Bluewater Key RV Resort

The most beautiful campground ever!

We were suppose to leave from the KOA Friday to Leo's Campground, but we went down to take a look and none of us wanted to go there! So I went online and found the campground that I had actually seen on the travel channel - Bluewater Key RV Resort. All of their sites are owned (each site costs upwards of 1/2 million dollars!) but when the owner's aren't there they rent them out! We got a beautiful site, right on the canal, with a huge fishing dock, tiki hut, and patio set for $88 a night (which for Key West is really good). I can't wait to go!

Abby at our new campground with the fish she caught right off our deck!

She's been fishing for 6 hours straight now!!

Thanksgiving

We had Pat & Debbie over to the KOA for Thanksgiving. Eddy, Pat, Debbie & Abby hung out in the pool most of the day and amazingly dinner turned out good (except for my Key Lime pie which was actually more like Key Lime soup). I miss Seth, Tommy and my Mom. I'm glad we're going up there for Christmas. Holidays just aren't the same without family.

Duval Crawl

I guess you have to do the Duval Crawl at least once in your lifetime and yesterday was my day! We started with lunch (and drinks) at this neat dockside restaurant which had a swimming pool right in the middle of the restaurant (Abby swam before and after lunch) and made our way down Duval Street stopping at each place with music! Three (or four?) drinks and many tee shirt shops later, we headed over to the beach to watch the sunset.

Summerland Key KOA

Well, we've moved on from Long Key and are gradually making our way further on down the coast. We will be at the KOA for about a week. I miss my campsite right on the ocean, but on the flip side, this one does have a very nice pool.

Snorkeling

Snorkeling

Abby had her first real snorkeling experience the other day. She did great! We went out to John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park and were lucky enough to see some fantastic fish, including lots of reef fish, a nurse shark, a couple baracuda, and of course, beautiful coral. Even I learned a lot as I took Abby thru the coral aquarium when we got back - coral is made from living animals and their skeletons actually are the coral, it takes 500 years for it to grow, it can only live in waters within a 5 degree temperature range, and is easily damaged by pollutants.

Abby's new Myak

The raft was just too hard to pull behind Eddy's kayak, so in comes the Myak! We took it in thru the mangrove swamps, saw jellyfish, and did some fishing.

Kayaking, Fishing, and Chillin'

Kayaking, Fishing, and Chillin'

Our first week in the Keys has been spent at Long Key State Park. The campground is right on the ocean and we have been having a lot of fun! We've been camping with our friends, Pat & Debbie (the workampers from this year at our campground). Both Pat & Debbie are into fishing big time and have started teaching Eddy and Abby to fish. Eddy has been buying tackle like there is no tomorrow, but he wants to make this a hobby that both him and Abby can enjoy. Eddy, Debbie & Pat caught about 4 Jack Cravalle the other day and boy were they good eating! Abby has caught a couple smaller grunts so far, but nothing we could keep.

We took Abby out on the kayak and taught her how to paddle - big mistake!!!! About a half hour after we brought the kayaks in and tied them up, Eddy looks up and thinks he sees me back out on the kayak, but it's Abby!!! No lifejacket, just happily paddling out to sea! Pat and Eddy had to go rescue her, and I can tell you none of them was happy when they got back! Hopefully she won't try that one again.

Other than Abby's little kayaking adventure we've been having a lot of fun. Abby's been learning all about sea life. We went to visit the Theater of the Sea and it was great! It's a lot like Sea World, only much smaller. We went to dolphin, sea lion, turtle, alligator, shark, and bird shows. At almost all of them Abby raised her hand to volunteer and got to help with the training. She even got to hold a nurse shark! She told me today she wants to be a Marine Psychologist when she grows up so she can train dolphins. She has also been walking the beach every day in search of new sea life that she can have "for a sleepover". So far we've had 10 hermit crabs, a seahorse, a conch, and a bunch of Box Elder bugs spend the night. She's learned about mammals, fish, gills, types of crabs, habitats, endangered animals, pollution, reproduction, and so much more I can't even remember it all!

Jetty Park, Florida

We've made it to Florida and are back at Jetty Park again (actually we're only 1 site away from where we were last year). Abby's been playing on the climbing tree, we've found 3 giant horseshoe crabs already, and have met some great people! Abby made friends with the boy across the way (turns out they RV for 3 months each year) and we all had the Browski's (from FOTR) over for dinner. What a cool family they are! Rich was a big help at helping me learn more about my IPod.

Sea Turtle Hospital

Georgia Sea Turtles

The Georgia Sea Turtle Hospital on Jekyll Island turned out to be very interesting and all of us learned a lot! We spent the whole day there, looking at various exhibits over and over again, and got a chance to visit with the injured sea turtles as well. I had called ahead and spoken with the educational director about possible homeschool opportunities and they actually changed one of the scheduled shows so that Abby would learn more about the turtles! They asked for volunteers (we already knew Abby was going to be picked so that was great) and the lady doing the show dressed Abby up as a sea turtle, complete with flippers, beak, carapace, lungs, etc. It was a great learning experience and well worth the few dollars admission!

Homeschool this week

Homeschool this week - The Crabby Adventure

Abby has had a lot of fun this week learning about all sorts of sea life. Since she found the crabs on Cape Hatteras she's really enjoyed finding out more about oceanography and marine life. She has also enjoyed mini golf at pirate cove, lunch at hard rock cafe; Underwater 3D adventure at Imax theater; trip to Aquarium, learned about swordfish, sharks, prehistoric creatures.

Some of the things she's learned are:

Crabs - There are lots of different kinds of crabs (beach crabs, hermits crabs, spider crabs, land crabs, over 45,000 types), each have 8 legs plus 2 claws and water crabs have gills so it can breathe underwater. Baby crabs are call zoeas and are only as big as a flea, then they turn into a megalops which have large eyes, then finally finally into an adult crab. Crabs molt about 27 times in their life when they outgrow their shell.

The biggest crab is the Japanese Spider Crab which has 8 legs as big as a man and 2 feeding claws, lives in the Pacific Ocean over by Japan, and are omnivores so they eat both fish and plants

Some vocabulary words: carnivore, herbavore, omnivore, invertibrate and vertibrate animals

Homeschool the past couple weeks

Language Arts

Book to Movie Comparisons:
- Nimm's Island - the book is very different from the movie
- Horton Hears a Who - compared with movie, discussed moral in book of how you should never let people make you doubt your beliefs, that you should take care of those who couldn't take care of themselves, and about believing in yourself

Reading/ Language
- 100 Book Challenge: 28 so far
- Phonics, rhyming words, antonyms, homonyms, synonyms

Writing:
- Postcards to Sarah, letter to Mema, typing on the computer


Math:
- Patterns with rubber band grid
- Measuring with centimeters, inches and feet
- Adding diameters

Science:
- Caterpillars, habitats, life cycle, cocoons
- Box Elder bugs
- Crabs, shellfish, ocean
- Time4Learning - Living vs. non living, all about Ants, all about Ardvarks

Social Studies:
- Peanut processing plant - factory tour to see peanuts from the farm to the bag
- Crab processing - workers show how to take the crabmeat out of the shell in a commercial fish market
- Election coverage
- Family traditions - pumpkin carving and fall dinner at Uncle Bill's farm

Geography/ History:
Maryland - C&O Canal, Canal Boats
West Virginia
Virginia - cotton fields, peanut fields
South Carolina - Cape Hatteras, beaches, islands, peninsulas, hurricanes, tropical depression, wind speeds

Cape Hatteras, Outer Banks, NC - BY ABBY

Cape Hatteras, Outer Banks, NC - by Abby

It was rainy and windy when we got to the Outer Banks. The wind was so much that you could actually fly! My dog Jewels, when we got to the top of the dune for ocean, she really flew! We couldn't even get to the ocean the first day because it was so windy and the sand was blowing so hard. There was a flood the next day - and oh my golly! it was big time windy and rainy, even more than yesterday, which was not so bad. We thought we were going to tip over in our camper when the wind was blowing so hard. We got to go down to the ocean today because the wind was coming from the other side and the sand wasn't blowing in our faces. The ocean waves were soooo big! They were about taller than my dad, which he is like 11 feet tall, and much, much taller than me cause I'm only 4 feet long! The waves were so totally awesome! The roads were closed from flooding and it was too windy to leave, so we had to stay here another night.

~by Abby Bennett

Junior Ranger Program - BY ABBY

The Junior Ranger Program was awesome! I got my badge for the C&O Canal. I had to do 5 activities. I choose color a picture, draw a picture of a lock and explored the lock in person, do a maze, find all the things at the visitor center, and looked for wildlife on the Towpath. I found an owl, a butterfly, and a bird. I also found a fuzzy black caterpillar which I thought a Wooley Bear, but it turned out to be a Gypsy Moth.

~by Abby Bennett