Journal assignment: Draw and write about your favorite place to be.
Student: "Mrs. Swanson, what's your favorite place to be?"
Mrs. Swanson: "The beach!"
Student: "I've never been to the beach."
So, we spent the next week studying the seas and oceans chapter in our science book, and the day that it was supposed to be 70 degrees on Slaughter Beach in Delaware, we jumped in the car and drove about two and a half hours for the most fabulous and educational field trip I've ever experienced. (It edged out Colonial Williamsburg just a bit.)
It was actually 73 degrees, and we found just about everything we had been studying except for an albatross. (Hmmmm . . . maybe in the spring we could go to South America or Antarctica?) We found three different kinds of crabs (Slaughter Beach is a horseshoe crab sanctuary), seven different kinds of shells, whelk shell eggs, coral, barnacles, and some gorgeous colored pebbles. (Yes, I pick up pretty rocks. Then I varnish them so that they still look like they did when I found them.)
In the car down and back, we sang our scripture memory and program songs, practiced our Spanish, marked our maps of the eastern coast of the U.S. and Delaware, and finished our history story about Christopher Dock. On the way home, one of the students said, "Let's go back again in the spring." I think that's a good idea.
And to explain Jeff's title, he watched a clip of a crab migration and was telling his students about it. "They look like aliens!" he exclaimed. A student asked him how he knew what aliens looked like.
He replied, "Because aliens look like crabs." The student was confused. I told Jeff that he was using circular reasoning. He just thought it was funny.
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