Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Winter Wonderland

We recently decided to pull our son, Jacob, out of his school and home school for a while. Since David and I are both self-employed, we decided to take advantage of our un-rooted-ness and travel too! Our first stop? Lake Tahoe. We have some friends who have a second house there, and they graciously allowed us to stay for a week (thank you Randi & Mark!).

Here are a few of the "classes" we had in Tahoe:

Language Arts in Batman Pajamas












Measuring Snow Depth in Lengths of Boy









A Study of Gravity and Friction

(Thanks for the sleds, mom!)









P.E. with a View

We recently invested in our own snowshoes. What a great way to get exercise and see some very cool things. (thank you, Carol J., for introducing us to this!)



Identifying Animal Tracks 

Before we left home I printed out a ton of info about the winter animals in Tahoe, what they do to survive, and what their footprints looked like. Sadly, we only saw a few in person, and besides these snowshoe hare prints (which we were very excited about!), mostly only saw dog prints.






Reading like a Pro

Jacob read "Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry - historical fiction about WWII

Meanwhile I read "Want Not" by Jonathon Miles, which was long but very interesting, and a book about crocheting.





Art





How to Move Stubborn Animals

This is Lucy, our little 10 lb. westiepoo. Her little legs sunk too deep in the snow to really get around by walking. So we devised other methods.



How to Pick Yourself Up After a Major Face Plant

There were a few of these. And it wasn't just Jacob doing them, though I'm not naming names.



How to Look Really Cool Next to the Inside Out Rainbow Unicorn

On the way home from Tahoe we stopped by PIXAR and got a tour from a friend of mine (thank you, Tia!) We got to see a bit of behind the scenes animation and learned a few secrets. But we were told, in no uncertain terms, that if we divulged any information we would be hunted down by the unicorn. Do you see how long her horn is? And you can't see it, but the end is rather pointy.

We like this world-schooling so far!

4 comments:

  1. I cant wait to read about all the lesson Jacob will learn while traveling this year !- Love you guys and miss you already

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  2. I homeschooled for one year when we were in transition from one place to the next, and I absolutely loved it! At that time my kids read "My Side of the Mountain" by Lois Lowry and wow, did that spark some imaginations (especially my own!). I used to be a teacher by profession and nothing beats getting out into the world and seeing it for yourself. I think it also made us much closer as a family. Now my kids are a senior in HS and a college freshman and I believe they are successful people today because they experienced what they did and are self-motivated learners. My daughter describes herself as "curious and creative"! She is heading to South Korea this summer for her major!

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