No Speedos, No Service

I love the title of this post - Mitchell came up with it. This post is part of his Language Arts lesson for today. He's also uploading two photos, so we could say he's doing some of the Arts curriculum as well :)

We started school on Monday, August 10th. We only "do school" in the mornings but I hope their learning goes on all day. You may wonder why we've started school so early - our goal is to get through alot of the math in these 3 months in France so we can unload the heavy Nelson textbooks we have with us. We will still have Math Trek on the laptop to keep up with math, as well as Millie's Math House, Math Circus, and Mathville. Ted tackles math with them, while I'm focusing on reading, reading comprehension and writing. We both fit the other stuff in around that. Everyday they add to their journal. Mitchell's is on the laptop while Jackson prefers to actually print in a notebook. Mitchell alternates between using Dragon Naturally Speaking one day and keyboarding the next day. He's getting good with Dragon now - even doing corrections and editing using the Dragon commands. We purchased version 10 before we left and I cannot get over how much better it works than our old version 8. Anyway, without further ado, here is Mitchell's summary of a little incident the other day at the local Piscine Municipale (local public pool). The first of many cultural misunderstandings to come, I'm sure.

(From Mitchell:)

Today, we decided to go to swimming in Castelnaudary, at the Piscine Municipale. But when we arrived, we quickly found out that the bathing suits that boys wear in Canada and the U.S were banned from the pool (board shorts versus Speedos). I felt angry and I thought it was unfair. We tried to talk to the lifeguard to ask him to make an exception, but he would not let us swim. They think our swimming suits are “unhygienic.” They offered to loan us Speedos to wear but I did not want to wear them and neither did Jackson. So we asked for our money back and left the pool and went to Lac de la Cavayére. We liked it because the water was very warm and the sand was not very rocky. People wore all kinds of bathing suits and nobody cared.

The discouraging notice . . .

Beautiful Lac de la Cavayére (near Carcassone) . . .

History & Geography

I'm excited to have found a great resource for teaching history and geography. It's a series by Susan Wise Bauer called "The Story of the World". And we are talking the whole story of the whole, wide world. Haven't you always wanted to get a better grasp of world history? I know I have. I was telling Mitchell that we will probably visit Vimy Ridge in France. He asked me many questions about it, including "so what started the First World War? What was everyone fighting about?" And what did I say, "umm . . . let me think . . . .I know that . . . something to do with an Austrian prince who got shot? Was that it? Ask dad". In other words, mom has no idea. Sad, very sad.

About the only aspect of history that I have a really firm handle on is the good ol' Louis Riel Rebellion of 1885 and that is mainly because I grew up in Saskatchewan and it was pounded into our heads through a variety of projects and assignments all the way through school. In addition, my parents had a farm very near Batoche, SK. We would often take visiting relatives to see the historic sites in the Batoche area - the church with bullet holes, the trenches where Gabriel Dumont and his rebel fighters took a stand against General Middleton, and the cemetary where many of these fighters now lie. My Dad loved to drive visitors around our farm proudly pointing out things like, "See that tree? Louis Riel pissed against that tree!" How do we that Louis Riel relieved himself against said tree? We don't actually but theoretically it was certainly possible, because of the location of my Dad's land, which is where history and geography intersect. Which brings me back to . . .

This series. That I'm very excited about. I was able to borrow both the books and the audio CDs from the library and I'm very impressed. As far as homeschooling goes, I have no intention of lugging a bunch of books from country to country so the fact that I can get the entire history of the world, told in a compelling narrative way suitable for kids, on CDs is a huge bonus.

The series is organized into 4 time periods:

Volume 1 - The Ancients (5000BC to 400AD)
Volume 2 - The Middle Ages (400-1600)

Volume 3 - Early Modern Times (1600-1850)

Volume 4 - The Modern Age (1850-1994)

I guess that would bring us to the post-modern age? In any case, I can see us reading these aloud, discussing them, relating the history to the places we're seeeing and, of course, writing about it. Another curriculum item I stumbled upon on Susan Wise Bauer's site had to do with teaching writing. "The Complete Writer" I think it was called. It also looked great. Somebody stop me. I think tackling the history of the world is more than enough for now.

Homeschooling

One thing we have not blogged much about yet is the prospect of homeschooling. Even though I work in a school board and am surrounded by teachers all the time, I still feel a bit intimidated by the whole issue. Having said that, though, we are trying to go with our gut, trust our instincts and remember that no-one knows our kids better than us. During our trip, Mitchell will be in Gr. 7 and Jackson in Gr. 3. The Gr. 3 curriculum seems pretty straightforward. Gr. 7, a little more daunting. We are also trying to remind ourselves that they will learn a great deal simply by virtue of travelling to so many different countries, experiencing firsthand so many different cultures, and having the time and freedom to pursue their own special interests.

I have obtained, from the Board where I work, some handy software by a group called the Nectar Foundation. The software (Math Trek, Language Trek and Science Trek) parallels the Ontario curriculum and I have the specific programs for Gr. 3 and Gr. 7 already loaded on our laptop. The boys and I spent some time this summer doing some of the activities and the programs are well done and allow for tracking their progress.

My own gut tells me not to get bogged down in the minutae of every strand in the curriculum and stress oursleves in trying to cover everything. I think if we have the kids focus on reading, writing (including posts on this website), and keeping up with math, and having lots of discussions about what we're seeing and doing, then we should be okay. In fact, it might just be their best "school" year ever. They will have to let us know in about, oh, 18 months from now.

For reading, it would be great to read together some of the classics for children. Kids don't seem to get that opportunity much in school these days, but I don't see why we couldn't tackle one great novel per month. I'm hoping that's realistic. At home, we've read books like Treasure Island, Pilgrim's Progress, Tom Sawyer, and the Narnia series but there are so many to choose from. Dear readers, what classics would you recommend for boys age 7 and 11? I found this list on the Internet and it looks like an excellent starting point, but I would love some more ideas.

For writing, some type of journaling seems like a good idea. This website is like our virtual scrapbook of our year away and, although the boys have not been posting much at all yet, they know this will be a requirement during our year away. I like that the writing they will do for this blog will have a genuine purpose and an actual audience and at the same time, the topic can be of their choosing.

For math, there will be the need to continually calculate exchange rates, distances, shopping prices, etc. Real-world math but obviously we will have to go beyond just basic calculations to meet Gr. 7 expectations.

The geography, culture, history and second language learning should take care of itself. What we don't want is a stressful year with homework-related tears and frustration. What we want more than anything is for both of the boys to enjoy the year, enjoy the homeschooling experience, and come to the realization that learning is not just something confined to a brick building or a desk between 9:00am and 3:30pm Mondays to Fridays.

We have been talking with the staff at the school they attend, to help prepare, and I take great reassurance in what one teacher shared with me. She quoted Mark Twain in reminding us that "you wouldn't want school to get in the way of a great education". Thanks Tracey, for that little nugget!