Books we're reading right now... these are books from our local library
This is a book we already had, which traveled 12,000 miles with us!
Here's a long-range shot of the homeschooling set-up at the in-laws' gorgeous wooden table
A close-up view of the Math U See blocks and curriculum we're using
We're also reading Heidi. This copy was my mother's and was printed in 1944. It also happily traveled 12,000 miles in a suitcase!
Here's our "Main Lesson Book", which has been influence by the Waldorf Education model. Here I've separated the journal into 4 sections: Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, and Misc. My son does one page a day, 4 days a week, rotating through these sections. It's really helping his writing, although it is still a struggle for him.
Here's a shot of the kids working happily side-by-side at the table. My youngest is working on a letter and number program. She'll (hopefully) start speech and occupational therapy soon, and possibly some academic work through a local school that caters to children like her.
They just love working alongside one another.
Heidi, just waiting to be read aloud
A page from a reading comprehension and grammar workbook I ordered off of amazon. It's only about 40 pages long, so it's not going to last us very long, but coupled with the writing my son will be doing in his journal, it will be a good base for his grade 3 language arts work. If I feel he could use more grammar work, there are online games (like on turtle diary) that he can play, and of course just the act of reading a lot and seeing good grammar in the books he'll be reading will do wonders. I feel kids learn a lot organically from what they read, especially if the books are of good quality content.
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So, our trip was full of adventure and challenge! When last I blogged, I think we were getting ready to sell our home. Well, *THAT* process was long and laborious...but between my husband and I (and the occasional help of friends) we managed to get it all done. On closing day, our house looked spotless, and the new owners were very pleased with how great the house looked when they did their walk-through. For our part, we went back to our motel and collapsed, but only momentarily, as we had taken everything we didn't have time to go through and brought it to the motel and dumped it all in there to be gone through later!!
We spent the next several days weeding through the stuff we had dumped into our motel, tossing most of it. We ended up purchasing some more suitcases (some cheaply through Goodwill, and some brand new at places like Walmart). At the end of the day, we had a grand total of 12 large suitcases (nearly 50 pounds of stuff in each), 4 carry-on bags (about 15 pounds in each of those), and 4 "personal item" bags (mostly our laptop bags/ipad bags, which also contained some essentials like snacks and water bottles for the flights). So, here we were, a family of 4 rocking up to the airport via the hotel shuttle with all these bags. It was a sight to see, and quite a challenge to deal with.
The kids did fairly well on the flights, although my littlest one had a few moments of stress, but overall she did pretty well. We made it to LA and enjoyed WONDERFUL accommodations at the Hilton right near the airport. It was very relaxing and the service was amazing. By then, we had only to pre-pay for our baggage with our international carrier (Qantas), which went off with only minor glitches, and then sit back and enjoy a lovely pool, hot tubs, and fabulous food. Then, of course, we had to get all our many bags to the airport again via shuttle, check it all in (a bit of a bru-ha-ha, but Qantas eventually sorted us out) and then we had plenty of time to relax in LAX, enjoy some food, the play area for kids, the free WiFi, and wait for our flight.
The flight over the pacific was *VERY* long, and my youngest did have a bit of a time, mainly due to not being able to get comfortable for sleeping. She eventually gave up the battle and just basically passed out. Thirteen hours later, we arrived in Brisbane, and were able to see my sister-in-law briefly as we were passing from the international terminal to the domestic one. We had some delays in Customs, but thankfully our flight was delayed by 30 mins, so we were able to make it on time. My in-laws greeted us with big smiles when we at last reached our final airport. We were tired, sore, a little flustered from the experience going through Customs in Brisbane, but otherwise we were happy to finally be on solid ground.
We were treated to a lovely lunch of Chinese food at a local restaurant, and then had the long hour-and-a-half drive to our final destination, where we nearly collapsed as soon as we politely could do so. We tried to stay awake, to get used to the new time zone, but we did sneak in a bit of a nap. It took us about a week to adjust - and I'm still not sure we're fully adjusted, as we go to bed around 9pm-10pm most nights, when in the past we would have stayed up until 1am or 2am. The kids have also been asleep by 8:30, which is HUGE for them...and they've taken to sleeping in a different room from us fairly well (a bit of a surprise to us, to be sure). They have a trundle bed (a bed pulls out from under the top bed) and they both enjoy the set-up very much.
One of the first things we did the next day was slowly start going through all of our luggage. We started taking out the kids' toys first, so they could feel more at home with familiar surroundings. We had already brought their own pillows and blankets, so this addition kind of put the icing on the cake for them. I managed to clean out 4 of the suitcases, and so we got rid of them (they were Goodwill finds, and all 4 of them had rips, missing wheels, and other defects and so they didn't travel very well and really wouldn't be able to be reused by anyone).
The rest of our stuff is either in my husband's old room (which is where he and I sleep), or still in suitcases, waiting for us to get our own place. We're hoping to get some storage totes this week, so I can start organizing some of the stuff (such as totes specifically for holiday decor, seasonal clothes, books, etc). Then, when we get our own place, we'll only have to pick up the totes and bring them to the new place without much of a drama. That's the hope, anyway.
We've been trying to adjust to many things, and there really are too many things to list in just one blog entry, so presumably I'll touch on some of it as we go along. The weather has been great - it's been about 80 degrees each day with a nice breeze...a great introduction. I know that as spring rolls along, it will get warmer and warmer here, but for now I'm pretty comfortable, and enjoying the gorgeous sights right here on our family property. There are exotic birds flying in and out of all the trees, gorgeous plants, bushes and trees, flowers, fruit trees, veggie gardens...it's really gorgeous.
We have had fresh orange juice a lot from their very own orange trees, and in general we've been eating much better than we had been eating before we left. My diet has been a little hit-or-miss, but I try to get at least one "clean" meal a day, usually breakfast, and then from there it's varying degrees of "healthy". I'm focusing more on an over-all improvement - less junk food, more fruits and veggies...less sugar, more "real foods" and lower-carb options.
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We took a week or so to settle in, and then I slowly got my son back into the groove of homeschooling. It's been going very well, and as usual we're usually done before lunch-time, unless we have errands or something to run in the morning, and then it's done in the early afternoon. We still try to do a read aloud at night before bed as well. I'll give a more finalized description of our curriculum (which I may already have described in previous posts) and some thoughts on how it is going so far with each component.
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I'll try to borrow a camera to take more pics of our family land. Right now we just have my laptop, which as you can see above isn't the best at capturing things with great clarity.
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