Honduras: Week 1

The Kid and I traveled to Honduras for five weeks! Some of our adventures from week 1:

Getting there: a plane from Indy to Miami and then another to San Pedro Sula. Our plane arrived too late for the last bus to Copan Ruinas, so we took a hired car. This made for a loooong day of travel! We woke around 4am and arrived at our destination around 7pm (6pm local time). I exchanged some money, which seemed totally sketchy as it was exchanged by some guy standing in the airport holding onto a big wad of cash and a calculator, but this is apparently the actually official way to do it.

We had a cheap upgrade to first class! Woot!

When we woke and took a look around, we discovered that our "homestay" was actually a small B&B. Hmmm. We had been looking forward to staying with a local family, as we did in Guatemala last year. We debated but decided to give this place a shot. The owner's 6yo granddaughter comes around frequently, which is a big plus for The Kid.

Our "B&B homestay"

We took a walk and found that this parque centro had a lot of kids and a tiny bit of green space - major improvement over last year! Plus someone selling little ice cream cones for only 5 lempiras ($0.25).

The parque central as seen from the second floor of a nearby coffee shop

Monday was our first day at Escuela Guacamaya. The Kid gets two hours of one-on-one instruction per day and I get four hours. Really, 3 1/2 hours and a break. Day 1 included each of our instructors trying to figure out what we know, which can't be easy with the odd hodgepodge of Spanish learning we've each had.

Throughout the week, we've been thrilled with the teaching we've had. The Kid already has the usual "kid basics" down - colors, foods, animals, basic nouns - and they've been working a lot on verbs, expressing opinions, etc. there's lots of game playing and she has "homework" for the first time. Most of the first week has been closing holes in my own knowledge, increasing vocabulary, and trying to work on my horrendous accent.

All of our meals are provided at our B&B homestay, but we have gone out for some snacks. Ice cream bars are available in most of the little stores for under US$1. We had this feast of a huge piece of torta, a cup of Honduran coffee, and a licuado (smoothie) for US$5 at a cafe downtown.

Torta and drinks

On Saturday, the end of our first week, we visited the Mayan ruins that the town is named for. In addition to the ruins themselves, The Kid was thrilled to finally get her first tuk tuk ride of this trip! A tuk tuk is kind of like a three-wheeled, semi-enclosed taxi. They're cheap and plentiful, but we don't take many because it feels too lazy!

After the ruins, we had a late lunch at Pizza Copan. That's right, American food! I forget how awesome comfort food tastes after a week of eggs, beans, and tortillas.

New Goals: A Side Effect of Child-Chosen Classes

As I talked about a few posts ago, The Kid gets to choose two classes per six-week session of school. We brainstormed a big list of things she might want to choose for classes based on current interests and things she has randomly mentioned.

She really, really wants classes with other kids. There are no academic co-ops available to us. She knows about online classes, so she asked to be able to take one of those - online kids are definitely better than no kids! After some exploring, The Kid decided she would like to try a class through Athena's Advanced Academy next fall. So, yay, I won't even have to teach all her classes next fall!

Most of Athena's classes have similar prerequisites - a minimum reading level, being comfortable speaking in an online classroom, the ability to give 4-5 sentence responses to forum questions. She's got the reading levels and the ability to talk (boy, does she ever!). But she's a hunt-and-peck typist and when I told her she would have to write her answers in paragraph form she asked me what a paragraph was.

Per our new scheduling, she gets to choose two classes for spring and two for summer, so she has already chosen that spring includes typing and summer includes paragraph composing. Yay for being able to set goals!

Creating Unit Studies

When I went in search of curricula for some subjects, sometimes I couldn't find what I was looking for. I started pulling together a mishmash of resources, and only later started thinking of some of these as unit studies. I thought I'd share the steps I go through in creating these.

1. Choose a topic. This includes not only the general topic, but any areas we want to focus on. We consider how deep we want to go and a general idea of how much time we want to spend.

Example: My daughter requested a unit on chemistry. She wanted quite a lot of information on it, definitely wants to cover the periodic table/elements, and wants lots of hands-on. We had a big trip scheduled, which presents a natural ending point for us, so we had about 6-8 weeks to spend on this.

2. Start gathering resources. Ask on homeschooling groups, do internet searches, see what the library has, take a critical look at anything we already have in the house we can use, check out online MOOCs, field trip opportunities. The idea here is to see what is available to you, not to do any choosing yet.

Example: "Chemistry" is rather a huge topic, so I decided to start by asking on one of the homeschooling groups to get ideas for materials others have found especially good. I needed to narrow the field. I knew we had a couple things in the house, including a molecular modeling kit, so I wanted to incorporate that. I got recommendations for a huge amount of books, curricula, websites, apps, and kits.

3. Evaluate the resources. Some just won't fit with your goals, your ages/abilities, your interests, your time frame, your budget. You might want to keep a record of these for the future, but take them out of your options for now. Some will hopefully be standouts and have you and your child really excited about jumping in - these are the essential pieces you can most build your unit around. Some are very good, but not spectacular - if they are affordable, then these are great to have on hand for open exploration even if you don't formally incorporate them into the unit. Some may not make you excited, but are the best choice for fulfilling some aspect of your goals.

Example: So much stuff! I find this the most overwhelming part of planning a unit because I want to include ALL THE GREAT STUFF! I had been wanting to try the Ellen McHenry units for a while, and she has one called The Elements, so I looked at a sample with my daughter, who agreed it appeared to be a good fit, so that became one of our main pieces. There are games in that, but not much in the way of experiments, so I needed something to fulfill that piece. I was planning on a traditional chemistry set, and Thames and Kosmos has some decently well rated ones at a fair price, so I looked there. While looking there, I came across Candy Chemistry - light on the chemistry but heavy on the fun and the candy! My daughter is young, and we'll definitely do more serious takes on chemistry later, so I went with Candy Chemistry. The kit is a bit ridiculously priced, so I downloaded the manual for free and gathered the supplies. There are some great books that were available at the library, and some recommended apps that were priced ok, so I added those to the stack, though I don't intend to formally include them. Add in a periodic table placemat, and videos from subscription sites we already have and we can easily fill our time!

4. What else can I incorporate? What can I let go of in the rest of our schooling?

Example: We were ready for a break from formal math, and there's a fair bit of math in chemistry anyway, so we shelved our math program for a bit. She kept some notes and did some written activities, so handwriting was covered. We were just about to do a bit on crystals in science anyway, so we did that and also included the crystal growing kit I had for that - fits in perfectly alongside the chemistry unit!

Interesting Asynchronicity

I just posted about our new scheduling. So what does The Kid choose for one of her first subjects?

Chemistry.

I was thinking mixing things together to see what happens. She wanted to learn about the Periodic Table. She wanted to learn about atoms and molecules. She wanted to learn about electrons.

Really, kid? You're five years old.

The Kid writes very little, has about third grade math skills, and generally wants high input and low output. She can read at a high school level but prefers mid-to-late elementary text with lots of pictures, enjoys verbal instruction at about a late elementary/early junior high level, and will happily watch documentaries of YouTube information at adult level. Balancing this is weird. It's not like I can add up all the different grade levels, find the average, and pick material for that level.

The Internet came to my rescue and I found that other parents had already been there and done that with interested young kids. I actually was able to put together a chemistry unit that we both loved, was appropriate for her level, and kept us learning and busy.

Blending Structure and Freedom

We recently switched around the organization in our homeschooling again. We are trying out something new - breaking our studies into six week "sessions", with four subjects each session, each subject being given 30 minutes per school day. The Kid and I agree that Spanish will always be one of her subjects. I choose one subject each session. The Kid chooses two subjects per session. (If she is feeling less schooly, she can choose less than two. The joy of being five years old!)

We've found before that no structure ends with The Kid frustrated, and too much structure ends with The Kid frustrated. A few years ago, I assumed that I would unschool until she was 7 or 8, but that doesn't quite fit her. We were doing daily core subjects and switching between science, history, art, music, grammar, poetry, and maybe some other stuff - it was exhausting to keep track of and plan! I wanted an option that blended heavily child-led with enough structure to keep us both happy. So far, so good!

We recently wrapped our first session, and it went great. We are now in the midst of a five week trip, so this session is all Spanish, all the time. But we've already chosen our subjects for the next session, and are excited to get underway again!