Precious Mountains in Homeschooling

Today was just one of those awesome school days where you are so pleased. We were finishing up everything and I was ending our unit on the planet Venus. He kids have enjoyed our work about the planets...it's always interesting and the kids are always full of questions. We had an experiment today to show about the patterns lava make when they come from a volcano. We had found out that Venus is full of volcanoes. Well, as we did this, Esther asked if there were any volcanoes in our country. Mount Saint Helen's immediately came to mind. So, I started talking about when it happened...I actually remember this event in history..and I was able to instantly pull up video and pictures of Mount Saint Helen's when it erupted in 1980. The kids were thrilled. They threw out a ton of questions...including my 14 year old who isn't doing astronomy this year, but was interested to hear what I had to say. It was an awesome, teachable moment. Which by the way, having the iPad at my fingertips does help with instruction at the table. Even so, with just the ability to pull up those images is crazy...at the drop of a hat they were before our eyes. Love these moments with my kids...when I get to introduce another great part of life to them.