Ueno Zoo

It is back to school for my little ones while Zombie is at summer camp this week. We had taken a very well deserved break after schooling through a PCS move and the holidays last year. All of us were a little burnt out so the last two months have been just relaxing time while focusing more on fun unit studies.

Squidward and Princess at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, Japan 2012

We began our "school" with a visit to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo after we dropped Zombie Boy off at the airport. We had a lot of fun and ended up spending 5 hours in the huge park. There were many animals and the kids loved learning in such a relaxed state. We rented little transponders that held an electronic map of the park and showed  educational videos of the exhibits we were passing. I loved that they had one on English that we could rent because it really did make our experience worth it as an educational field trip.

Those sure are some cute monkeys!

The maned wolf, the huge brown bear and the mouse holding station were favourites for us. The big bear even came to the window and Squidward was scared because he didn't realize how big they really were. In BC, our black bears were tiny compared to the huge Japanese brown bear!

Japanese Brown Bear

Maned Wolf

Holding the cutest little mice!!!

We also loved seeing the panda bear but it was very crowded and we could only see them behind glass. Ueno Zoo recently lost a six day old panda that was born in early July so it was very sad to see the memorials set up in honor of him. It was a great loss to the not only Ueno but zoos and sanctuaries worldwide. The kids wrote a special message to the baby panda and we hung it at the memorial site.

Great Panda

RIP Baby Panda

I even took a small lesson in origami! This man was so nice (and patient!) and the end result was the cutest little panda bear!

I have skillz, one of which would be the ability to look absolutely horrible on hot humid summer days in Japan :)

Holidays

Don't you just love the holidays? We had a very nice Christmas and New Year and I was so thankful to actually be together this year.

Josh was able to be home for Christmas Eve and Christmas again this year. Our last few years we have been lucky to be together on both days! We had planned to do Christmas in Disney this year and only give a few presents to the kids but we were still having some issues with PSD from our transfer so we decided on only a few good gifts. Thankfully a majority of the presents we were planning on giving had already been purchased prior to our transfer to Japan!

The holidays are over now and we are focusing on going back to school. I always wonder if other home schoolers take breaks during the holidays or just work straight through. Usually we work straight through- even during the summer but doing that allows us to take breaks as needed rather than being held to the public school system schedule. Due to our stressful move and the fact that we will be missing Josh for over half of the year, I thought it would be best to just take a rest to recharge all of our batteries. My children do not only learn Monday through Friday from the hours of 8:30-3:30 with pro days, week long holidays and exclusive learning only during the seasons of fall, winter and spring... we learn everyday during every hour! How about you?