Galapagos Report

Oh my goodness!

The Galapagos day went GREAT!

Ahno had made us some fabulous puppets by drawing or using photos, laminating, stuffing, and mounting on sticks. She had drawn a land iguana, a marine iguana, a flamingo, and had used pictures for a sea lion and a tortoise. They were fantastic – the kids loved them immediately. Benny was instantly on fire to do a puppet show, so the first thing they did when Zoe and Phillip arrived was to do an impromptu, unscripted puppet show, which was great. There were three “chapters” to it. The chapters were called "The Playground," and "The Mall," and "Sleepover at Tortoise's House." Not very South American, but OKAY!

Then they came to the table to make puppets of their own, which they liked. Then lunch and of course ice cream. Then we reproduced maps of the Galapagos Islands and discussed Darwin, microevolution, isolation, circumnavigation, adaptation, etc. Very good. The kids were right on top of it. Then we went and danced with our puppets and sang the Galapagos song, and then they did another puppet show.

The differentiation between the land and marine iguanas did *not* appear in the final puppet show, but I was still extremely satisfied with the event. All the kids behaved marvelously, and even Sadie got to wave her puppet around and make sea lion noises. She was also, at one point, spontaneously telling us something about Ecuador. We couldn’t understand what it was, but we did understand it was about Ecuador. J GREAT HOMESCHOOL DAY. Follow link for pictures.