Koteewi Park Field Trip

     I mentioned in my previous post that I hope to get the family out and about to someplace fun and interesting as part of our home schooling each week.  My current criteria for such outings is: within driving distance, free/economical, educational and mostly outdoors.  My goals for the outings are: driving practice for teens, airing out the children and complementing subjects in our home school studies. We had beautiful weather which was timed perfectly with our field trip plans at the end of week.  

    We have recently been studying Native Americans and also wanted to do our suggested Observation Walk for science. So we headed to nearby Koteewi Park. This sprawling park is about a 20 minute drive from our house, so we packed a picnic and set off in the late, late morning - thus giving time for one of the teens to join us.  The park has several, seasonal activities - archery, horseback riding, zip lining, snow tubing and walking trails. We've been to the archery center several times over the last few years and may be going back next month for a certain boy's birthday.  But this time we focused our visit on the small Nature Center and replica Native American Village.  

   

     As a bonus, after looking at different animal skulls inside the Nature Center, we were able to determine that a skull one of the boys recently found in the ravine in back of our house most likely belonged to a raccoon.  

This was a creepy fun find.  

    I began questioning my life choices whether or not our outing was going to be worth the effort of corralling children, finding shoes, packing a picnic bag, finding all the masks, and hand sanitizer, and water bottles, and maybe sunscreen, never mind the sunscreen, etc... but it was definitely worth getting out into the world for some fresh air, sunshine and a change of scenery. We enjoyed our time at the park and look forward to exploring other places of interest in the coming weeks.  

~ Dori