Of course the first thing people ask me when I tell them we are taking our kids around the world is “are you going to teach them yourself?” with a tone somewhere between “are you insane” and “thank god that’s not my problem”. I usually give a pretty flip response that we are going to keep them up with their maths and they will be keeping daily journals but other than that learning will take care of itself. But in truth I’ve been researching the hell out of home schooling and vacillate between being worried about keeping them focused enough to maintain the bare minimal amount of work and worried that I cannot stop myself from piling more on! It is going to be hard to be the one responsible for the discipline day in and day out, especially when I might not be particularly interested in doing math that day anyway.
On the other hand, this is just a year, we are not yanking them out of school forever and they are still in relatively early grades and able to make up things pretty quick. So the other side of the coin is taming my desire to make everything “educational”. We went down that road in Italy where there was just a few too many museums and churches! Some museums they love – any science or natural history museum with buttons they can push and levers they can move – fantastic! They still rate the Leonardo De Vinci exhibit in Venice as one of the best places they went because they were able to try out all of his mechanical inventions. But they will never forget the torture of being pulled through the Musee d’Academia. I keep telling them there is no equivalent of a Louvres or Hermitages in Laos or Cambodia so stop worrying! But, conversely, I will also not be visiting as many temples or watts as I would on my own. Forts and “old places” will need to be negotiated.
I was very intimidated by one homeschooling mom I spoke to who had designed an intensely elaborate academic curriculum for english, history and science – complete with research projects and papers for the year they were away. I really can’t see doing that and getting any enjoyment at all out of our trip..
Some overarching topics such as world religion or colonialism will be discussed as we move and geography will be pointed out as we cross over mountains and drift down rivers. Writing will primarily be journals and maybe blogging (emails would be nice too but I have a feeling they will prefer sykpe). I am trying to find books for them to read set in the countries we visit. It was a huge relief to find out David Evan would be missing Biology the year we are away since that is the one thing he will be learning about in spades via nature reserves, jungle sanctuaries and above all by visiting the Galapagos Islands.
Sometimes I think – eh, the internet and youtube will make everything a snap. You can google any historical fact and there are so many math games or homework help sites out there I think we can probably just stumble along. Sometimes I think, wait, Miriam has to work on writing creative stories, Leontine will miss learning to research a big project and David Evan is ready for algebra! Aie! What are we doing!? In the end I just keep telling myself – how lucky we are to be doing this BEFORE David Evan hits high school. It’s really the last chance I would feel comfortable doing it.
momofour