Road School

Since we don't have a home right now, we are calling our educational experience road school this year.  Sam is signed up for an on-line charter school that starts next week.  The other three kids we decided to not enroll in the on-line schools available.  For one reason or another none of them were a good fit.  Some wanted students to be available in February for testing, some wanted to send us boxes of materials to supplement the on-line portion, and some wanted to charge us boatloads of money.  So we opted to road school our three younger children for the year.

While we do have some specific curriculum,  we are mainly taking advantage of the museums and sights around us.   Let me share a few examples of that from sight seeing this week.

We visited the National Cathedral and the tour guide gave us a great lesson in Gothic Architecture.  It was much more interesting than reading about it in a text book.   After our inside tour, we walked around outside and looked at the various outside Gothic features.  I'm sure we will be able to identity more Gothic cathedrals when we visit Europe.

Outside the National Cathedral

Inside

The south side.  It is being repaired from damage received last summer in an earthquake.

Later in the week we visited Mt. Vernon.  A few days before I gave the kids the assignment to each research a bit about George Washington and write a eulogy that we would read when we visited his tomb.  Near the end of our day at Mt. Vernon we found a shady place to sit near his tomb, and each child took a few minutes to present a eulogy.  They had a few things in common, but each child had also come up with a few unique things to share.   We then had a discussion about things we had learned while at Mt. Vernon.

Seth and Jenna at Washington's tomb

Joe at Mt. Vernon

The kids resting on George Washington's porch after a day with lots of walking

We spent a few hours at the Holocaust museum.  I told the kids that it wasn't going to be the most fun museum they visit, but it was an important one to learn about.  I took Jenna through the childcare’s area while Rich took the boys through the main exhibit.  It was a good introduction to the Holocaust and we will learn more about it later in our trip when we visit Auschwitz.

This coming up week will be US Government week as we visit the US Supreme Court, the Capitol building, and the White House.