We went to a lot of museums! We went to Tucson Botanical Gardens, the Arizona State Museum, the Arizona Historical Society Museum, Tohono Chul Gallery, the T-Rex Museum, and the Flandreau
Planetarium. Art students went to the Tucson Museum of Art, photography students went to the Center for Creative Photography.
We saw animals! We saw animals at the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich farm, the Phoenix Zoo, the Reid Park Zoo, and the animal shelter. Students studied physics by going to the workshop for Creative Machines, a baseball game, a jet pack demonstration. Biology students visited the ERL Tilapia Lab, Agua Caliente park, and Desert Survivors nursery.
We saw earthquake faults, glacial canyons, and terminal moraines in the Sierra Nevadas.
The trippers who went on the Pacific Northwest trip saw more things than can be listed. They visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Seattle Aquarium, the Rock and Roll Museum, Hoover dam, The Evergreen State College, and the University of Washington. They saw giant sequoias, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Crater Lake, and the Olympic National Forest.
We’ve celebrated each other’s birthdays and gotten to know each other better as homeroomies by going out to breakfast (IHOP, Waffle House, Frank’s) or for ice cream, by going on picnics, playing in the snow on Mount Lemmon, having swim parties at each other’s houses, and going bowling and roller skating. Before Halloween, just about everyone took a trip to Buckelew Farms or Apple Annie’s to pick pumpkins.
Cold morning on the Nevada trip, 2008
We’ve looked for books at the downtown library and the U of A library. Both the middle level students and the primary level students picked out their own books to buy at Bookman’s Used Books. Vanessa’s classic literature class often went to Starbucks for a change of setting for their intellectual discussions.
Spanish students ate at Guadalajara Grill and La Candela; Japanese students ate at Sushi on Oracle; French students ate at Ghini’s; journalism students ate at The Crying Onion (and then wrote restaurant reviews). Metal workers visited the Sculpture Resource Studio to see what Kino graduate Ernest Espinoza is welding these days.
We saw most of the Arizona Theater Company’s productions: Hair, Enchanted April, Henry V, Somebody / Nobody, and A Raisin in the Sun. We saw flamenco dancing. The Science Fiction class went to the TusCon science fiction convention and to lots of movies. Lots of kids went to the Renaissance Fair. Primary students spent the day at Old Tucson and visited Becky at Sabino Canyon, where she’s a docent.
Every Wednesday, some students went to Casa Maria to help prepare lunches for people who are needy. Just about every month, Anna took a group of kids to Childrens’ Memorial Park for fun and keep the park clean.
Patrick’s dad took kids on a hot air balloon ride!
We took day hikes and night hikes and overnight hikes. We went to Romero Pools, Finger Rock Canyon, Linda Vista trail, Sabino Canyon, Pusch peaklet, General Hitchcock park, Montrose Canyon and pools. We camped in snow storms and sand storms. We went to Mount Lemmon at least eight times, to play in the snow and to picnic. We went fishing and camping at Patagonia Lake.
We saw cheese being made at the Tillamook Cheese factory and tortillas being made at the La Palma Tortilla factory. We went to Bisbee and to Sells, on the Tohono O’odham reservation. We shopped at Competition Hobbies for hobby supplies, at Marjons for ceramics supplies, at Safeway for food and supplies for the camping trips and hikes.
Both Spanish students and journalism students visited the San Xavier Mission.
The Creative writing class had a week-long retreat in the Chiricahua Mountains.
