Wordless Wednesday: Fun at the Farm

 

Roadschooling as a Lifestyle

Please welcome Yvie, a veteran homeschooling mom, to A Mom's Quest to Teach for a special Guest Post. I had the privilege to meet Yvie when I joined the Homeschool Review Crew. In this post, she shares about the beauty of roadschooling. While we haven't had the chance to venture too far away from our home, we have enjoyed visiting several historic sites with our family, including Washington Crossing State Park. 

As a Lifestyle 

For six years, our family roadschooled, which means that we traveled throughout the year, focusing on studies on the opportunities we meet each week.  As a contractor, hubby’s job took him all across the USA, and we got to jump on the train (well, RV) with him and take the journey as a family!

Why travel?

The beauty of roadschooling is having the chance to immerse yourself in different places and cultures…and all the amazing field trips!  That doesn’t mean that we neglected basic studies….math, language arts, science, social studies, copy work, physical education. What it means is that we took advantage of our location to emphasize certain studies at certain times – when they would make the most lasting impression.

When students have the opportunity to visit different places – rural, suburban, and urban – it helps them to better understand the nuances of the world around them. How better for urban students to explore geographic features, landmarks, and ecosystems than by actually visiting them?  Rural students can get a better feel for the frenetic pace of an urban area by visiting and living within city limits for a while.  This cross-cultural knowledge will help them to become better citizens and leaders in the future, as they apply their experiences to decision making.

Make it a Unit Study

There are five basic steps to creating a unit study:

1. Pick a topic - For us, the ‘topic of choice’ was always either a specific location (geography & culture – such as Seattle or Louisiana) or historic event that occurred at our current location (such as the Boston Tea Party).
2. Decide when to start and how long the unit will last – Start the day that you arrive on location!  Or, even better, start researching and reading a few days prior.  Your unit will last as long as you are on location, but can go a few days past your departure if you want to wrap it up.
3. Choose resources and activities to flesh it out – Mom, this is where you’ll need to be a little bit of a planner!  Make sure you have books and reading material on hand to complement your field trip studies.
4. Make a plan of activities scheduled by day / week / month – Depending on how long you are on location, you may want to field trip two days a week and do ‘regular school’ three days a week.  If you’re only a short-timer, take a learning field trip every day! 
5. Decide how you’ll record your unit – We like to blog about it.  ☺  Seriously though, our blog actually began as a way for family and friends to join our journey, but blossomed into a learning record for the kids.

Pick up the Unit Study Planner to help you get started.

Getting Started

Not everyone has the opportunity to travel full-time, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t turn a one week family vacation into a bit of fun-school!  COVID is going to end someday, and life will return to a new normal.  

I would encourage you to sit down with your family….start daydreaming about places that you’ve always wanted to visit…make a list of realistic and dream places.  Choose one location from each list and start researching it – actually plan your trip!  Two things will happen here.  First, you’ll have your ducks in a row for when you’re able to actually make the trip.  Second, you’ll be surprised at just how much you learn during the research!  

A few tips to help you begin your journey…

Think outside the box. When asked, most children aren’t going to list architecture at the top of their ‘coolest things’ list. But after seeing such unique architectural styles, visiting places like the Biltmore House, Overholser Mansion, and Cornwall Iron Furnace might change that!

Plan ahead. Scout websites, including the city’s municipal site, to learn about the area you’re visiting – check for museums, events, festivals, factory tours, and anything relevant to that specific location. Site-specific websites will often have free educational resources to help guide your field trip.

Relax.  We school through the summer, on the weekends, at midnight…pretty much whenever we want.  We get more than the required days in, and that’s fine.  We have a lot of field trip days, too.  Want to know which style helps the kids learn and retain the most? Life experiences, of course!

Yvie is a veteran homeschooling mom and the high school counselor for The Homeschool House, a non-profit organization.  She helps to create unit studies and enjoys helping other families on their homeschool journey.  When not teaching or counseling, she enjoys reading, spending time in her garden, and traveling the country with her boys.  You can find her at Homeschool On the Range, on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.

Wordless Wednesday: Eckley Miners' Village Museum

While exploring old photographs, I stumbled upon these from our trip to Eckley Miners' Village Museum in Pennsylvania. It was such an interesting place to visit and we hope to return soon.

Some of the structures are original to the Mining Community and others were built when they filmed the movie The Molly Maguires on the site.

Wordless Wednesday: Science Museum

Wordless Wednesday: A Seaside Aquarium

I linked up the following blog(s): 

   

  

Wordless Wednesday: Roadside America

Please excuse my using older photographs from a trip to Roadside America but I was recently reorganizing my online photos and rediscovered them. We are actually hoping to make a return visit this summer so our son can see it now that he is older and our daughter can see it for the first time. 

Update 2021: Sadly Roadside America has closed its doors and over the past several months has sold and auctioned its property. 

I joined up with the following blog(s): 

Holidays: What does Memorial Day mean for your family?

“Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service 

of our country can never be repaid. 

They have earned our undying gratitude. 

America will never forget their sacrifices.” 

President Harry S. Truman

Memorial Day in a lot of places in the United States, for a lot of families, means barbecues, backyard activities, a long weekend, the unofficial start of summer, or even prom weekend. The history of Memorial Day is often overlooked as we rush to purchase hamburgers and rolls and make potato salad. 

This holiday is actually "a day of remembrance for those who died in service of the United States of America."  It was "borne out of the Civil War and a desire to honor our dead" ("Memorial Day | In Memory of Our Honored Dead." Memorial Day. Web. 17 May 2016.) General John Logan, National Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, proclaimed May 20, 1868 as a day to decorate the graves of the fallen because it was not the anniversary of any particular Civil War battle.

By the 20th century, various days had emerged to honor the Union and Confederate dead of the Civil War, so Memorial Day was extended to honor all Americans who died while in military service.  A typical way to honor those who have died in military service is to visit cemeteries or memorials and place flowers or the American Flag at tombstones of servicemen and women or at the base of the memorial statue.

Our family always celebrated Memorial Day by visiting a local battlefield or memorial site and having a picnic at that location. We did this for most of my childhood at the bequest of my mom.  So we learned something about how our country achieved its freedom and were also able to share time with family.

As my two littles and my stepson (who is a typical teen focused on video games) get older, I would like to make sure that they remember the true meaning of Memorial day.  So even if we don't get to visit a battlefield, memorial, or cemetery this weekend, we will be making a trip in the near future.

I am pleased with the number of cemeteries within driving distance that continue to place flags upon the graves of veterans.  There are so many Americans who have fought and died for our country, we should not forget them and their service. 

Olmstead, Larry. "Let's Not Forget What Memorial Day Weekend Is Really All About - The High Cost of Freedom." Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Web. 17 May 2016.

Photographs by KAH 2010-2012. 

"President Truman's Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress. April 16, 1945." Address to Congress, 1945. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 May 2016.