Melanie and I just returned over the weekend from a visit out west.
How do you get a child excited about school again when they’ve been on vacation for a couple of weeks?
The beauty of homeschooling (the way I handle it), her schooling really never ended even while we were on vacation.
What did she learn? What “subjects’ did she work on?
Geography
The train ride was great and both ways, we saw so much of our beautiful country. We discussed states we were going through and commented on the change in landscape. From east to west and back again, this land truly is gorgeous!
History
We were able to spend a couple of weeks on a ranch. We didn’t see many people as we didn’t leave much or travel far. We did go explore some abandoned buildings near the ranch and Mellie and I talked about the history of the place. Who lived there and what they might have done on the land. She even got to see some decomposing cows and skulls. (Maybe that fits into the Science category)
Math
One morning, she and her big sister decided to make a cake. I was busy holding the grandbaby so I just listened to their conversations. Mellie had to learn measurements for the frosting recipe her sister was giving her. They had fun making this cake and I was anticipating eating it never suspecting a thing. More math came into play later that night when we headed to the small town of Pine Bluffs to bowl (check is out because this place was so adorable). I quickly figured out we weren’t JUST bowling but this was a surprise birthday party for me! It was just five of us but we had fun and Mellie got to use her math skills as she played her first rounds of bowling.
Besides our basic subjects, Mellie did daily chores feeding the animals and explored the outside when she wasn’t in the house cooking for us. Her education on this trip was much more than I could have given her from a textbook.
I believe we have gotten so far into the book learning these days that we have forgotten how much children can soak up learning just from day to day experiences.
I really hope to give her more journeys like this one. Education is a daily, hour by hour communication with our children to prepare them to be godly citizens in this world.
