BortmanBlog: School every day...

Many people, both from home and that we meet on the road, have asked how the whole school thing works for the kids while we're traveling, so I figured I'd do a quick entry. As we learn to navigate new countries, cultures, transportation systems, and languages, we're definitely of the attitude that every day is a school day. But, we are also doing "real" schoolwork along the way, especially to make sure that Ari doesn't fall behind, since he'll have finals at the end of the school year back home in Pennsylvania.

We had to essentially "unregister" the kids from their regular schools and register them, instead, as "homeschoolers" to avoid getting into trouble for truancy. So the kids' teachers have absolutely no responsibility towards our kids while we're gone and we are free to create our own school curriculum to follow while we're away. We need to prove, at the end, that the kids have been learning regularly all the required subjects for their ages (i.e., reading, writing, 'rithmetic, etc.) When we return, there's an evaluation process where we hand in their portfolio (which has a pretty loose definition and interpretation based on PA state homeschooling law) to an approved evaluator (whom we've already selected and scheduled an evaluation with upon our return), who checks for certain things (like a reading log, proof of days of school attended, etc.) and then writes an evaluation that says that the kids did, or did not, show proof of "sustained progress" in their required subjects...

We were extremely lucky that all of the kids' teachers were supportive of our journey and went above and beyond anything we could have imagined to help us prepare. We owe them a huge thanks. All of them prepared packets or gave us written summaries of upcoming chapters and units to be covered so we could keep up, and all of Ari's text books and homework assignments are available online so he can easily log in to read and do homework assignments from wherever we are.

So, that's the technical part...now for the implementation:
It was definitely hard to do any "real" schoolwork during our 10-day whirlwind tour of Israel where we barely had time to breathe, let alone do math problems. But the days were so full of history, geography, art, architecture, culture, language (Hebrew), and more, that we'd definitely consider them educational days.

Since then, we've slowed our pace considerably and do find time at least every other day or so to do schoolwork in a more traditional way. Luckily, both of our kids are relatively motivated so it hasn't been a problem. The kids do read every night and Ellie writes in her journal each night. While we were in Greece, Ari read and completed most of a detailed curriculum about the book, The King Must Die, about the hero Theseus who lived in Athens and Crete (both of which we spent time in over the past 2 weeks). I found the curriculum online - including essays, quizzes, and a special creative project where he designed a toy to market to children of ancient Athens, complete with marketing poster. Ari is also working on his own blog. Although he's a bit less than motivated about that right now...I'm hoping that will change.

Additionally, we're making a concerted effort to learn the languages of the countries we visit, although our attempt at Greek was less than stellar. We learned about 8 words of Greek in our 2 weeks in that country, and that's not due to a lack of trying -man it was difficult! No matter how many times we'd ask how to say something, and then repeat it over and over, we just couldn't get it. We're already much farther along with our Italian. We have some Pimsler lesson tapes that we try to listen to at night. I'm sure anyone walking by outside our hotel room or apartment door has a good laugh as they hear all four of us repeat, "Scuzi signorina. Lay capeeshay l'italiano? See, ee-oh capeesco l'italiano." We also have a great online account with Rosetta Stone for Italian that really is fantastic. Hopefully, we really will speak Italian before we leave return home...that's the goal.

Also - I haven't finished writing about it yet, but we also made a special stop in Crete for 3 days, going high up to an old, mountain village, specifically to study art and astronomy with a very special couple. More on that soon...but suffice it to say, we're squeezing in lots of education along the way... for all of us.