Visiting Florida

Just another reason to love homeschooling. We are visiting family and have the opportunity to see, touch, taste, smell and hear what life is like in Florida.

We got to touch alligators.







My aunt has citrus trees growing in her yard. (This is a lime tree)




She also has tiny lizards running around her yard. Can you see the one in this picture?


We saw the sun set on the Gulf of Mexico last night. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera were dead last night and this was the best picture I could get tonight.


We are here for a few more days. The kids can't wait to see what we will experience tomorrow. This is homeschooling at its finest. Once again, they are learning so much - where Florida is on the map, what the state capital is, and how the flora and fauna are different from what we have at home in Pennsylvania. I could have handed them a book on Florida and asked them to learn the contents, instead this is a learning experience they will remember for many years to come. I realize not everyone has the resources to have experiences like this for their kids. However, I encourage anyone who is presented with an experience opportunity to embrace it and enjoy witnessing the learning that happens.

When Learning Spills Over into Play

In Karen Andreola's book A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning, Chapter Four tells us that Education is a Science of Relations. I have always said that we make connections with what we already know.

I get so excited when I see my kids making connections. During the month of November, I have been reading Pilgrim Stories by Margaret Pumphrey to them. All the while, they are building their Thanksgiving notebooks. Yesterday, I walked past the living room where my daughters were playing with a friend of theirs. Their friend was wrapped up tight in a blanket and I asked what they were doing. They said they were pretending it was the Pilgrims' first winter at Plymouth and the friend was pretending to be Priscilla Mullins and dd10 was pretending to be Mistress Brewster. Priscilla was sick and Mistress Brewster trying to bring her back to health. DD11 was pretending to be Squanto and was showing them how to grow food.

Inside my brain I did a loud "WOOHOO!!!!!" because this form of play shows me that they got something out of what I read to them. They made a connection! This also tells me that they will remember what we learned about Thanksgiving for a long, long time. They didn't learn anything for a test only to forget it right away.

Here are a couple of pictures.

We are not so sure that Squanto had eggs to bring, but in our version, dd11 went to our chicken coupe in our back yard and brought eggs to the ailing pilgrims.



Mistress Brewster also took care of sick babies at our Plymouth hospital.