica Minolta Super MediaGlobe II, which is “the highest-resolution and brightest, single-projector digital planetarium available today.” This museum is the first to install this system in Georgia and only the third in the Americas. The resolution is supposed to be four times higher than of the best HDTV images – that’s impressive.

It was worth the drive just to see the two shows we attended. They were under thirty minutes each, but they were stunning, beautiful and very educational. I learned so much in such a short amount of time! Each show included some animation, so they were entertaining for the children as well.

My four-year-old got scared in the opening of the first show we saw, titled “Stars.” Later we were told that this show was the most intense. It begins as the camera moves in on a star, and my son had never experienced such a huge screen that encompassed our entire vision before. Later he told me that he thought we were all going to be swallowed! That is definitely the feeling you get as you sit under that huge dome and the “star” is moving toward you. I thought I was going to have to leave with him, but I calmed him down and he enjoyed the rest of the show. By the second show, he was an old pro.

If you would like to visit the museum, it is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10-5pm and Sunday 1-5pm. It is closed on Mondays. The admission price is very reasonable and includes all the exhibitions, mini-zoo, discovery house and the planetarium. It’s $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and military, $7 for students, $5 for children, and children under 3 are free.

It took us about two hours to drive there. For directions, be sure to check the map on the museum’s website. When we got near the facility, we discovered that the directions from Google maps had one mistake. (We never found a Hall Road. Use Wimbish Road instead.) The website is www.masmacon.org.

The Georgia Museum of Art

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750 pixels Terry Allen main_8247

Photos courtesy of the Georgia Museum of Art

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on April 9, 2014. Believe it or not, I wasn’t planning this field trip when I started writing my art series. It’s serendipity at its best!

My boys love to produce lots of original artwork. I keep their supplies out where they can reach them, so art happens almost daily. This year I also have done a few formal lessons in art. For example, we’ve looked at some of the artists from the Renaissance, and we’ve talked about color and line. I had them make a color wheel, and we did some fun activities to explore how everything is made up of lines!

I didn’t think my boys were old enough to visit an art museum, though. I imagined my seven-year-old hanging onto my arm and asking, “When are we going home?” and I imagined my four-year-old running up and down quiet hallways and knocking over some precious sculpture.

Then my sister came to visit us for a very short visit on her spring break, and the weather was not ideal for hiking, which is what I was hoping to do while she was here. It also seemed silly to drive into Atlanta when she was here for such a short time, and we were going to have to take her to the airport the next day anyway. And there are not many indoor places around here that’s fun for both kids and adults. But my sister loves art – she even teaches at a special school that emphasizes art, so we decided to take a chance on our boys and visit the Georgia Museum of Art.

The Museum is located on the University of Georgia’s East Campus. It is free for the public, though you will need to park in the Performing Arts Center parking deck and pay for parking when you leave. We were there for about two hours and paid $2 for parking.

The museum is kid-friendly. Upon entering, we were greeted at the visitor’s desk where our children were offered a bag with some activities they could do while they were visiting. They also could have taken a sketchpad and drawn pictures in it while viewing the artwork, though all these items needed to stay at the museum. My seven-year-old was happy to receive a little button he could wear on his shirt that said, “Art for Everyone.”

It had been years since I had visited the museum, and it all looked new to me. This is because in 2011, a 16,000-square-foot expansion was added to the museum. It is beautiful. There is a huge permanent collection with artwork from the Renaissance to Modern times. Some of my favorite discoveries were a portrait painted by Mary Cassatt and a small painting by Renoir.

I was happy that my boys behaved themselves, and for at least the first half the museum, they were engaged and enjoyed looking at the art. I squatted down by my four-year-old and asked him what he saw in the abstract art, so that helped him focus, but eventually, he did try to run around the big, airy rooms and hallways. (It’s tempting even for me to want to run in such lovely hallways!) But we kept him in check, and he was good boy.

GMOA

Eventually my seven-year-old did grow tired, but that probably had more to do with the leisurely pace at which the adults were moving through the museum. He enjoyed a lot of art, especially the Belleek Porcelain collection. He loves working with clay, so the delicate porcelain sculptures with such fine details were impressive. He also was taken with a special, temporary exhibit that the museum staff called “the floating pen,” but according to the museum’s website, it’s called “Machine Drawing.”

Tristan Perich, a contemporary artist and composer based in New York City, is the artist responsible for the “Machine Drawing.” He created the code that operates a machine that controls a pen, held by hooks and wires, and over a six-month installation, this “floating pen” will make a work of art on a 60-foot wall in the museum. It is fun to watch!

There was a good chunk of wall already covered in pen markings, so we thought the “floating pen” had been working for a long time. We were surprised to hear that when we visited the museum, it had only begun three days earlier. My seven-year-old wants to go back and see the wall in a few months to see what it looks like, so we’re planning to do that. (We also asked them how often they have to change the pen – the answer was everyday!)

If you would like to visit the museum, it is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10-5p.m., Thursday from 10-9p.m., and Sunday 1-5p.m. It is closed on Mondays. For parents, you may be interested in looking at their calendar and going on a Family Day, which is once a month on a Saturday and free. We have not tried that yet, but it looks like a great activity for kids.

The museum’s website is georgiamuseum.org. Click here to go directly to their page about upcoming Family Art Days.