Vacation 101

Ask a kid what he likes best about school and he’ll either say “lunch” or “vacation!” As homeschoolers, we’ve found the flexibility to do more traveling than the typical school setting might allow.

Because we don’t follow the normal 180-day schedule, we can find off-season days to head to the beach or the mountains. This helps the budget quite a bit! (I have to admit here that my amazing world-traveling mother-in-law has also helped us frequently get to where we want to go!)

Over the years, we panned for gold in the Yukon, we measured the great sequoia in California, we walked on that Great Wall in China, we played quoits in Williamsburg, we dipped our fingers in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, we traveled in trains, planes, automobiles and houseboats. We are now preparing for one of the most complicated itineraries we’ve ever faced: a Mediterranean tour including stops in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Israel.

Planning for vacations can be overwhelming. I can remember being overwhelmed by our first vacation with our first baby. We just wanted to spend a weekend at the beach. Is that so hard? It can be when you need a car seat, baby crib, playpen, beach umbrella, beach toys, baby food, and, oh yes, diapers!

My husband and I started a pattern then that we have followed ever since:

1. We make an itinerary. I type up a “formal document” that lists the days we will be traveling in the left column, then a column with the information about where we will be staying (hotels, tents, or houses) and what we will do while there. In the third column, I track the estimated amount of time for the drive or the visit to the museum or other point of interest. In the final column, I track the prices for lodging, attractions, restaurants, etc. (The 4-column approach doesn't work on this blog-site, so I just put the hours and cost next to each event.) Here is what one day of our last vacation looked like:

Day     Time     Destination/Hrs/Cost
SUN
9/15     9:30a      Breakfast at Hotel (FREE)
                           Drive from Atlanta to Chattanooga, TN (1½ hr)
            12:00n     Eat picnic lunch at Lookout Mountain?
                            Visit Ruby Falls & Lookout Mountain (open 8a-8p daily)
                                    1720 S. Scenic Highway, Chattanooga, TN
                               Take Guided Tour of Ruby Falls (1½ hr) ($18/pp)
                                     Wear sneakers & jacket (60-65 degrees)
                               Stay at La Quinta Chattanooga/Hamilton Place ($69)
                                      7017 Shallowford Rd, Chattanooga, TN
                                     Conf#________ (LQ Returns #______)
             6:00p         Eat dinner at Fazoli’s (same road/across street) ($8/pp)
                                      2332 Shallowford Village Drive, Chattanooga, TN

My husband likes running up the expenses in column 4 and making sure he knows how much money to prepare to spend.  The timelines are guesses and remain generally flexible.  We keep the itinerary in a folder for that specific vacation along with any mapquest directions, hotel confirmation forms and other paperwork we need while traveling.

When looking for lodging, we have a few things we generally look for:

a) price (of course)...I feel gypped if I spend over $100/night, and I go for lower when I can. However, you have to balance safety, comfort, and cleanliness with price. Don’t sacrifice a good night’s sleep for an extra $10.

b) location...I try to find a place near an interesting activity or sight (of course).

Everybody does that. But, what we really love is finding places that have:

c) indoor pools...if there is any boring moment, we can always swim; plus great to stretch out after a long drive!

d) in-room mini-fridges...so helpful so we can bring supplies to make lunches to take with us whenever possible.

e) free breakfast...this is a huge time/money/space saver. We don’t have to carry as much food. We can just go downstairs and not have to make breakfast or look for a restaurant. Eating out at restaurants can get really expensive!

2. We make a packing list. I keep all of my packing lists on the computer so the next time we go on vacation, I can browse through and see what we packed before for a similar vacation. For instance, we have a favorite hotel we like to stay at when we go to the beach (Sun Viking) and every time we go there, I just modify that list for our current needs (no more diapers!) and save it with the current year in the file name.

Our list of things to pack includes clothing, accessories, hygiene, medicines, games/toys, and food items as needed. I check things off as they go into the suitcase or car (or whatever). Of course, other special items like cameras, pillows, identification, money, and other things are listed as needed as well. Some vacations require more “stuff” than others. Last week, we were houseboating in Kentucky, and took along a lot of camping-type supplies (flashlights, fishing poles/bait, star and bird watching charts) that we would never consider taking on an airplane ride to New York City. Every packing list is tailored to the specific trip’s needs.

3. We make a countdown. For bigger or more exciting trips, I often print up little squares with numbers. Usually the pictures that go along with the numbers related to the trip – a cruise ship or an airplane or in the case of our upcoming Mediterranean tour, we have the Pantheon, the Parthenon, and the Colosseum included. Each day, the kids take turns pulling off one number and we get closer and closer to leaving. When I forget (or get too lazy) for this step, my (now high school aged) children remind me over and over again – so it really does help build excitement!

4. We make it educational. Now, don’t get carried away thinking that we make some huge effort or bore our kids to death on vacation. We really don’t. But, we try to find one or two things that make the brain function while we take a break from “regular school.” There are lots of ways to do this. In that first beach vacation with a preschooler, we just made an attempt to notice things. For instance, let’s talk about that salty water you just swallowed. See that horizon line? Oooh! Look at that crab! In later years, we could refer back to those things during science class – remember when...

On other trips (at the initial suggestion by my MIL), we’ve collected water or sand samples. We have a whole array of little plastic bottles of water on the shelf from the Red, Dead and Mediterranean Seas, the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. We didn’t do anything “educational” on the vacation but collect the water (the more exotic “flavors” were given to us by my traveling MIL) but later, at home, we compared salinity or color.

In the Sequoia forest (at the suggestion of my BIL/SIL who live near there), we took a ball of yarn. We found the fattest tree we could and tried to hug it all around. Failing that, we used the yarn and now have a cool souvenir that reminds us exactly how big – and it is really, really big – that tree really was.

Some trips were perfect for history or cultural instruction. On the drive from California to Washington, we took along little history books for each state we were driving through. My kids love to read, so it was no big deal to ask them to read those along the way and get a feel for the places and things we would see. On the trip to China, we studied up before-hand on geography, history and culture. We learned some common phrases (hello, thanks, where’s the bathroom) and customs.

Everywhere we can, we make sure to visit museums, science centers, planetariums, living history centers, and zoos in various places. We’ve taken tours of government buildings, factories, historical houses, and farms. There is such a vast variety of things you can do that don’t look like “school” along the way. I tend to google “fun things to do in...” wherever we are going and I usually get more lists than I know what to do with. We don’t do everything, we can’t afford everything, and we don’t have time for everything. We pick one or two things that fit our time, our interest (or the interest we are trying to build) and our budget. We had no idea we were interested in wallabies until we met the cutest pair last week at the Creation Museum in Kentucky! We’ll be following up that trip with a trip to the library to research about how we can get our own pair! (Not likely, but fun to think about.)

One of my son’s favorite trips was Patriot’s Point in South Carolina. He would not have been interested in touring a plantation at that time. He was (and is) all about the air craft carrier and submarine tours that we took there. One of my daughter’s favorite places was our Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown adventure. She loved just running around on the redoubts at Yorktown, watching the glassblower and silversmith at Williamsburg, and trying to hoe the garden at the living history museum in Jamestown. We weren’t being overtly educational, but I think we all learned a lot from those trips.

In the long run, our main goals are always to be together and be relaxed and have fun. Having the itinerary and the packing list help us keep organized and sane. And we also take on age-appropriate challenges of learning things like: saying common phrases in Chinese or another local language, counting foreign currency, trying out some hypotheses, reading about and absorbing the places we visited. For our next trip, we are looking forward not only to seeing the amazing architecture and bringing biblical history to life, but also trying all the flavors of gelato that we can fit in!*

*update: Mediterranean vacation complete and both Italian and Greek gelato flavors have been evaluated. However, more tests may be needed in the future to validate our results.  ;o)

Keep the Faith, Baby

Ten and a half years ago when we started homeschooling, there was lots of pessimistic encouragement in the form of “It’s worth a try; you can’t mess up kindergarten.” In other words, never fear, for if (or when) you fail at this endeavor, the schools are still waiting to take your children and they could undo anything horrible that you did. 

Now, as my youngest enters high school, I find less people with encouraging words – even those who homeschool themselves. There is this idea that high school should be hard and not only should I not be able to teach most of it, but my kids must be missing something. I’ve heard moms say, “Aren’t you freaking out? Aren’t you worried? Aren’t you afraid?” 

I check in with my kids pretty regularly – I mean, I see them pretty much all day, every day, and we do talk about stuff. I ask them if they are still happy homeschooling. (They are.) In fact, they’d be highly offended if I wanted to switch venues at this point. They would think I was pretty hypocritical and wonder if I still loved them as much as I did when they were little. (I do.) 

Do I ever have fears and uncertainties? Of course. Who wouldn’t? We can’t know the future. We can’t know what we might have “missed,” by definition, until we run into problems. So far, we haven’t. But, I do know God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and He knows the future. And He is the one who set us down this path. And I trust that He knows what He is doing, even when I don’t. 

A man’s heart plans his way,

But the Lord directs his steps. 

Proverbs 16:9

We are trying some new things this year. My kids have started earning college credits through examination. If they continue to do well, we’ll ditch more and more high school and keep on this path. I find that they are meeting the challenges that are set before them. When they hit a roadblock, we’ll stop and look for the way around or through it. 

I don’t know about you, but I was public schooled and ran into confusing situations and roadblocks and followed divergent paths and somehow I still got into (and graduated) college (and my college was the infamous UCF which stands for “U Can’t Finish”). Amazingly, those career goals (public school teacher) that I set for myself didn’t materialize, but God had uniquely prepared me to do what my future really held: wife, mother, homeschooler. So, fear or no fear, I’ll go down this road as far as God leads and as long as He is holding my hand.

National Treasures

I just noticed my blog sitting there, so long ignored, but patiently waiting for the update on my life.  How kind, sweet blog!  I am back now and ready to talk!

This month has been a whirlwind of activities (including hot air balloons and tornadoes):

The first two weeks were dedicated to finally taking our family on that long-awaited trip to Washington DC.    We'd been planning for over a year (maybe two) and there were a lot of things on our itinerary!  We had an amazing time and got to see so many things, including:

• National Zoo (saw a panda!)
• Pentagon (tour)
• Bureau of Engraving and Printing (tour, but no free samples)
• Washington Monument (inside is closed, boo hoo)
• Smithsonial Museum of Natural History (can you say "evolution?")
• National Archives (waited in line for over an hour!)
• Sculpture Garden
• Air & Space Museum on the National Mall and the Udvar Hazy off-site
• Smithsonian Castle 
• Library of Congress (tour)
• US Capitol Building (tour of senate and house galleries, rotunda and more)
• The White House (no tour, boo hoo - cancelled for imaginary "snow storm")
• Lincoln Memorial
• Korean Memorial
• WW2 Memorial
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial
• FDR Memorial 
• Jefferson Memorial 
• Viet Nam War Memorial (engulfed by the names)
• Iwo Jima Memorial
• Ford's Theater (tour)
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery
• Old Post Office (tour of clock tower)
• and more!

We got lots of experience using the DC Metro.  And, after a while, we figured out the Metro was using us -- we were paying an extra dollar each way for each passenger ($8, multiple times a day) just because we used a paper pass!   

Along the way, we also went to the Airborne & Special Ops Museum in Ft. Bragg, NC -- very nicely done museum! 

So, we shared all these "national treasures" with our children (allusion to the movie is intended as we had fun locating some of the movie's events/documents) and what did they enjoy the most?

• It snowed on us! (that was pretty neat)
• Eating donuts every morning at the cheap, old motel we stayed at
• Watching HGTV (home & garden - we don't have cable at home)
• Visiting the Air and Space Museums (with the kind of stuff we see in Florida all the time!)
• An unexpected and unplanned ice skating experience in an outdoor rink! and
• Eating ravioli at a Fazoli's Restaurant on the way home (ours closed down a few years ago)!

Go figure!

After getting things back to normal (the laundry got done and the pets came home), my daughter and I were scheduled for a hot air balloon ride.  After two cancellations for weather, we were excited (and a little scared) for our journey.  More about our ride and our later brush with tornadoes in the next update!

One Month Gone

A month has passed since my New Year's resolution post.  I have to say, I'm still going...  My resolve, of course, was to lose weight and get healthy...

I started the year off right by going through my old Weight Watcher materials and tracking what I was eating.  I re-joined Weight Watchers and started attending weekly meetings.

The second, third and fourth weeks of January were pretty easy.  My church went on a 21 day "Daniel's Fast," which we interpret as "no meat, no wheat, no sweets."  (The fast is a spiritual one -- bringing your body under subjection so that your spirit is stronger -- but it does have a physical result of weight loss as well.)  Because my promises were made to God, instead of myself, I found it very easy to say "No" to temptations.  Until midnight on the last night of the fast!  Can you believe I stayed up to make sure I got the first nibble of chocolate in?  I had tried to psyche myself up into going longer on the fast, but just couldn't do it.

So, the long and the short of it -- or should I say, the fat and the thin of it? -- is that I lost 10 pounds in the month of January.  This month, I'll be continuing on with the Weight Watcher's plan and trying to add more exercise into my daily routine.  I've been walking a mile almost daily, but need now to add some more toning exercises -- abs and legs routines by Denise Austin.

My goal is to lose another 8 pounds this month...

How are your resolutions holding up?  Are you approaching them with an "all or nothing" attitude, or are you able to take baby steps to get to your goals?

Happy New Year!

The ball has dropped and the new year has dawned.  I'm getting older and my New Year's resolutions are sounding a bit cliche!

I need to lose weight!  I had some medical issues last year that kept me from exercising for a while and then habit grabbed hold when I was feeling better and I just never got back to it.  So, today, I begin again!  My husband and I walked a bit over a mile this morning just to get things kicked off.  I'm going to make the kids go again with me this evening...and tonight I go back to Weight Watchers for the first time in a long time.

Starting over is hard.  I was very successful with Weight Watchers a few years ago, but when I slid, I slid big!  (Pun intended.)  It can feel depressing and overwhelming to go back over the same ground again, but I know I need to.

There are other things on my list too, and probably more important in the grand scheme of life, but this is the one that is "weighing me down."  (Too many puns?)  I know that with good diet and exercise, I will have more energy to focus on and accomplish my other goals!

John 3:30 says it all:  "He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease."  

So, here's to a Happy New Start for me...and a very blessed Happy New Year to you!

All Over Again

My daughter is in the middle of tenth grade, so we are reaching our tenth year marker for homeschooling!  If I had to do it all over again, I would probably tweak a few things here and there curriculum-wise.  Mostly, I would use LESS, not more.  Below are my favorite choices from over the years:

Reading
Pre-K/K - Learn to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
also:  read lots and lots of books!  Fiction and Non-fiction!
Middle/High School:  BJU Literature

Writing
Pre-K - 4th - Handwriting Without Tears
2nd - How to Write a Paragraph (workbook)
3rd - 9th - Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) levels A, B, C
7th - 9th - Unjournaling

Spelling
K - 6th - for natural spellers:  Spelling Plus
or:  for not-so-natural spellers:  Sequential Spelling
also:  The Logic of English (book and maybe curriculum)

Vocabulary
7th - 12th - Wordly Wise

Grammar
4th - Junior Analytical Grammar
7th - 11th Analytical Grammar

'Rithmetic
K - 8th - A Beka Math
also:  Right Start Math Games
9th - Teaching Textbooks Algebra
10th - Teaching Textbooks Geometry
also:   ALEKS

Science
K - 2nd - A Beka Science
also:  Rub a Dub Dub, Science in the Tub
3rd - 6th Apologia Junior series (Botany, Flying Creatures, Swimming Creatures, etc.)
7th - 12th Apologia series (General, Physical, Biology, etc.)

History
2nd - 4th - Mystery of History I (MOH)
4th - MOH II
5th - MOH III
7th - MOH IV
8th - MOH I (again)
9th - MOH II
10th - MOH III
11th - 12th - MOH IV
supplement with library books!

Geography
2nd - 7th grade - Maps, Charts, Graphs workbooks, levels A - H

Foreign Language (Spanish)
4th - La Clase Divertida 1
6th - La Clase Divertida 2
8th - La Clase Divertida 3

Foreign Language (Latin)
9th - Getting Started with Latin
10th - Linney's Latin (free online)

Must-Read Read-Alouds
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Goodnight Moon
Little House on the Prairie (series)
Julie of the Wolves (trilogy)
Henry Reed (series)
Pippi Longstocking (series)
The Chronicles of Narnia (series)
Left Behind - (kids series)
Left Behind - (adult series - PG)
Brother Andrew
The Hiding Place (PG)
China Cry (PG)
If I Perish
The Wheel on the School
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Giver
This Present Darkness (PG)
Not a Fan
So, What's the Difference?
It Couldn't Just Happen
Princess and the Kiss
Squire and the Scroll
Before You Meet Prince Charming
I Kissed Dating Goodbye
Chester the Crab Comix (read on their own!)
Young Peacemaker Comics

Gold Rush!

What is valued above gold? God's Word!

Above Gold is a new iPad app where you can earn gold and precious gems when you unscramble Bible verses -- the real treasure!

My husband, Paul, designed and developed this new app with goal of helping you and your kids learn and meditate on God's Word. You can unlock four levels of difficulty from "easy" to "hardest"...starting with short scripture verses and moving into longer and longer ones.  

To get the gold, you need to beat the clock to solve the puzzle. Use the golden arrows to roll the letters into the right position and create the verse. You can use hint buttons to reveal the reference, the verse or both, but it will cost you some time. 

More and more loot is added to your treasure chest as you complete each puzzle. By the end, your chest is filled with coins, gems and bouncing pearls. Surveyed kids called the treasure room "a game within a game" because they loved watching the active treasure!

More important than the earthly treasure, however, is what you might gain in head and heart knowledge as you solve, read and meditate on the scripture as you go!  

So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.  Isaiah 55:11

For only $.99, you can challenge your brain, spend time in God's Word, and get some gold!  For more details about this and the other Digital Worship apps, like Dad's Prayers (free), Heavens Above, and Bible Shuffle, click here!