Now that we are officially on the road full time, I thought an update about our current homeschool activities was appropriate. If you recall, our beginning was a little rocky, but I feel like the kids have now gotten into a routine. Some days Andrew will wake up and be done with his workbooks before breakfast, other days they are both still stumbling along well after lunch. For the most part though, we get through their workbooks and assignments fairly quickly and move on to the more exciting aspect of schooling while on the road; the field trips. Remember how as kid you had maybe 1-3 field trips per year? Field trip days were the most exciting, the most anticipated days of the year (for most I suppose, I’m sure there was the student in every class that would rather stay at a desk all day. That was definitely not me). We probably do 1-3 field trips per WEEK. I love it. I feel like my kids get so much more hands on experience, and while I feel sometimes that I’m not doing enough, or that I’m not doing the right things, we have moments where I feel like this, this is exactly perfect for them.

For instance, we were at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina and I had a moment with Andrew. We desperately wanted to get to the butterfly hall in order to see the release of new butterflies (occurs at set times once or twice daily) so we raced past an old train caboose that you could go inside and explore. It was bright red and looked really old. Andrew turned to me and said, “Mom? I really want to come back and go in there.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because the kids that are coming out of there are smiling. So it must be fun and I want to go inside and check it out.”

I about died of happiness right there. My cute little 6 year old had made the cognitive link between smiling children exiting a play structure and that because they were smiling it was probably a really cool place. Not only had he made the link in his brain, but he verbally expressed it to me quite clearly.

Maybe these types of moments happen all the time in public school? I’m not sure, because I’m not there to see them. It makes me happy to see my kids make connections between various places we visited or talked about in books. I feel in a small way, maybe we are doing okay. Our learning opportunities are different from what a regular school provides, but I  feel like it better fits what my kids need.