New York City

Before dropping Alex at camp in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, we were all able to enjoy a quick trip to New York City. It was a fun trip. We stayed in the Hilton right near Times Square. One day 1, we went to the top of the Empire State Building, walked up to Central Park, and visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Day 2 brought a subway ride down to catch our tour of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and a walk past the Twin Towers site. That evening we visited the Times Square American Eagle Store, and then saw "West Side Story". The highlight of the trip - at least for Rachel - was our Saturday evening performance of 'Wicked"! During down times, we walked around Times Square, ate at lots of good restaurants (my favorite was Five Napkin) and stopped at the soft serve ice cream trucks to stay cool. (The temperature was high 90's and VERY humid.)

New York City is crazy! People everywhere. Rachel and I enjoyed 1 hour of just sitting in Times Square watching people (and counting the number of females with wayward bra straps - over 100 in an hour...) This was my first ever visit to NYC. I would go back, but never to live!

The Empire State Building

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is the bed from 'The Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler".

Times Square

Manhattan- view from The Statue of Liberty park

After dropping Alex at camp, we drove down to New Fairfield, CT to visit friends who just moved there - probably a week before our trip. It was a fun trip. We were able to see their new house, visit Mystic Pizza and enjoy a quick trip to the beach. It was sad, too, since we know we won't be able to see our friends for a long time now.

Rachel's best friend, Sarah - now living in Connecticut.

New Blog!!!

Check out my new blog - Under the Tuscan Sun!

Coasting the East

Here's a link to my newest blog - Coasting the East. Our summer fieldtrip this year is a trip to the East Coast. We will visit Philadelphia, Boston and Washington DC and lots of sites in between.

Should be fun!

Another Plug for Goodbye Old School, Hello Bold School!

Here's a post from a blog I just found and really like. Sounds like the author and I have a lot in common. Maybe I'll need to get Pat to read the book like her husband. Then, away we can go!!!!
(Oh, by the way, on the posts in which I link to someone else, I always put my comments in black.)


The New Global Student: Kicking My Dragon
July 12, 2009 by SwitchedOnMom

So let’s take a look at my living room bookshelves, shall we? In amongst the volumes of African fiction and non-fiction, political science, voluntary simplicity and environmentalism, biography, classics, personal essays and creative non-fiction (much of it travel literature), there’s Tales of Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman. Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Monkey Dancing, by Daniel Glick

Hmm. I’m detecting a trend here. Person/family leaves everything behind to travel the world/start new life overseas. No, I don’t have any surprises in store for Husband Dear, but I guess I have long entertained the fantasy/dream of ditching everything and moving overseas…or at least traveling for an extended period of time. (Does it say anything to you that I loved, loved, loved The Dove back in 1974?) I’ve spent a total of seven years of my life living overseas (six with Husband Dear) and as I’ve written here before, the only thing I have ever explicitly told my kids they must do is spend an extended period of time living overseas, be it as a high school exchange student, gap year, junior year of college, Peace Corps….

Meanwhile, my downstairs bookshelf is weighted down with books about education and homeschooling and giftedness. (Mine too!)

Enter The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition and Get a Truly International Education by Maya Frost. Which had me at … the cover. Reading Frost’s book felt like being in a benevolent Vulcan mind meld or chatting with my upbeat new best friend. I devoured it.

Seamlessly combining my longheld vision of a life overseas and all my hardwon “radical” out-of-the-box educational notions/solutions/knowledge, Frost’s book coalesces the ideas and impulses that have been swirling around in my brain–and makes me want to do it all NOW.

Drat you Maya Frost!

Why? She’s kicking my snoozing dragon, that’s why. “The Plan” had always been for Husband Dear and me to bid the suburbs farewell and pursue international careers as soon as M. was in college. We’ve repeatedly told the girls, more than half seriously, “When you’re out of here, we’re out of here.” But after reading The New Global Student I found myself spinning out different scenarios, accelerated timetables. Because if you’re already as far along as I am in questioning the whole educational industrial status quo, and in believing that we are in the midst of a fundamental global and societal shift–then what Frost lays out is simply the next logical move outside the box.

And what exactly is Frost saying?

Step away from the herd. Step away from “doing time,” checking off the “right” extracurriculars and all the other “givens” of high school and college. Step away from the fear. To quote Twain: “Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

It’s a whole new world (pity this year’s graduating journalism and finance majors)–and one that is ready and able to compete with us here in the US on all levels. Creativity, flexibility, initiative … these are the skills to cultivate in our kids, and the ones that will be rewarded in the future.
Total immersion in another culture during the formative adolescent years is indeed crucial.
And here, in an enthusiastic, step-by-step fashion, is how to do it.

C. actually grabbed the book before I started reading it. She has a pretty clear picture of what she needs to do to get where she wants to go. A few things, like IB, she’s already doing. But after reading The New Global Student she did for the first time express interest in doing a homestay exchange experience rather than just going solo somewhere, and she is now talking about wanting to have conversational Spanish in her skill set, something she pooh-poohed before. Meanwhile M. hasn’t even read the book yet, but just based on my oohs and ahhs she has taken to lobbying–hard–for us to move overseas sooner rather than later. In the past week there have been heated arguments with C. over whether we should move to somewhere in Latin America or to Thailand, whether Husband Dear should start a restaurant or be a CPA. “Mom,” she’s intoned, “I’m already out of school. And life here is stressful.”

Dear Husband is now in chapter two. Will be interesting to see his reaction.

Hello, from Sunny Arizona!

Today's our last day of a full week in Phoenix. I'm really sad. It is sunny, and hot and beautiful! I'm ready to send for the kitty cats and just stay. Pat can telecommute, or come back and see us every weekend. That's another beauty of homeschooling. We can school in the sun!

PS - I need to post more pictures, but in the mean time check this out -bouncycurlsgirl.

Maybe Blogging Isn't So Hard After All!

It's been easy for me to help the kids set up their first ever blogs, but not as easy for me to set up my own. Blogging is kind of like scrapbooking for me - I have so many ideas, but it's so hard to take the time to get them out! So, inspired by my friend Kim and her awesome blog, I guess I'll have a go at the most important topic on my mind lately - homeschooling.

Last year was our first year. It was alot of fun, alot of chaos, and alot of running around all at the same time. APD's schedule was the most hectic. He went to his middle school every day for band and lunch. This meant leaving the house at 9:30, dropping him off for Band class to start at 9:51, returning home to check on RMD, leaving again to pick him up at 11:07 and returning home again for a few hours before heading to piano or choir or some other activity. APD still managed to get alot done. He completed 2 semesters of Pre-Algebra through BYU on-line, started Algebra 1 with a textbook at home, completed a BYU Chemistry class, completed a Northwestern University on-line Creative Writing class, spent every Thursday at a wilderness class, and beginning in February spent most Tuesdays at a homeschool coop. In between all this he completed a literature-based study of World War II and wrote various papers on topics ranging from Chemistry to Italy to Peru!

RMD's schedule was a little better. She focused on math this year and really advanced - she was excited to learn "hard" multiplication and division and move into fractions and decimals. She wrote many papers and did alot of creative projects. She also really took off with her reading as well. Her favorites were the Little House series and Wise Child - a book about herbalism. She attended her elementary school every Tuesday and wilderness class every Thursday. She started singing in a girls choir which performed in an opera in the spring.

The highlight of our year was our trip to Italy and our Mediteranean Cruise. Places we saw include: Rome and the Vatican City, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca (although only a pearl factory), Tunisia, Malta, Sicily, Pisa, Florence, Cinque Terre, and Venice. Maybe I'll get around to a whole separate blog about the trip!

Anyway, as far as homeschooling, this year was a learning year in more ways then one. Next year we won't be doing any parttime schooling at the middle or elementary schools. It will be a little sad as the kids have alot of nice friends at the schools but it will be nice to have more control of our own schedules. It will be great to have time to actually learn what we want to, read more books and not worry about days spent at the coop or wilderness class. More on all that later.