Homeschooling in the 'Hood

Field Trip

There is a pause when I announce, "Oh, we homeschool," to those who we are meeting around town. The pause is enough to let me know I'm being studied; the recipient of that startling news is trying to figure out if there is something wrong with my kids, or if I believe in public education, science, or sheltering my kids to the point they haven't seen the inner workings of a playground. Through baseball seasons and soccer seasons we are meeting more and more kids that are involved in our lives but don't necessarily know us, and therefore I find myself quickly filling the pause, "Wetraveledforayearandwhenwegotbackwerealizedhowmuchweliketheflexibilityinourschedule." Phew. Done. Explained in one sentence. Our entire educational plan summed up sounding like it's because we like to stay in our pajamas. But...not really.

Climb On 

We can't stay in our beloved jammies because there is a school to get to (on Mondays), science class to get to (on Tuesdays), art class to get to (on Wednesdays), and nature class to get to (on Thursdays). Our time is filled with sports and music classes and climbing. I find myself on Fridays trying to cram in some classes and wondering how anybody even has TIME for school as I line up the worksheets for us to start on.

Fall Fun

Shifting away from a nomadic living experience that allowed us to learn wherever we were and finding ourselves in a house with no intentions of moving anytime soon led me to buckle down on some serious curriculum. We have Moving Beyond the Page, Teaching Textbooks, Math U See, VocabLit, and Life of Fred. We have start times of 9, breaks at 11 and 1, and tracking of grades. We have structure. And all that structure led us right back to looking at schools. If we were going to re-create a school here in our house, it honestly felt a little lonely. It felt non-productive and had us all yawning before our first snack. What is going wrong? I wondered as I contacted the local public school to see about a tour. Fill out these worksheets I instructed as I realized we were about 6 lessons behind schedule. "All of them?!?" the kids asked as I handed a small textbook sized sheaf to each. "Yup, we've gotta get through them, look at the calendar."

Marimba!

Recorder Time

Each weekend was coming and going with me wanting to go hiking with the family, and each weekend was coming and going without us being able to. Baseball and soccer occupied each day, work, chores, or plans occupied the nights and all I wanted was to be out and hearing the crunch of leaves as the golden and red colors surrounded us. I called a park day on a Tuesday and the kids and I headed for the hills. We explored a new park, went out for coffee and cider, and headed home when we wanted to. We read for a long a time that afternoon and we all ended the day feeling productive and engaged and it clicked. We learn SO much more when we are engaged than when we are following a checklist. Language develops during those read-alouds and fluency during our curl-up-and-read-the-favorites time. By getting supplies and actually building the buildings we read about we cement the information into our minds. By exploring areas we are already interested in, we are continuing our thought process rather than just inserting pieces of information that we don't really care about. My job as a homeschool mom is to make sure they have the building blocks for learning (HOW to read, HOW to write, HOW to do math) but it's not really my job to tell them what subject to apply that knowledge. This freedom to move within our curriculum has provided the shift we needed for our love of home education. By the time we went on the tour of the local school we had already fallen back in love with what we are doing at home.

Mini DC

I am somewhat certain at some point our boys will find themselves in a school again. I have no idea when that will be. We are no longer the Roving Pirates (though we still try to search out the fun), but we are now The Village School. A play on words due to our neighborhood's name as well as the fact that our kids are growing up in the proverbial village. Their education is formed from our network of classes and relationships with teachers, coaches, and family. Their school walls are invisible and their learning time is endless. All of these things provide flexibility in life and mind, and in that case, I can stick to our elevator pitch of homeschooling.

Valmont Bike Day

Calendars flip so fast

Oli's Happy Walrus

On the road, if I didn't capture the memories right THEN we would have moved on and the place would have been in our rear view mirror holding all it's memories until we landed in the next place and the mirror would fill with another. I had to write it as all of that was a once in a life time situation...we would never be floating on Flathead Lake with our 6 and 7 year old again. But here, at home, things are still happening so fast, but I can pretend they aren't. I can think of these kiddos as still my little ones that I get to enjoy for years to come, but when our 6 year old is the average size of a 9.5 year old and is only 10 inches shorter than me, it hits that these littles are not so little. Though they are young, the years too will pass and the less they will occupy my lap, calling for my attention at every moment to watch, watch, WATCH what they are doing, and I will be left with only wondering how their time is being filled. And so, let's recap. Just for myself, when I am sitting here with an empty house, not fighting to find a quiet hour when I can, and I can point my screen to this little blog and remember the fun this time has been.

On a bike ride in Longmont

It is May. The end of May. That means we got home seven months ago, and yet we are still transitioning. We moved into my parents house in October. We moved to Gunbarrel in November. We spent Jan-Feb in Florida. We moved back to my parents house in April, and now we move home tomorrow, the first week in June. Since we have been home we have taken two trips to Arizona, one to California, and I've gone to Florida twice. We have visited friends, watched the Rockies train, sat in the ocean, and relaxed around pools. We have lost one of our dearest friends in the form of a big black dog. We still miss his "kissing spot" between his eyes and miss his smell, always of a puppy. Through all of this, we have had school. Each day that passes I am more in love with our decision to keep homeschooling, even last week, our last week of 1st and 2nd grade as the final lessons draaaggggeeeeed on for all of us because we'd much rather be doing something, ANYTHING than spelling words using these last "vowel teams" because in May, nobody cares if AW sounds like "aw" or "ow" and we certainly don't care if "aw" or "au" can be used at the end of a word.

Drop off at school

Living at my parents house is a little like living in the middle of a party. With my dad and Chris working from home and the boys and I schooling from home, the house rarely empties. There is always some kind of action going on in the kitchen or people coming up with ideas of what we should be doing. From backyard fires, to nerf gun fights, baseball games, bike rides, or just lots of chatter amongst ourselves, I am sure that moving out will feel a bit quiet, if not for us, certainly for my parents. Living a mile from our old house has given us plenty of time to catch up with our old neighbors which has been nice as it affirms our reasons for moving back into the house. The neighborhood is so small that the kids will now have the run of the place and there are plenty of friends to run into at the park for a game of soccer or a bike ride on the paths. Thinking of moving back in has the same sort of feel as landing after being swirled in a tornado. It is a safe landing pad that feels comfortable and stable after all of the moving we've been doing, and at the same time it feels like the end of an adventure.

Capture the Flag Pros

Through all of this, I have been continually amazed by the flexibility and adaptability of our boys! Some nights we have not known where they would be sleeping and by the time bedtime rolls around and we've found where they will be resting their heads, they are just as happy and able to sleep as if that was the norm. Through the trip Oliver would let us know "Well, this was a good day, but I still want to go home." That was about the extent of any unhappiness. Austin would choose to continue to live on the road and is always talking about the "next" time we do this road trip or different countries we think we need to explore.

My happy Oli

We started school in Montana, with Flathead lake as our backdrop. We took our back to school pictures around a picnic table as we cracked the books open and started doing work. Back then the boys were reading books such as Little Critter, concentrating on each letter as it formed with the next. Last night Austin was in the home stretch of finishing "Little House in the Big Woods". To witness this kind of growth, to see your kiddo self motivate and push themselves through lessons that they would rather not be doing, but come out the other side with greater abilities has been extraordinary. I can remember when the kids were babies and I would think about homeschooling. Or when the babies were nothing but fragments of my imagination and I would wonder about homeschooling. Or about when we were about to start down this road and I was nervous about homeschooling, and I wonder how that could be. How could I have thought about this NOT being a part of our lives? It feels so natural and fits in with who we are completely.

Enjoying Mt Falcon

This past weekend we drove to Morrison for a hike. We drove right to the area where I used to take the kiddos so often, Tiny Town. I started thinking about how often I used to drive those roads, the hour long commute, the picnic we would have at Bear Lake after, just the boys and I. I would see their sleeping heads buckled in their carseats as we headed home in the afternoons and how that was so "us" and as my heart seized up I wondered when did that not become our routine? One summer I probably just thought that the boys were too old to enjoy it and stopped going, and then they were out of carseats and booster seats and now the bike rack is always in our rear view mirror as we head out for the trails or parks and my heart loosened as realized I lost the routine with the babies, but we have kept "our" routine. These boys and I, we are still doing our thing through all of this adventuring and exploring and that feels right.

Favorite hiking buddy!

And so, it's off to the next adventure. As we ready ourselves for our next move, we are getting ready for our next routine. One of summer and pools and camping. Of friends and hikes and bikes. But we are also in the middle of supporting Chris, who is bringing our family on the next adventure of self employment. A dream he's had for years is now falling into place, if somewhat erratically due to Gary's health and the state of the properties. He has a challenge in front of him that will require us to support and help him along the way, but I know our team of four is good at adventures and support and challenges, so instead of it being "Chris' work" it feels a bit more like a family adventure. One that will have us saying, "where has the time gone?" in a year from now as our routine has once again shifted.

The love of learning

The boys are playing lego's, which they have been doing for the past two hours. Now they have the Story of the World playing over the loudspeakers as they play which is talking about the creation of South Africa and the politics of race that went into the government. In a little bit I will let them know that it is time to "start" school. "Noooo!" they will protest as they don't want to put down their latest creation, but we will indeed gather around the table and begin.

"The sun is in my heart
It warms me with it's power
It wakens life and love
In bird and beast and flower"

That will begin our day. I think it is a sweet opening verse and it brings us together every morning, uniting us in a lovely approach to the day.

We move into looking at our calendars and then our maps. This lasts anywhere from five minutes to twenty depending on what we start talking about before we move onto math, or our math book portion, of Life of Fred. I read one chapter and when it's over, "Noooo! Read another!" they will protest as we love the funny little world Fred brings to our days. We work with math manipulatives, which they love, and do our math minutes (a worksheet) which they love to check over.

Next up is typically a story or a poem. We read it, talk about it, and sure enough, "Noooo! Read some more!" they protest as we start to draw a pictorial representation all comparing what parts of the story we chose to draw. They write a paragraph (Oliver, three sentences and Austin, five) and present them to me and one another. I read their paragraphs saying the words they meant to write, and then they love for me to read them the way they actually wrote them as they find their own words hysterical before editing and talking about the different parts of a sentence, correct punctuation, and catching common spelling mistakes.

"Can I read first?" "Okay, you can...but I get to tomorrow..." This starts our read aloud time when we all get on the couch and they bring over their favorite books. They read, the reader getting to sit closest to me and the other on the other side if they choose to listen. Austin also has spelling words to study and his cursive to practice. We do letter blends that we make up words for and spell correct words for in their writing books.

On Thurs. and Fridays we bring in social studies and science "Do we get to do chemistry?!?" Oliver consistently asks. We use workbooks on Fridays rather than long stories together. Sometimes we bring out other books we have on the subjects...architectural books to look at buildings of the societies we are studying, animal books to talk about the nature observations we've talked about. We bring out our Animal Food Chain game, Bananagrams, or play simple card games.

These days, they are some of the simplest and most peaceful I will ever remember with these two. I would love to say that the above routine has resulted in an explosion of knowledge, that the boys are flying high in literacy and I just can't keep up with what they know in math, but the reality is we are much more main stream than that. We talk about the same mathematical problems for a week during our manipulative time. Austin's reading is most likely behind his peers if he was to go into a school. They like writing, but spelling is still very much based on phonetics and many times u's take the place of a's and w's fill in for u's.

What is undeniably exploding is their love of, and confidence of reading, of learning. This is absolutely thrilling to be a part of. I can't tell you how many times we've been out for a day on the way home they say, "I just want to get home and curl up with a book." After watching friend's who have children who can read chapter books by the dozen and knowing I was the same at a young age, this road to reading has been perplexing to me, though not that concerning as I see such desire and progress. We have brought out some Little Critter books along with Berenstein Bears and the boys LOVE them! It had me remembering some of my favorite times as a girl...a big stack of books next to my little foam chair, sometimes with a little snack on my lap and endless amount of time. Just because I could read chapter books, I still loved reading picture books, finding the little hidden treasures in each page, exploring each illustration before turning a page, and now I get to relive that thrill through the eyes of these boys. They pour over their Highlights magazines, Little Critter books, and Peanuts comics. They giggle and share what they read. They negotiate who gets what book in the car, and they believe they are good at it!

Austin told me, "Spelling is sometimes hard for me, but I'm a really good reader." "Yes, honey you are," I say. "You are a good reader, Austin, but I read faster than you." Oliver says. "Yes, Oli, you read faster than me, but I read more than you." There is no competition. They compliment one another in their achievements as well as feel pride over their own. They are great readers because they love to do it. Because they want to do it. Because they love books so much that their free time is usually filled with a book, if not legos.

"Mommy, I must have gotten my reading gene from you," Austin tell me as he knows reading is one of my favorite past times before continuing, "I like that, and I also like that I didn't get a texting or facebook gene from you." He's smart, and he's funny.

This love and excitement they have for the lessons we are doing is something I am nervous to see disappear if they go back to school. I would love to think that school would do nothing but build that sense of success and confidence up, but in reality when one is in in a room of 25 rather than 2, weakness as well as strengths will realign themselves and I'm wondering if that would take away from, or possibly add, to their learning experience? Will they keep their love of learning as their lessons become more textbook and less literature based? Will the different reading groups help or encourage? I'm not sure. We have such limited experience (yet a positive one!) in a traditional school, but now that we have such beautiful days that I KNOW are working, I am reluctant to get fully on board with the kiddos going back to school, Chris being even less so. However, that is still the plan. The kids say they want to see what it's like, though not this year. We fully support it verbally towards the boys as I want them to feel nothing but excitement if that is the shift we take, and it would be exciting! But, we'd most definitely be losing out on these magical days of ease, curiosity, and learning that are taking place at the moment. These days that we've learned to love so much.

Sequim, WA where the air smells like lavender

Blueberries for Boys

I was hungry. We had just spent the past hour in a bookstore and after making our selections we headed out in search of a place "like a coffee shop, for muffins and food." We are professional coffee shop people. We found a delicious place a couple of doors down with an excellent lunch menu. It was 1pm and the kids had eaten. Austin had had lunch while I read with Oliver, and Oliver had when I read with Austin and I...hadn't. It's typical for me to forget to eat and then have hunger come roaring into my belly, so, we are professional coffee shop people. This place seemed great, but no muffins or quasi-healthy food was there for the kids, it was either health or triple chocolate cake, and we were on our way out to try lavender ice cream, so we left with my mouth drooling.

We started driving. I was so hungry. Hungry where I couldn't think in logical steps and passed two great looking coffee shops because I could not figure out a way to cross traffic and park. The effort of putting on a blinker too much, and I thought, my god, what will it be like if they go back to school? I'll be able to grab lunch without thinking of everybody around me. My world will expand to 7 hour windows of time rather than the 20 minutes or 2 hours we operate in right now. Almost 8 years of full time parenting has been great, but what will it be like to have space? We ended up at a glamorous Safeway where I chose a bean salad and Oliver got himself some hard boiled eggs.We grabbed some hoagies for our picnic hike in the evening and sat outside at a crumby table.

After dropping the dinner off at home we headed out to the lavender farm and on our way we saw a sign for berry picking. We pulled in to see what that was like. It was nice, so we grabbed a box and hiked out to the orchard getting sprayed by sprinklers along the way. We checked out the black berry bushes where they were just turning to ripe and popped a couple in our mouths. We went down to the short blueberry bushes that looked like they were all picked over and then found the middle height blueberry orchard which was like striking gold. "Mama! I like this! This is fun! I didn't know it would be like this, can we stay for a long time? Like a WHOLE hour?!" Their enthusiasm exploded. I know it probably sounds dramatized to have two boys squealing over blueberry bushes as if we ended up in Disneyland, but that's exactly what it was like and I found myself laughing along in surprise, carried on by their pleasure. We picked and talked and the boys imagined a world where they are farmers, "we would even save on gas money to the grocery store because we'd just be riding around on our horses!" Austin told us about how America was named for "Americo Vespucio, a Portugal merchant who had fumed when Columbus sailed before him. He worked for a nobleman and more people learned of Americo's travels than Columbus', but some people wanted to call the new land "Columbia" and do you know where Portugal is? It is a little peninsula off of Spain but stayed independent." Oliver loved finding the "mother loads" but thought we should call the big bushes of berries the "daddy loads" and kept slipping into a world where we owned a farm house with chickens, lots of blueberry bushes, and a baby goat. When we finally got hot and found ourselves all sitting around the box in the middle of the orchard eating rather than picking, we headed back in and drove to the lavender farm, ice cream well deserved. We sat on a porch and ate our lavender ice cream, sipping our lavender lemonade, and talking about the farming practices of growing flowers and what other plants we all eat. We left happy, and as we climbed back into the truck a note of sadness crept into me and I thought, my god, what will it be like if they go back to school?

Gorgeous farm trees

HS Elem. 2015-2016

"Hey Austin, who was that guy who wanted all of their followers to be under one religion because it's easier to rule a population that all believes in the same thing?"
He has to take his headphones off to hear me..."Ummm, that was Clovis."
"Thanks...what was he? A prince? A king?"
"He was a king...the king of France."

Right. Thanks.

Austin has the first three volumes of The Story of the World and cannot stop listening to them. Yesterday we had a 9 hour travel day with 7 of those in the car. That is all he did. Last night, after he helped with parking, setting up and walking the dogs, we found him in his bed, headphones on, listening again. And again this morning. This is one of the curriculum packages I purchased last year and it's the one Austin clearly loves the most. Our first day of school is tomorrow, but these stories have been going all summer.

Study time

I have been getting us ready for the upcoming school year and I find myself getting so excited. The second grade curriculum of Oak Meadow focuses on ancient people and society's which is right up our alley. We love reading stories and most of what we do is literature based...Oak Meadow, Story Of The World, and Life of Fred are our main curricula. We use other things as they make their way towards us reading tons of Little Creature books, Pete the Cat, and other stories we fall in love with. We have a cool book about architecture books that focuses on the buildings of the past that allow us to feel like we are living in the lives we are reading about. We have books on science experiments (Oliver's favorite subject!) and again, I am leaning towards a literature based science program, Sassafras, as those really capture the kiddo's attention and they love to do extended projects based on the characters they are reading about. The hard part is figuring out how it will all fit in!

This year will go by in a flash, I am sure. We still aren't sure what we will be doing for the following school year and if the kids will be home or back in school, so all I can do is enjoy each of these days with them. I have gone through this process for so long...thinking it was my last year with Austin home full time before pre-school, and then the same process with Oliver. Watching Austin go off to full day Kindergarten and sitting and crying at a coffee shop while two friends bought me coffee completely understanding as they'd done the same with their son the year before. Again, I find myself gearing up for the final year with them and I feel the old familiar pangs of sadness and nostalgia mixed with excitement and curiosity at wondering what is to come.

Diplomas All Around

As the students of Burlington, VT walked around in their graduation caps and gowns, our two quietly progressed to 1^st and 2^nd grade. We wrapped up the year with a week of focus on their own favorite books, How To Train Your Dragon for Austin and a Magic Tree House for Oliver. They took some placement tests, did a recap on the geography they learned, and drew their final self-portraits. We rode bikes to meet Chris for ice cream and we declared the school year “over.” Only to purchase their summer work books, start reading from their math curriculum, science chapter books and pick out some easy readers from Barnes and Noble. Like most of our friends, our kids will continue to learn throughout the summer, but the routine will be slightly different and I wanted to provide a sense of completing one year to be able to welcome the next come September.

Last day

It is hard to wrap up our year of homeschooling in a blog post, as it doesn’t really feel like anything has ended. Our homeschool is life school, or life is homeschool. We read books, we write things down. We study things we didn’t know before and we add. There is no real agenda besides to explore things that interest us and for me, to push the kiddos to expand on the basics such as reading and comprehension as we learn throughout the day. We did use some purchased curriculum to help start us off and we still turn to those on days that we find ourselves hanging around the camper, but so often there has been subtractions of those and additions of reading materials related to what state park we are in, the map in front of us, or magazines along the way. We play cards for a lot of our math and a deck now accompanies us in my purse for when we find ourselves at a coffee shop or out to dinner. In an effort to capture the year, I’m going to break it down in categories that are mostly asked about…What curriculum do you use? How do you feel about socialization? Do you want to kill each other at the end of the day (or as I view it, How do you teach when your kid has had enough?) and What will you do when you get home?

Side note, these past two paragraphs have taken forever to write as both of the kiddos are curled up with books and I constantly get questions and comments such as “What does a-n-o-t-h-e-r spell?” “Did you know that the anaconda does not lay eggs?” So summer school is in session!

Oliver
Beginning of the year portrait reads:
"I like having my own school bag and my crayons and horse camp and looking at phones. I like doing science experiments and playing at birthday parties and turning lights off and on and sleeping and having brownies. And chocolate chip cookies and lemon bread and frappacinnos without coffee and throwing pencils. I like watching television and playing video games and riding skateboards, bikes, scooters, plasma cars, crazy cars and the tractor. I like playing with my brother and playing inside and snuggling with you (mama) and fighting with my brother. I like doing home school and I'm lucky to go on a year long road trip. And lighting candles and going in campers and tents."
End of year portrait reads:
"I like bike riding, swimming, playing in waves, money my family, and me."

Academics

As I’ve written before we purchased a couple of curriculum packages. Oak Meadow, Life of Fred, and Explode the Code. Later I went to Barnes and Noble and purchased a math work book for each as well. These we used somewhat consistently throughout the school year. We definitely did through CA and the beginning half of the year as we were staying in places longer so we could still get out and explore as well as sit and do school in the mornings. As we started staying in places for shorter amounts of time, those plans stayed on the sidelines and we would use them once or twice a week and be out and about the rest of the time. Life of Fred is a story based math program and you are supposed to read the first three books while doing the activities and then re-read them as a story before going on to the next three books. We were able to go through the first three books twice and are in the middle of the fourth. I had purchased this curriculum thinking I’d read it during the car rides, but that hasn’t happened. We sort of stopped reading it as our days became less structured as it’s really a story that is meant to be read consistently to get the most out of it and we will do the next three as stories through the summer as it is pretty fun to read!

To track the kiddos progress I used an online assessment test. I don’t put a ton of stock in these online tests, but I wanted something to measure progress that wasn’t just my observations as this was our first year and I had not quite learned how to trust the process. For what it’s worth, Austin’s (just finished 1^st grade) reading skills were at a 1^st grade level the beginning and middle of the year and 2^nd grade level last week and his math was 2^nd grade level the beginning and middle and is now at a 3^rd grade level. Oliver (just finished K) started reading at a 1^st grade level and is now at 2^nd grade level and his math progressed from K to 2^nd grade. I think I like to see the progression, but if I hadn’t seen it I’m not sure I would be concerned as it is clearly evident throughout the days that they have progressed and I completely trust the process of homeschooling by now.

Austin
Beginning of year portrait reads:
"I really like to long board. I also like science and army. I like to play hide and go seek and I also like reading."
End of year portrait reads:
"I like bike riding, swimming, snorkeling, playing in waves, turning 8, and nature."

Socialization

To me, this is pretty much a non issue. I am not sure if any child of mine would not be exposed to socializing and sometimes too much! We constantly meet new families while out and about. We have dinners, take walks, go for bike rides, play in parks and have even visited their homes for a weekend. We meet up with all of our friends and family around the US and have been lucky enough to have some visits from our loved ones back home who are able to meet us places.

Beyond friendship though, I think of socialization as the ability to communicate with people outside of the family. This was something I was concerned about as they do not have a teacher to be asking questions from, taking directions from and negotiating a day with. We have searched these types of interactions out in our visits to museums, restaurants and our state and national parks. I have strongly encouraged the boys to start asking questions wherever we are and they are also expected to order for themselves when we go out to restaurants. This clearly comes easier to Oliver, but Austin perks up in strange places with his confidence to use a strong voice and I found him chatting to the lady in our grocery line today about our trip and how they home school.

Graduation

Constantly Together

This part of homeschooling has completely captured my heart and has blown me away. This is the reason I glow with the knowledge that next year we will be homeschooling and when I think about this trip ending I know it will be fine because we will still be able to continue with our time together. Our adventures won’t end and we will find new ways to learn and explore with one another.

I know too many great teachers and our kids live (at home) in too good of a school district for me to ever think that they would not be getting a great education in our schools. We are fortunately surrounded by wonderful kids who are breaking records when it comes to academics in our public school system and I routinely see friend’s children plowing through chapter books that they cannot get their hands on fast enough. Our schools provide gardens for each classroom, or special summer programs, travel programs and have great parents with incredible degrees all right there backing up our little future graduates as they encourage their little ones to have a love of learning. I know that this is my safety net if we find ourselves in over our head, and I love having that there. But it’s not the same, for me, as living and learning beside the kiddos.

By working together every day all day I have been there to see the struggles and accomplishments and that is something I'm not sure if I'm ready to give up. As the boys have learned to read we sit together and I have learned what silences mean they are working things out in their heads and feel the silences that mean we have reached the end of our lesson. I see the stooped shoulders as a new concept is introduced and have seen the slow rise in their posture as they grasp it and am at the receiving end of their smiles as it all clicks into place. I love our read-aloud times and the question for “just one more chapter.” I love learning what interests the boys and seeing how the same topic can branch off into different areas for each boy. I love Oliver’s constant questions on how all of our lessons relate to people and Austin’s in how they relate to scientific facts.  I love seeing them work hand in hand, pouring over new books or figuring out how an art project should develop. They are the first to say “good job” to one another or to call me over to see what the other has created. We have not really had any conflicts when it comes to learning as when something isn’t working (such as spelling words) we talk about a different approach that would work and still accomplish the goal of learning to spell (writing sentences in a first/second draft approach) or with Oliver who hates when I read a word for him, I am able to sit quietly until he asks me for help. Our school system has been a little of an experiment for our family. I entered into the year having a good idea of what I thought would work, but with a flexible attitude knowing that when you only have two students, lessons are pretty easily adjusted to fit the needs of everybody at the table.

When people ask if we are ready to run away from one another, the answer is just simply, No. I want to soak this year up and experience it again and again and when it hits me that we might be able to continue on living like this when we are back home, the stress of only having one year fades away. I can only dream that the closeness that these two have found during this time of living and learning with one another will continue on if we move away from this life in a bubble. This all brings me to…

The Future

We know that next year, for Austin’s 2^nd grade and Oliver’s 1^st, the kids will still be home with me. We will be moving back to CO in November and then renting a home that is outside of our school district. If we do actually find a farm house in Erie, there are three different public schools they could end up in and we haven’t discounted the public Montessori charter school or the schools in the neighborhood over from us. Because there are so many options, and our living situation will not be determined until the following school year, it makes no sense to start at a school mid-year. By summer, I hope we know more of what our area has to offer. I know we will stick with Oak Meadow and Life of Fred. I also think we will become involved with our public school’s one-day-a-week school for homeschool kids. We will take advantage of the CU science classes that are offered to homeschool kids and hopefully take a course at the Laughing Coyote Project or Shining Mountain Waldorf school that both offer homeschool classes. Each boy will choose an instrument and a sport and those will be added to our weekly schedules. I’m hoping that by having 6 months of homeschooling in CO we will feel confident in moving forward with a decision. 

Austin says right now that he wants to homeschool next year and go to school the next year. Buuuut maybe homeschool. But maybe go to school if his class gets a garden. But maybe homeschool if we live on a farm... Oliver, who would follow Austin to the moon, says he wants to go wherever Austin will be.  I love the creative mixes of traditional school and homeschool scenarios they come up with as they try to navigate the best of both worlds. Their voices count in our decision making process, so it is interesting to keep those conversations going and seeing the many different ideas they have.

And that’s where we are. When we started this year I had questions if we were doing the right thing educationally. We’ve moved on from there and now I think that I might just have something unique to offer my two little munchkins, and that’s a pretty good place to be.  

NContinued

A month has passed. A month has passed?!? It is crazy that a month has passed, and in that time, two more states.

The rest of North Carolina was spent exploring the downtown area, visiting the Children’s museum, eating at some cool little places, and taking a road trip to Durham for a day. Durham was special as I visited with a girlfriend of mine who I have now known 25 years. She was the little sister of one of my best friends and we played Barbies in Barbieland (their basement), roller skated in Barbie skates (our basement), sold painted rocks on sidewalks and attended one another’s birthday parties, graduation parties and are now hosting baby showers with each other. Because Kristy and I were the furthest apart in ages in our group of two sisters, we have mostly known each other through our sisters, but I was so excited to go see her and see how her life has developed since we danced to Greece Lightning in our (front) yard. In leotards. Her life is developing very nicely.

Kristy is a sporty, fashionable Einstein who graduated Valedictorian from our High School’s IB program. She sailed through undergrad in 3 years to get to her dream, going to Vet school. She is a young vet who loves working with horses and has done so in the fields of Kentucky and Dubai. She also spends a couple of weeks in Nicaragua the past couple of years volunteering on their horses. She has a lovely horse named Paddington who she subjected to being a mock patient of our boys for a day as we did a mini vet field trip. Kristy let the boys listen to Paddington’s tummy, heart and check his teeth. They watched him get a shot and then groomed him until all traces of dust were wiped from his very shiny coat. She then let them ride him where Austin told me, “I’m shaking because I am so excited and a little nervous, but mostly just excited!” She let our boys fall in love with horses all over again and she showed me the special bond people talk about when they have Horse Love. She made me want a pony, but only if she would move in and take care of the creature as I am still mostly skittish around those wonderful animals.

Kristy then had us meet up with her handsome Einstein husband whose life ambition is to find answers for neuro cancers and has the full ride scholarships to Duke and Stanford to back him up on those dreams. He dyed Easter Eggs with the kiddos. We then all packed it up and strolled through the Duke Gardens and had ice cream.

North Carolina, it was fun. We were sad to leave as Charlotte was a fun place that we wished we could see more of, but alas, it was time to head back down to Charleston, which turned out to be a fine decision!

Coastal Georgia

A couple of years ago I wrote this post while we were vacationing down in Nicaragua. In short, it describes the peacefulness of living life moment to moment and not having much else to do. Quite by chance and without setting out to do so, we have created that life here in the US. Back then I didn't think that was possible.

We are currently in the Golden Isles of Georgia. Warm weather, miles of trails and a couple of lakes surround us as at a camp in a regional campground (which I highly recommend). The town of Brunswick is not huge, but it offers a public library with a large children's section and a couple of great places to eat (Tipsy McSways, Indigo Shanty and The Southern Table have all been fantastic). The time change happened last weekend and it is nice to say that it didn't have much of an effect on us this time around as our lives are already inline with the sun, not the clock. We wake later and go to bed later and there is no stress over the fact that we will not be up until 8 as there is no place to go, no schedule to follow. I speak, of course, for the kids and myself. Chris is still operating on Colorado's time zone which time change or not, is just a hassle, but one that allows for this life on the road and one that doesn't seem to bother him all that much.

We have made it out to some of the great places to see around here such as the Turtle Hospital on Jekyll Island, the lighthouse on St. Simons Island and the Okefenokee Swamp. The kids have enrolled in a homeschool gymnastics class and we had visitors which kept us happily entertained with stories and coffee and of course, we've been doing home school.

It is safe to say that our homeschool these days looks quite a bit different than it did at the beginning of this trip. Today for example had the kids start off the day with a new craft kit that kept them busy from 9 until around 11:30 which is when they turned to their toys and have created villages across the camper of Iroquois families as they are loving the series of The Indian in the Cupboard. Playtime lasted until 1:30 when we came together for their writing assignments. Oliver dictates to me a journal and we talk about the different parts of writing...the who's, what's, where's and why's and Austin is doing a standard 5 sentence paragraph on sea turtles.  The loggerhead's for accuracy's sake. After that we got our Main Lesson Books and studied the differences between the Iroquois nation and their enemies, the Algonquins. They are back to playing and we will get together in a bit to focus on math.

My friend from home set me up on a date with one of her girlfriends that lives out here and I had a (much needed) night out with a funny charming southerner that left me laughing all night and looking forward to the weeks that are coming up. We have about another week here in southern Georgia before we head North to SC where we will be camping with some of our close friends who we haven't seen in a long time due to their move out East and we can't wait to have all the kids together. That will kick off a couple of months being surrounded by friends and family and in fact we will not be on our own again until the middle of June thanks to some friends who love to travel and our upcoming Dominican Republic trip in May! It is exciting to think about having friends around and a social life that exists outside of our little group of 4. It will be the best of both worlds, the life of simplicity and enjoying each day for what it brings as well as evenings gathered with others to celebrate what has been going on.

Tell me a story...

Have you ever wondered if there is a spider web that is stronger than steel? How about what the cousin to the giraffe is? If you have, I invite you to hang out with Austin for a day. He is full of facts. For months we would allow him to choose three animals out of his animal encyclopedia for his bedtime stories. As soon as he was old enough we took him to a special class on hippos at the zoo. The zoo used to be a favorite stomping ground of ours as we would head there sometimes twice a week. He would want to stop and read every sign, and we would. I have known that Austin is a fact lover, and yet, I haven't really recognized it so much until recently. This is one of the things I love most about homeschooling, the ability to get to know our children as they grow into people and stop being toddlers (the other is that we usually sleep in until 8 and bedtimes aren't much of a struggle because we won't be pushing to get up the next day).

Over the weekend we were visiting a marine rescue and research center in Gulfport, MS. There was a presentation going on in our group of about 20 people and the presenter brought out a turtle and Austin immediately called out, that's a Hawksbill! A couple of days later we were at a different marine rescue and release center in Clearwater, FL and we were attending a presentation with about 75 people. They were playing a game where kids would come down and tell about different parts of the dolphin's body after choosing the playing piece. I never thought Austin would want to go in front of the crowd, but there he was waving his hand to play. He was called and he marched to the front, introduced himself as Austin and chose the Melon piece. He put it on the correct part of the dolphin (the forehead) and told that it was used for the dolphin's echolocation.

I am not sure if Austin's love for stories was something he was born with, or if this was inspired by my dad who would tell endless stories for hours at a time; the storyteller and the story follower. Any which way, this boy of ours has one of the longest attention spans I have ever seen in a child. He sits and listens to his audio books for 3 hours at a time (during non driving days) and is upset when I say it's time for a different activity. My mom was worried on Christmas because the only thing Austin asked for from Santa was the entire set of chapter books of How To Train Your Dragon, and that was his main present while Oliver was getting things such as as a remote controlled kite and Baymax toys. I don't think it's a question anymore if Austin really meant it. He is hungry to learn and wants to listen to stories, act them out, draw them, and illustrate new stories that he comes up with while I write out the words. My only job is to keep providing the information, the stories, and not squash his desire to learn, which I do, when I ask him to read. I don't think this is a unique problem as it is pretty common that children do not want to read until later, however, it is a unique problem for me, who is trying to inspire a kid who will most likely be entering back into a school situation where he is expected to read. Yesterday we had a conversation about it, "But Mama, all of the books for my level reader are things such as 'Mag has a rag.' They are baby books." And they are. Why should he care that Mag has a rag? Why would he care if Mag has a rag and wants to play tag when his other book is about his favorite dragon in the world and conquering bad guys and protecting the Archipelago?

So, I don't push. I push the stuff he is interested in. Instead of him reading, we work on word families and read stories about word families and draw pictures about word families. We just purchased a history curriculum that is all about audio books and accompanying activities, The Story of The World. He loves it. His math book is a series of stories about a math professor named Fred who is 5 years old, he loves it. We were out to dinner a couple weeks ago with my mom and between the five of us at dinner we were ordering three desserts. Oliver was having one to himself and the rest of us were splitting the other two. As we were holding a conversation Austin interrupted and announced the rest of us would each end up with half of a dessert because if each dessert was split into 1/4s and if we each got two 1/4s then we would each actually end up with a 1/2. I considered it a pop quiz that was passed with flying colors.

This teaching/learning relationship isn't new to us, and yet it is. He is absorbing information faster than I produce it and right now for the most part it is all on me to provide it to him. In my eyes, it is so obvious that when I remove the stuff that squashes him down he soars and that is such a fun and rich experience to be a part of. I have all the confidence in the world that when he is ready, he will pick up books and get lost in them the way he does his headphones, my job is to help him have the confidence to do the same.

Explaining to Chris how the ancient nomads became farmers in the fertile crescent.

A Day In The Life of a trailer

7:15am: Wake up with both boys snuggling in bed. Chris has already fed and walked the dogs and scurried off to his work place for the day (here it is a coworking office). I send the kids out when they start wrestling and hear the Cheerios tip over and listen to the clean up before I come out.

7:30am: Oliver goes on his morning "laps". He has started running by himself in the mornings...not far, but it's something I support 200%!

7:40am: Start cream of wheat for Ollie and I, clean up, start coffee. Kids are playing outside.

8:30am: Walk to the camp laundry and start two loads.

9am: Hunt down kids who took off on their bikes. Request to be told where they are going next time. All walk back to switch laundry around.

9:10am: Start school. Calendar and map work always start our day. 

9:30am: Move into reading and writing. Today is all about the AD word family (dad, mad, had...). The story comes from our curriculum, Oak Meadow. Draw our accompanying pictures while having conversations with Mike and Nana. Next up is the Louisiana flag. We take advantage of our travels by drawing flags and studying different environments from where we have been. So far we've seen mountains, deserts, mountain tundras, woods, beach and swamp land.

10:20am: Walk over to the laundy and fold one of the loads that is finished. Both of the boys think this is super fun, so much so that Oliver has to run laps in the laundry room.

10:30am: Start science, a potato growth experiment. Hunt for sticks to put in the potato and set it up in the sun. We draw our pictures and make our predictions of what the potato is going to do.

10:45am: Start lunch. It sounds crazy, but we are all ready! Boys work in their writing and spelling workbooks while I make sandwiches and smoothies.

11:15am: Ourside playtime. Kids catch bugs and ask me to look up what they eat. Today they have black ants and earwigs. Some football ends in scraped knees and Austin takes Oliver inside to be bandaged up. They get out the first aid kit, wash the cut and bandage it.

12:05pm: back to the laundry to fold the second load.

12:30pm: We turn on an audio book (How To Train Your Dragon, book 10). We listen to it over our surround sound while I put away laundry and the boys take out one of their skeleton excavation sets. I make tea.

2:20pm: Math time! We gather round the kitchen table with snacks and read from our math curriculum, Life of Fred. We follow it up with a couple pages in the kids math workbooks and then play with our base ten blocks.

3pm: Time for showers! We usually shower in the camper, but if I want to get the kiddos and myself clean in one swoop we do mid day showers in the camp showers...then it's not too cold to walk back after!

3:30pm: Back to the camper for snacks and more of the audio book (yes. Going on to hour 3). While Austin can sit and listen to these for hours on end, Oliver usually needs something to do with his hands. Today we make paper airplanes. Sometimes I use this time to get stuff done, but for the most part I like to lay around and listen with the kiddos so we can talk about the different vocabulary words and themes throughout the books. That said, Austin has listened to some of these long chapter books 4 times, so then he puts on headphones while Ollie and I play games or Ollie does something on his own and I read my own book, chat with a friend or scroll online.

4:15pm: Take dogs and paper airplanes out for a walk.

4:50pm: We return to clean up. Fortunately the boys still think this is fun, so Austin vacuums, Oliver puts things away and I do dishes.

5:10pm: We all gather to read Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator.

5:30pm: Austin pops on his headphones and sits down to another story. Oliver draws and I start planning some upcoming travel.

6pm: I start dinner and hold conversation with Oliver who is claiming nobody wants to play with him. I catch up with friends and family on the phone and serve dinner  at the same time. Chris is working late tonight so no family meal this evening.

7:15pm: Feed the pups and take them out. Dinner is cleaned up and kids are flying airplanes and telling jokes. 

7:50pm: Chris gets home and grabs his dinner. Boys and Chris head outside with headlamps to play and take the dogs for a walk. Two minutes later I am consoling a hurt Oliver (again! Growth spurt?) I send him back out. I have a glass of wine and catch up on facebook.

8:45pm: The trio returns. Another snack before bed and then it's all about flossing/brushing/Jammie's and shenanigans. 

9:10pm: Kids are in bed, Chris starts reading.

9:40pm: Kids are asleep. Chris and I head to bed. Time for me to check my CrimeMap! In a camper, there is only so much room to hang out. In warmer weather we would sit outside, but inside its more comfortable to just be in bed than sitting side by side on the couch!

Tomorrow will be completely different! Tomorrow the kids and I will have the truck. We have plans on visiting the library, WW2 Museum, and City Park over the next week. The rhythm of the day is usually the same though...wake and start school around 9. Instructional focus for 2 hours, have lunch, explore and come back together for books and math. Chris is typically home around 6 and we have dinner around 6:30. Things are flexible though as that is what this year is about!

Sponges

When I am driving, I like to look at the map. Listening to somebody give me directions just stresses me out as I end up repeating the directions in my head and making a wrong turn.

This morning we found ourselves watching a World War 2 documentary thanks to my five year old who has been asking non stop war questions since we left the USS Midway yesterday. He can now tell you the premise for the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WW2 which exhausted all my knowledge without diving into books. "Just let me know if it gets to be too much and we will turn it off," I said. "Turn it off," he said when we saw our first dead civilian. We went on to watch a documentary on the Inuit and Austin has let me know that he is thinking about moving up there and becoming an Inuk when he moves out.


When I am relaxed about what they are learning or how they are learning, they learn. When I try to force it and say "read to me" and Austin's face scrunches up and he doesn't feel comfortable in his body and he starts twisting and turning and trying to look at the book upside down, learning doesn't stop, but it is much more painful.


Their minds remind me so much of a sponge, the sea kind. When they are relaxed and floating along information just passes right into them. They absorb and float on to the next thing. When I push and pull and the sponge is stressed, it's harder to get the information in and I don't think it has much staying power.

"I like when things are based in a story," Austin let me know. He was talking about our math program, Life of Fred, and listening to his audio books and Mike's stories and this book series that he reads from on my IPad. He loves to get lost in the story and retreat to a corner to listen. The stories continue in his head as he goes to lie down and comes back with questions over what we heard and how it relates to one another.

Oliver is building a blacksmith shop out of Legos right now. Detailing the fire pit, the water jug, and ways to pick up the metal pieces because they don't have wooden handles. He has a trailer to haul materials and I know he is thinking back to last Wednesday when my mom and I took the kids to Old Town. Oliver loved the live demonstrations and loves to get his hands on materials to play with. He can play with boats, or crabs or games all day and loves a good work book to write in. It's best when he is given this freedom as it's not as much fun for him or myself when he just sits and listens.

By teaching the boys, I learn about myself. I learn about Chris and I think we (the adults) learn to see strengths in our differences. When we are living in such tight quarters, I can't help but think that this is a really good thing. We realize some of us need to see so we can hear and hear so we can see. Of course, when nothing is working, we all love a good movie!

Home Is Where You Park It

Besides being a very classy window display, "Home Is Where You Park It" is also how many many people are choosing to live. One of these is parked down the lane from us and you cannot tell me that that isn't a house! I am pretty sure there are plenty of people in NYC that would be jealous of all that space, and yet it all folds neatly away into a 40 ft trailer that can be pulled to just about anywhere.

After San Diego we leave for Huntington Beach and then on to Sequoia. After that we think we'll hit Napa and San Francisco before heading for CO and the Holiday season. It is a bit surreal when Chris and I sit around talking about it all as it feels like life and also like a "permavaca" as my sister in law calls it.

It is mind blowing that there are so many people living like this. We walk around and we see full patio sets outside of people's rigs. They have lights outlining their "yards" or large river rocks building small walls. Their tags for the park say they will be staying for another month or two and then they pack it all up and head on out.

Now that we are a month in, people are asking how school is going, if we are keeping up with it, and if I think the boys are learning at the same rate that they would in their traditional school. The answer is, I don't know. I know they aren't learning the same things, but are they learning as much, I think so, I hope so.

We start our days by looking at a calendar and a map. On the calendar we talk about the seasons, the days, upcoming travel days and special days. We keep track of the moon cycle and the temperature. The boys write this all down in their own calendars so they each get to think about it. On the map we learn the states we've been in, the states around them, and the main landscapes for each state. They learn the bodies of water, the surrounding countries, and what that means to be a different country or part of the US. From there we move into reading/writing which is sometimes done by me reading a story and then them drawing a picture and writing a sentence (Austin does phonetic writing and Oliver copies my words) and sometimes it's by using readingeggs.com . I like this part of the day, and it is very important, but sometimes it feels like YAY! We got that done! Let's get moving! So far this week we have been able to

-play at some awesome parks,
-hike and talk about deserts vs oceans and where all of our water is,
-ride bikes to feed the ducks and talk about natural prey vs predators,
-swim :)
-play at the beach where we collect hermit crabs, limpets, and study anemones (which we then look up on the computer later and read about)
-check out the sea lions on the rocks and beaches, talk about the girls vs boys and their predators (the food chain seems to be one of our main topics)
and tomorrow we will ride the trolley into town where we will go to some boat museums.

When we started out we were doing much more school at home, but it's hard to sit in the trailer and do paper crafts when there is so much going on around us. It would feel like a lost opportunity to finish this year and talk about all the stuff that was so close to us but we couldn't do because we had to check off the school list and I know they are learning as we do these other activities. Through all of our plans we are talking about it all, looking at maps together and figuring where we want to go or talking about the hours in the day and figuring out how much more time we have. The boys help figure out tips, we talk about the personality traits of the people we meet and the boys have to report what time it is to me. Oliver lists off letters we see (he seems to be much more into reading than Austin which is interesting to me) and Austin corrects my directions as he is much better at orienting ourselves as we walk down the streets together. When I first started looking at home schooling I was scouring the Internet for advice. It is basically shouted at you from all sides (JUST TRUST THE PROCESS!) and now I am finding out what that means. It just works.


It's not always sunshine and Hallmark moments. Chris travels a lot, and that is hard on him that he is not with us living this life and it's hard on this mom who gets a bit edgy come 7pm! We have ants. I have been battling them with Peppermint oil, but I turned up the notch today as they seem to be hanging about in places that have nothing to offer them and that shows me they are just invading for the company and that is so not OK. Financially this has been a bit more that we had been thinking but being parked now for a month seems to help out in that department which is great or we would be headed back for my parent's living room and making ourselves comfortable. We miss our Colorado people. We have some really special relationships back there and it was the hardest thing to leave as we pulled away.

So, one month in and it still feels like I am a spectator in this whole thing. It is interesting to watch how it all unfolds. How the boys are sliding into this life and wonder what it will feel like next year when we are looking at the school system again. I think it has been an easy road for us so far because neither Chris nor I knew what to expect. We had no idea about homeschooling, working from trailer parks, or where we were going. We make up the plans as we go and figure out the days as we go and it all just seems to work out which I figure is a pretty nice way to live these days when "home is where we park it."