Field Trip to the Oregon Gardens

This has become an annual event for us and I am so glad I decided to do it again this year.
This year I decided to add a more organized activity to the mix by giving the boys a scavenger hunt to notebook as they made stops at the various activity stations. I found a wonderful full color printable scavenger hunt at The Taylor House blog. I printed copies half sized so they would fit inside the boys' composition books and add a pencil and crayons to their backpacks and off we went.

Cameron was excited to take his backpack and add his Gtuzy Gear straps just for the occasion.
We headed into the garden knowing that we would have at least 8 or 9 stations with activities to try plus exploring the garden. I knew we would likely run into some of our homeschool friends as well. My plan was to be to the garden by 11:00 and heading home by 1:45 at the latest. The idea being, that we would be there when our friends were there and we would be done before the local school let out as to miss traffic.
Ready , Set , off we Go!

The boys found a larger map to look at the figure out their plan. Since this was our third year attending this activity we already knew where most of the stations were located. We decided to only do the upper level activities in an attempt to combine our scavenger hunt and keep our timeline.

Nathan was very excited about the scavenger hunt and made a point to stop and draw in his notebook often.

Cameron found one of his homeschool friends and they checked out the insect station taking on the sorting activity to test their knowledge.  Watching Cameron do this activity reminds me that I want to print and laminate some sorting cards for various activities.

Nathan couldn't help himself, he surveyed the crossing  for several minutes before deciding he had to jump it.

Nothing but air!
He is such a dare devil, no fear!

This is just one of the plants we decided we want to find and plant in our yard. I'm dreaming up a plants unit study for the boys and maybe a landscape design project for them.

If you would like to see the rest of the pictures I took on our field trip, check out my Google+ album

.