Category: Homeschool

Off to New Zealand

Posted on by Caroline
This year when we dreamed about what we wanted to see and do for the year, an RV trip to New Zealand was high on the list. We figured we’d go sometime around September - plenty of time to plan and dream, and catch the shoulder season between winter and summer. What we didn’t dream about (at least not yet) was transitioning from homeschooling and back into school for the kids. But after oodles of dreaming and scheming and thinking, we decided that this year will be our last year of homeschooling. Homeschooling has been an unexpected joy for us… It has been the right choice for these last five years. We’ve taken full advantage of the flexibility, travel opportunities...Read More

Wrapping Up in Tokyo

Posted on by Caroline
It always seems to happen… I start off a trip with frequent posts and lots of commentary… and then we get busy traveling and I get tired. And I fall behind. The past few days have been filled with the Ueno Zoo, meeting up with family, the Pokémon Center, the TeamLabs immersive art museum and the Cup o Noodle museum. Last night we had an extended adventure trying to find a restaurant that could accommodate us, and ended up eating a picnic dinner at a playground at 9 PM. Travel always brings adventures. This time the adventures came with a side of new friendships. At the end of the month we’ll be heading to Chang Mai for the Lantern Festival...Read More

New Friends

Posted on by Caroline
Yesterday was a whirlwind of fun and activity. Tim set off a little early to visit a glider school north of Tokyo. When he sent pictures later in the day, I started to worry that we’d never see him again. Grass airstrip, taildragger airplanes, gliders. And all of it next to a fly-fishing river? I really can’t imagine a more appealing combination! Meanwhile, the kids and I had a slow morning at the hotel before we meandered over to our meet-up spot for the World Schooling Pop Up families. The host family found a park with a series of nearly 30 obstacles. The kids climbed and scaled and tugged and rowed from one end of the park to the other....Read More

World Schooling in Tokyo

Posted on by Caroline
We’ve spent the last few months enjoying the rhythm of our daily life on Guam. After traveling so much at the beginning of the year, it felt nice to settle in. The kids were homeschooling and surfing and playing soccer and (most of all) enjoying the chance to play with their friends in the neighborhood. We went out on the boat as much as we could and saw turtles and sting rays and dolphins. Its been a nice, relaxing stretch at home. But… we were also starting to get itchy feet, so when our neighbor told us about a trip to Tokyo set up by an organization of world schoolers, we got excited and asked if we could join in...Read More

Lair o’ the Bear

Posted on by Caroline
It’s been a year since we upended our lives. In this season of reflection, I’ve been thinking about that anniversary. Our life was good in Davis. I loved my job - who I worked with, what we were doing, the values we embodied in the projects we built. And Davis is a community straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. We were exceptionally lucky in our friends and our schools. But… we were so busy with our daily lives that we barely saw each other. I didn't want to miss any more of Amelia and Duke's childhood. So when we decided to re-think everything, it wasn’t because we were unhappy with any one aspect of our life. We decided to...Read More

Lessons

Posted on by Caroline
I sat down at the kitchen table to draft a post about how I’m striving to learn the lessons of patience and grace that this year seems to demand of me. And Duke decided to try out all the different alarm tones available on his iPad. All of them: foghorn, klaxon, old fashioned telephone ringtone. And then listen to all of them all over and over again. Usually the result of this kind of experiment is a top volume alarm going off at 1:30 A.M. But I am learning patience. I am learning to live with the vast universe of things that I can’t control. I am learning to truly treasure the seemingly small list of things that I can...Read More

Amelia’s review of John Muir’s book

Posted on by Amelia I
Book title: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth Author: John Muir I like it because it helps me pay more attention to nature.  It helps me see more of the beauty in nature.  I liked when John Muir was riding in the boat.  He didn’t go with any of his sisters, he just went with two of his brothers and his dad.  John knew moving to America was a new part in life.  And he knew he was going a new way in life so he could survive.   He got a horse named Jack when the rest of his family arrived in the woods.  I liked Jack because he was super funny.  One day in winter, Jack was very...Read More

Map of My Day

Posted on by Caroline
Last week I pulled out some old books and articles about maps for an informal lesson. We read about the history of maps, going all the way back to a stone map made in Babylon in 600 BC. We talked about why we use maps and some of the quirks of maps. Why do we draw north up? What do our choices about what we include and exclude say about us? How do we draw a round Earth on a flat piece of paper? Next, we drew our own maps inspired by Sara Fanelli’s Map of My Day. We had fun drawing, and I was impressed with the kids' level of detail. The kids drew maps of our house and...Read More

Abnormal Normal

Posted on by Caroline
When I wrote the tagline for our new blog, "Adventures in Our New Life", these were not the adventures I was planning on. Soon we'll pass the break-even point, when we'll have spent more time in quarantine in our new house then we've spent not in quarantine. And so it shouldn't be a surprise that our new abnormal reality is starting to feel startlingly…. normal. We’re settling in. Of course, we get stir crazy. But oddly, life within these walls feels so routine, even as life outside them is less and less recognizable. But within these walls, we’re doing our best to continue to find adventure and moments of happiness. A week ago the kids found a caterpillar and put...Read More

A Crash Course in Homeschooling

Posted on by Caroline
I think we can safely say that we’re in strange, strange times. Millions of Americans are suddenly having to contemplate how to educate their kids at home. And many are also simultaneously trying to figure out how to work remotely. It’s a recipe for anxiety and confusion. Our family has been homeschooling now for all of two months. So in many ways, I’m exactly the wrong person to be writing a crash course in homeschooling - there are many parents out there who have been doing this for decades, and are homeschooling experts. But in many other ways, I’m exactly the right person. It’s a recent transition for us, and I’m right in the middle of figuring all this out...Read More