Book of the Trees Nature Outing: Cave Creek Botanical Gardens

Our 7th graders at co-op use the classical curriculum Book of the Trees from Memoria Press. As we are approaching the end of the curriculum it wants us to go out and nature journal a tree each week. This is exactly why we formed the Cardinal’s Nature Club – so we could see what we learn in science first hand. The Cave Creek Botanical Gardens is a free outdoor paved nature walk of all kinds of desert type botanicals. We saw lots of really interesting things and learned four new Read More …

Cardinal’s Culture Outing: Handel’s Messiah at Trinity Cathedral

There are no words to express how beautiful this is. Driving home, even the best of Christian musical just sounds like “twaddle” in our ears. It is such a wonderful tradition to start the Christmas season. This particular Messiah was also a sing-a-long so we brought our books to follow along and sing our parts with the choir and orchestra. Trinity Cathedral is a real gem. The acoustics are amazing, the organ and musical talent is exceptional… and it also happens to be where Derek and I got married! It’s Read More …

What’s that Bird? Nature Outing

classical education homeschool nature walk

In 6th grade, for science, we study birds. In our classically educating co-op we use the curriculum What’s That Bird? from Memoria Press. We learn to identify 30 of the most common birds by sight and by sound. We also learn about the anatomy of birds, how they fly, characteristics of different birds, etc. It’s a fascinating study and the children love it! To make science come alive we went to our local Audobon center (The Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center) and went a free guided bird tour. It Read More …

Japanese Moon Festival and Telescope Viewing

Classical Japanese art and education paintings

In the 4th Grade Memoria Press Curriculum, we study Astronomy, so we though this would be a perfect opportunity to get out and see first hand all that we are learning. The children used the star gazing app on my phone to find the constellations they’ve learned. They had a huge telescope to view the moon and Jupiter. The moon was absolutely incredible. I have never seen the moon so close. It looked like those clay sculptures were the sculptor has put in a ton of time and there are Read More …