Learning Tree Farms

One of the perks of homeschooling is being able to take advantage of the many educational opportunities available. Learning Tree Farms is one of those. A couple months ago, the older kids had a blast at this non-profit, free one-day seminar, learning about the Lewis and Clark exploration. Again on March 21st, as soon as we got back from our vacation, we were scheduled there again, this time for the War Between the States (or as it's commonly known, the Civil War). The boys call it the War of Northern Agression, but we will leave that debate for another time.

I am extremely impressed with Learning Tree Farms. The owner of Learning Tree International, Inc., David Collins, provides these one-day field trips FREE of charge for public schools, private schools and home schools. The kids arrive and are seated in a room that rivals any classroom in a university that teaches the latest computer technology. It features a $10,000 set up with two large screens at the front of the room, a podium with a projector and touch screen computer, all networked with the laptops on the tables in front of the students. Each student has a computer buddy they work with for the day. After an informative lecture featuring multi-media presentations, the students have an opportunity to compete in teams for the "hands-on" portion of the field trip, where they have games and a few mathematical problems to solve. Then they have a short time for the bag lunches, and continue the instruction/lecture and give some basic computer procedures.

Before leaving for the day, their assignment is to publish a newsletter about what they learned and what they did during the field trip. There is already a template in MS Publisher on the laptops, and the pictures the instructors have been taking during the day are uploaded and available for them to include in the newsletters. The students publish their newsletters, they are printed out, and they take them home to show what they have learned.

This is all on an actual farm, so while we were outside comparing the use of a Gunter's Chain to a modern tape measure to "survey" the distance between two trees during the Lewis and Clark field trip, some of their horses fenced nearby came galloping up to us. I was glad to be able to snatch this picture of them:


I hope to be able to scan in a picture of a sample newsletter when I have more time.