For Spring Break we went to visit family in Arizona. It was great. Except, we were missing a couple days of "school", since it was a Wednesday to Wednesday, instead of the originally planned Sunday to Sunday trip. I wasn't exactly concerned about it, except that with the parent partnership programs we're involved with we need to document our learning. So what to write down? Hmmm.....
So for school on the go, we went to the zoo and Grace wrote a summary afterwards. She learned about marsupials and mammals. There was more, but she really picked up on what the tour guide was saying about marsupials. Lena didn't learn anything at the zoo....she's 13. But we went to the Superstition mountains and a museum there and learned about the Lost Dutchman's mine and surrounding area. We went on a horseback ride through the Sonoran desert. The girls each got books about the area and "the west": Treasure Mountain and Daughters of the West. We checked out a ghost town, too, but it was a total tourist trap, not the real thing. Another day we went to mini- golf so maybe that counts as PE? We went to the state fair but I don't know how that could count for school. It was fun though! Other than that, they each had additional books from home they were working on constantly, including a Sudoku puzzle book. Grace isn't doing Sudoku yet- we'll keep an eye out for a good beginner's one.
Once we got home, we've done a lot of makeup work. Grace completed 3 math assignments today, for example. I felt a little guilty for not doing more while we were gone, but she's raced through her school work on her own. She used her experience at the fair in her Just Write assignment using the 5 senses. Lena is done with her musical she was in so she has more time to make up her online class work, and spent a lot of time over the weekend catching up in math for her part-time school. She's so funny- she just was reading over my shoulder and said "what? you count that for school? so are we unschoolers now or what???" Hey, I count it for school on the go, not regular every day school. I'm not counting the fair. And there were plenty of kids at the fair with their school groups....if they can go to the fair on a school day and ride the rides, we could probably count it for a field trip day, too. But we're not. They only missed 3 days of school and the time they spent reading and learning about things in the Superstition mountains probably covered that, especially with the zoo trip counting for Grace as well. Lena would be a little behind, but she's only homeschooling part-time, so I think we're fine there.
When we got home there was information from Colonial Williamsburg so Lena and I started getting back into planning that trip for Thanksgiving. I'm so excited for that! I outlined the Beautiful Feet Early American history lessons for each girl, and started looking at what we need to cover when in order to really make the most of our time there. I was trying to compare BF Early American with Sonlight's Core 3. Whichever we use, we'll need to have Jamestown lessons finished, and I would like to skip ahead or be finished through George Washington, in the off chance we'll have time to go to Mount Vernon. There is so much history to see first hand in Virginia. It's one of my favorite states, ever since I wrote a report on it when I was in the 5th grade. Grace will have her first state report next year. This is partly preparing her for that, as she sees the planning process and how we're gathering information from a number of sources to prepare for our trip. I'm considering using the "My First Reports" series for her. I saw some good samples somewhere online...I think from Hewitt Homeschooling. (
www.hewitthomeschooling.com) Rainbow Resource catalog has some of the series, but I haven't seen the state reports except at hewitthomeschooling. I think we'll use the Eastern United States set. It'll be a good starting point at least.
So in summary, to homeschool "on the go" out of state or on a vacation/field trip, I like to read a lot of related books, really experience what the place has to offer first hand (especially through living museums), and have the kids summarize what they did or learned that day. This time I only had Grace do it as a one-time activity on notebook paper. Other times I've had them use journals, but I get frusterated with the blank page or one-sentence days and feel pressured to fill it in with over the top experiences every day, which obviously isn't realistic.
We're trying to find balance. We tried lap books about a year ago on the trip to Phoenix (via Moab, UT), but they got into the decorations and didn't record hardly any information. So the books look cute but are not filled with much information. (Recurrent theme of too many ideas, not enough focus.) Lena was thinking about going back and filling it in, but we're not reliving that trip so she'll have to research it a little and find pictures on her own. She can handle it but I'm not sure she'll be motivated to do that still. I think she wanted to go back to some of those places and do some first hand research again. Right now she needs to focus her online classes and her part-time school work.
