Today we had a great day, we got up to blue skies and went to the beach with the surfboards. We also borrowed Linzi's longboard. We headed to a beach about 10 mins away and had a super fun morning surfing the little waves, yes even me!! Then, as usual hunger got the better of us and so we headed to a little town nearby for lunch. There were a few shops in the village and one was a new age shop which was soon to close down and was filled with crystals and stones, by the desk were a stack of little cards with words of wisdom to take away and I picked one that said 'Simplicity is the beauty of life'.
I think this is a really nice sentiment, sometimes it's easy to over complicate life by thinking too much about what might happen and trying to put things in place to stop those potentially awful things from happening when in reality they probably wouldn't have happened in the first place... so I liked this little card - just keep things simple! It reminds me of something Sam said when we couldn't get into the house the other day - me and Will started to discuss the options and stress a bit about what we would do next when Small Swami Sam piped up with, ' hey don't worry guys, lets look on the positive side, we have a van to sleep in, we can stay here for the night and most importantly we have each other.' Well that shut us up and we shamefacedly had to acknowledge that he was right and stopped our gloomy predictions.
When we set off it was really difficult to know how to approach home schooling, unlike many countries, the UK doesn't insist you do a correspondence course, they just look at you with a slightly confused expression and say in a slightly sarcastic voice 'Ok then, off you go on your holiday, but don't expect any help from us!' So we set off somewhat in the dark, armed only with a little advice from the headmaster of the private school and a rucksack full of text books and revision guides.
At first I wondered how this was going to work, how long should we study for? What subjects should we study? What time of day do we study? and on and on and on... and then I remembered...'Simplicity is the beauty of life' and so we just let things happen organically, we began to look at one subject a day and did this without a clock so that we weren't putting time restraints on ourselves but just working until we either a) finished the topic or b) felt that Sam or us were getting too tired to continue. This means that we usually work for between 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours every day and this seems like a sufficient amount of time to get a grasp of the topic/section we are looking at. Sam also reads for 1/2 hr every night and occasionally updates his blog (www.thebiggesttripever.blogspot.com). He also unwittingly learns history and geography as we travel around the world, as well as planning skills and confidence which are by products of the travel, and of course he is fitter than he has ever been due to the walking, skating, surfing, paddling and lack of rubbish foods and chocolate.
Since we have been home schooling a few remarkable things have happened naturally, Sam has started to enjoy reading the books and no longer sees it as a chore and occasionally he will pick up a pencil and start to draw just for the fun of it, these are things that he would never have done back home, he has also started to ask literally thousands of questions... now it could be that he always asked these questions and we just never had the time to answer them but now they stream from him every day, infact it's quite difficult to shut him up which is why it's so nice to have separate rooms because at least we are getting a bit of peace on an evening once he has gone to bed.
So to all those who are thinking of travelling with kids but have no idea how to approach the schooling, don't worry, don't stress, do your research and then set off and let your own child dictate the nature of the learning process (with a few clearly defined boundaries) and I think you will find a healthy, happy learning environment. I wouldn't say that Sam relishes the lessons but he certainly doesn't moan about them and is engaged in the learning, and that's good enough. Of course the proof of the pudding will be when we get back and he hopefully slots seamlessly back into the education system but no point over complicating things and worrying about that until we get there.
Picture of Sam and his friend Will paddling out on the canoe with fishing rods to catch some food for the BBQ!
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