Today we had Weather School with our homeschooling group. One of the local news stations offers this program to schools and educational groups free of charge. It's pretty cool. I nearly had given up, however, because the guy was 30 minutes late. Lovely.
When he did show up, things got a little nutty. There were probably 25 home schooled children there, ranging in age from 3-11. Duck, in his crazy way, found that the guy's tie was most interesting - and eventually, the meteorologist just took his tie off and gave it to Duck for the duration. I'm told that one of the mom's got a picture of Duck in the weather man's tie. Sheesh. I'm so proud.
Regardless, he was very receptive to the kids. He brought lots of fiber fill (like the inside of pillows) and gave some to each child so they could better understand 3 different types of clouds (can't beat hands on learning.) He answered questions and got on the floor with them. It was wonderful. Stealth and Duck and all the other kids learned lots (what is fog? what happens when there's severe weather during a football game? Where do you hide in a pumpkin patch when there's a tornado? You know, the essential questions of life.)
It was approaching 11:30 in the morning and he mentioned that he had to go back to the studio (about 15 minutes away or so,) for the 12 noon live news broadcast and he invited us all to go with him! UNREAL.
So, we all piled into our vehicles, carpooling when possible, and drove en masse to the studio. I couldn't believe it, but all these kids and their parents crammed inside the studio (not behind a window) and watched them do a live news broadcast for 30 minutes. This meant sitting still, being quiet, not running in front of any cameras and lifting up dresses or dropping pants. This is big time stuff for some of these small kids. Every single one of them (my two monkeys included) behaved better than I could have ever possibly imagined. We got to see the green screen that they use for weather, got to see the robotic television cameras move around the studio unmanned. We got to see the control room and the teleprompters and all that so cool stuff. And, after the newscast, the kids got to go back into the studio and check themselves out on the green screen. Hell, even the adults were impressed with that.
It was by far much much much cooler than anything I could have planned to teach them today. And it didn't cost us a dime (okay, it cost me the price of two ginormous cookies I gave the kids as bribes to keep quiet in the studio during the broadcast.) I'm so blessed to have my homeschooling group. I'm so blessed to be able to teach my children in this way.
And, should I ever be in a pumpkin patch during a tornado, I know what to do.
Way to go, Weatherman, you've just won 3 new fans.
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