Treasured Pearls: More of our Camping Trip

Monday, May 16, 2011

We took full advantage of our time at the campground and got in some homeschool Physical Education (bike riding and scooter riding)

We also did some Marine Biology! We found some Sea Stars (yes, they are different from Star Fish) that were dead and a couple that were alive.

And LOTS of hermit crabs!

And a few mussels.

And a jellyfish!

One of our camping neighbors managed to catch a Lemon Shark and proceeded to dissect it. The boys watched. The girls and I left.

We put some of the hermit crabs in a bowl with river water so we could watch them. I think the boys enjoyed this!

We all had a great time on our Marine Biology Field Trip!

Orphan Statistics

Inter-country adoption has decreased 59 percent from its high in 2004, due primarily to restrictions by sending countries.
81.5 million Americans have considered adoption. If just 1 in 500 of these adults adopted, every waiting child would have a permanent family.
Every year more than 23,000 children age out of foster care, leaving them without families of their own.
The average waiting child is 7.5 years old.
Last year, nearly 9,000 children were adopted internationally
Of the estimated 238,280 children who exited foster care during 2013, the median amount of time spent in care was 21.8 months.
In 2013, California and Texas were the two U.S. states with the most children in public foster care waiting for adoption.
As of 2013, an estimated 17.7 million children worldwide had lost one or both parents to AIDS. Most of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa.
The births of nearly 230 million children under age 5 worldwide (about one in three) have never been recorded, depriving them of their right to a name and nationality
http://showhope.org/9-stats-about-the-orphan-crisis/