One of the most common questions we get is "What are you doing about school?"
(other common Q&As here)
Answer: We're homeschooling the girls this year, 3rd grade for Paige and 1st grade for Sadie. Stating the obvious, this will be a new endeavor for me & Doug as educators, and for Paige & Sadie learning solo/outside of a classroom, with us as their teachers.
Researching homeschooling options pre-departure took us down a serious rabbit hole. We ultimately decided we needed to be swift and pick an educational product/service that was:
Not overly reliant on offline materials, as we don't have the luxury of packing a year's worth of lesson plans & workbooks.
Agile so that we could quicken or slow the pace depending on the girls' progress in a particular subject.
Standards-based (common core aligned) to enable us to plug into most any (public) school system in the country upon return. This was especially key as we don't know our landing spot yet.
We've tapped into an online curriculum (www.time4learning.com) to help steer us through the primary components of Math and Language Arts. We'll supplement with other websites & apps for deeper dives into things like Science, STEM, Typing, Coding, etc. We'll also create topical learning units (i.e. pyramids before we go to Egypt, Greek mythology pre-Greece) through a scrappy combination of YouTube videos, Google searches, Khan Academy modules, etc.
Time to Get Going
We gave ourselves a proper Summer off, and officially started school work towards the end of August while we were hunkered down in Austria. Coming on four weeks, we're averaging 3-4 days per week with school. We're very much still finding our footing, and will need to better discipline ourselves to make the time, even when we're on-the-go.
Some School Days Look Like This
Most of the time we're hunkered down at a table at our "home" of the day/week, tapped into the online curriculum (with one of us always sitting alongside one, hearing the lesson, answering their questions & observing their online exercises/assessments) and then supplementing with offline notebook work to reinforce the concept.
Other Days It Looks Like This
When Papa visits & teaches them two new Italian words each day, or provides them an impromptu geography lesson on the wall globe map of a restaurant (showing them in particular where their Bohemian Bohaboy ancestors hailed from):
Sometimes We Learn in the Field
For example, on the day we popped into Rome, Doug had the girls watch a YouTube video on the train all about the history of Rome. I made up some little cards of random "fun facts" to engage them with some the iconic stops along our way. We have to get creative on the days we're challenged to plug into the online lessons.
Solid Work
Check out these two examples from Paige, one from last week and one from just last night. Felt great to see these, but even more felt proud of HER.
Figure It Out As We Go
We're fully prepared to learn & pivot as we go. This is completely new territory for us all and we'll need to read the room to ensure we're doing right by the girls as we go. Some days it clicks; other days we fumble as we try to figure out the best approach to get the best out of this new "classroom" for the girls.
Rewards
On the whole P&S have been attentive and are legitimately learning, even in the short amount of time we've been at this new gig. Sadie especially has been really focused & into schoolwork, not putting up a stink at all. Paige has generally been great; until we get to writing assignments. She can't stand writing lately! And to make matters worse, she has a tendency to rush through something when she's not keen to do it in the first place, which makes for a jumble of incomplete words.
Just yesterday we decided to implement a rewards chart to motivate & reward good behavior during school sessions. We let them help us devise the plan, first brainstorming together & capturing what it means to have a good school session (to earn a star), and then how stars translate into tangible rewards. I think we still have some work to do on creating compelling rewards that don't involve a screen - still WIP. Below is what we came up with. We may want to make adjustments as we bring it to life, but I think it's a solid starting point.
Each girl got a star for creating this system with us ("start"), and from thereon out it's up to them. Sadie earned her first star, all good. Paige was doing super . . . until the darn writing part! She completely fell apart. We took a break, talked her back to calm and she tried again. She finished her writing assignment, but she knew that she hadn't earned a star because of her initial reaction to the task at hand. She was unhinged a bit & decidedly not happy, but she totally understood *why* she hadn't earned it; she could point to the behaviors on the "earn a star" school list and identify the ones that she didn't respect that day. That kind of transparency was really helpful - not only for her, but for all of us. Being more clear with the girls about what we expect (effectively the same behavior they would have in their "real" classroom) is helping us all get off on a better foot. And we're happy to reward them positively!
Start of School Posters
Every year I make a poster with the girls, capturing a few keynote things like their age, school, grade, teacher, what they want to be when they grow up and some of their favorite things (food, activities). Check out this years!! So grown up!
Keepin' the Faith
We've gotten all kinds of supportive advice from friends & strangers when they learn of our homeschooling plan. Most notably that our girls will absorb & learn an incredible amount as we travel around the world; about other cultures & other ways of living, about themselves, about values, about how to treat others/themselves & what really matters in this crazy world of ours. It's also been pointed out to us that the girls are already advantaged by having engaged & supportive parents/household environment.
At the end of the day we're keeping the faith that our homeschooling efforts will pan out. Worst case (which we don't expect), the girls will have to repeat this school year back in the States next year. No matter what, we know they'll be enriched for this year's world experiences and connections, which is overwhelmingly our main goal.
Here's to a great 2019/20 academic year for P&S and their teachers :)
Commenti