Wordless Wednesday
park
2022-23 School Year–Week Twenty-Nine
We’re trying to get in a lot of outdoor field trips before the end of the school year since the weather is so nice…this week, it was a visit to two playgrounds ranked among the best in the St. Louis area by St. Louis Magazine, plus an old family favorite: Queeny Park, Watson Trail Park, and Vlasis Park:
Of course, we also had our regular work (although it is beginning to wind down). In algebra 2, Ladybug figured age and boat/current problems. I thought we had wrapped up thermodynamics last week, but there was more fun with the application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In history, she read about the Great Schism and Leif Ericson’s exploration of North America…next week is the Norman Conquest! She read a sestina poem in creative writing and identified its rhyme scheme. In literature, she read a section of Robin Hood Ballads.
Chickadee worked with measurement conversions in math and had and introduction to the metric system. In science, we started a chapter about dinosaurs, learning a bit about how they’re named, and what makes a sauropod different from a theropod. She finished her history curriculum for the year, learning about the end of the Western Roman Empire and the contributions that Rome made to the world that we still see today. We continued reading Smoke on the Wind.
Only three weeks to go, and right now, I have a fun field trip planned for each week!
Chickadee Thursday
On Monday, we had a special outdoors day, where we visited several parks…it was lots of fun!
At the Park
Yesterday we visited a new playground–Discovery Playground at Jaycee Park in St. Charles, MO. This is one of the coolest parks I’ve ever seen. It’s designed for children of all abilities, and has cool elements like roller slides, musical play, adaptive swings, and is fully accessible. While we don’t require accessibility features, having a child with special needs has made me appreciate parks designed to allow all kinds of children to enjoy themselves! There were also other features (like the rope merry-go-round and saucer swing), that I’ve never seen before, and were just really cool to watch the children explore!
Wordless Wednesday
Park Day 2013
Today was our annual-ish “Park Day.” We did this two years ago, and decided it should be a yearly event, but last summer was so hot, we never got around to it. Today was absolutely beautiful, so we got out of the house for some playing (at eight different playgrounds!), and a picnic!
Park stop one was at Creve Coeur Park. We found three different playgrounds at this one location (and one of them was a complete surprise, even to me!).
Playground one had a splash pad (or sprayground, or spray park…whatever you want to call it!):
Turkey tried to get Ladybug under this bucket before it dumped, but she’s pretty scrappy, and wouldn’t stand for it!
Chickadee wasn’t too sure of the swing at first, but she warmed up to it pretty quickly!
Ladybug got right to work on her monkey bar skills, which she practiced at pretty much every park we went to:
Moose liked these “rock, paper, scissors” spinners:
We also saw some evidence of the storm damage from over the weekend:
Playground two, still at Creve Coeur Park, with some completely different equipment.
This is also where we stopped for our picnic, since they have a fantastic pavilion:
It had an amazing view of the lake:
Playground three, again at Creve Coeur Park:
There was a cool braille alphabet and puzzle (which was on the back):
Plenty of new stuff to climb:
And a slide built for three, which was great for races:
We drove past the lake before we left, and saw just how flooded it is right now:
The fourth playground we went to was at Faust Park. This was one of the most popular stops we made!
More swinging:
Then Chickadee got to try something other than swinging:
Turkey loves rock-climbing walls:
After a stop at the mall (that was for me!), we went to Central Park in Chesterfield, which is always a favorite.
Even more swinging:
And bouncing:
We drove by “The Awakening,” which is always kind of weird to see.
And the fairly new Amphitheater, which looks really nice!
Playground six was pretty small, because it’s just a little park adjacent to the North Pointe Aquatic Center in Ballwin, and yet it was surprisingly popular with the children!
What I learned today? My children would rather climb on top of the monkey bars than swing across them!
Something else Chickadee could do:
The tire swing was a lot of fun!
This dog statue was very cute:
The seventh place we visited was Vlasis Park in Ballwin, and it is one of the best playgrounds in the area (I think), because there’s just so much to do.
Everyone wanted a turn riding next to Chickadee’s little sidecar…she was very amused about the whole thing.
We found another sprayground (even I can’t decide what I want to call them!). I’m always the most fun mom at any park, because I play in the fountains, too!
One last stop, at another playground we used to frequent way back when Moose was a baby: Millennium Park in Creve Coeur (back where we started):
All parks should have signs like this!
They’ve added a lot of stuff in the years since we were there last, including yet another spray park:
There’s a bonus playground 8.5 here…it’s within sight of the main playground, unlike the ones we played at at Creve Coeur Park, which are spread out quite far apart, so I don’t count it as a whole other playground. Still fun, though!
Bunny had fun with the telescopes and binoculars at every park that had them!
It was a great way to spend a beautiful day…hopefully, the children sleep well tonight!
The Castle Playground
Swansea Kingdom Playground at Schranz Memorial Park isn’t quite as awesome as the “Space Park” we went to, but the castle theme is still pretty cool! Our only regret was that the splash pad is “closed for repairs.” That was one of our favorite parts of this park, and would have been very welcome on a hot day like today!
In addition to the castle, there’s a “boat” to climb in and steer:
And even a “stagecoach”:
The Coolest Park Ever!
At the suggestion of a friend, we stopped at Deer Creek Park in Maplewood, MO, as part of today’s tour of parks. I thought the children might explode with joy when they saw the playground:
It was like it had been built just for our family–so fun!
Park Day 2011
Since Ryan had the day off today, (after working all weekend), we decided to get out of the house, and make a tour of parks in the St. Louis area. Some were parks we’d been to before and loved, some were ones we’d driven past and always wanted to go to, and one was a previously unknown park, that a friend said we needed to check out.
We also did a little shopping while we were out, stopping at Petsmart to look at all the cute animals, and WalMart, so Bunny could spend her birthday money. We even walked around the St. Louis Galleria for a bit, (that was a treat for me), and went to lunch at Seamus McDaniel’s while we were out, (and got Slurpees for dessert!). But mostly today was all about parks–we played at five different playgrounds!
Vlasis Park, Ballwin, MO, (this park has some sprinklers built-in, but for some reason, they weren’t working today, which was too bad, since it was so hot!):
We also saw some really cool sculptures at Vlasis Park. The turned with the breeze, and the flower actually looked like it was blooming. That’s art I can get on board with!
Central Park, Chesterfield, MO (this was a favorite park when Turkey and Bunny were very small, and Moose was just a baby–it’s been years since we visited):
Faust Park, Chesterfield, MO (this is a cool county park, which has an historic village, a butterfly house, and a carousel on the property):
Deer Creek Park, Maplewood, MO (it’s a spaceship park–what else do I need to say?):
Swansea Kingdom Playground at Schranz Memorial Park, Swansea, IL (the “castle park,” which also has an adjacent splash pad, but sadly, that was closed for repairs):
It was such a fun day, I think it will become an annual event. Next year, though, I think we’ll pick a cooler day to go!