Category — Kids View

Caroline and Conor have new posts up on their blog.

Check out Caroline’s post on a 2 am false alarm and Conor’s description of what it means to be “travel sick.”

Plus, Caroline and friends have put together a music video.

On the kid’s blog, Caroline explains the difference between full cama and semi-cama service on long-distance buses in Argentina.

If you haven’t visited Caroline and Conor’s blog recently, you should check out their latest posts on the odd Argentine artist Xul Solar and the day spent partying with Mr. Puffy Pants.

Caroline and Conor have published their first posts on their blog – be sure to check them out.

Also, we’ve posted our first batch of pictures from Ecuador.

When we last discussed the issue of roadschooling, we were considering working with Learning Community International, a Maryland-based organization that initially seemed excited about working with us.

But when the time came to put together a course of study, we felt their interest in working with us had waned (to put it charitably), and we decided to look at other options.

We considered a broad range of possibilities:

• Nonschooling (probably the best idea, but it’s hard to make the leap);

• Unschooling–I swear, this is a legitimate movement;

• On-line schooling presented by Maryland’s Department of Education (sadly, ironically, the county we live in does not yet approve our state’s online curriculum);

• Making up our own customized “curriculum” to reflect the places we would be visiting;

• Purchasing the Montgomery County curriculum and administering it ourselves, figuring out how to manage the legally required periodic reviews by homeschooling office personnel (fly them to Thailand?, Budapest?);

However, none of these options would put us in the best position to accomplish Caroline’s ardent wish: To graduate high school with her peers.

It’s important to her, and we didn’t want our wanderlust to put her ability to graduate with the class of 2012 in jeopardy.

Ultimately we settled on the most “conventional” of the unconventional choices open to us. We enrolled Caroline and Conor in online private homeschool programs that have been accredited by Montgomery County, Maryland.

Both kids are enrolled in Griggs International Academy’s online homeschooling program. The school provides a comprehensive, county and state accredited curriculum and will supervise and grade schoolwork and provide transcripts at completion.

We also registered Conor in a math class at the impressive Calvert School.

One thing we learned so far in this process: The text book industry is far, far behind in the digital revolution.

We have had to dedicate one piece of luggage to text books. There are no online or CD-ROM versions of books the kids will be using in their studies.

At some point, not long from now, I imagine text books as we know them will be a thing of the past. But for now, they represent about forty extra pounds we’ll be hauling around the world.

Caroline and Conor have set up their own blog for the trip, where they will be able to share their unique views without Mom and Dad (mostly Dad) looking over their shoulder.

They’ll still be posting to the family blog, but they’ll have free reign on their site. Uh oh.

OK, so get this. I am going to travel around the world for 365 days. Kind of like the movie, except not. I am totally psyched to do it, and who wouldn’t be? (Other than my sister…)

A bit about me:

• I love cheetas.
• I can’t wait to go to Japan.
• I’m looking forward to living on a boat for ten days while we’re in the Galapagos.
• Once our trip starts, I’ll be writing a story as we go (chapters to be posted every week).

I am looking forward most to swimming with sea lions, going on a giant zip line in Peru, zorbing and street luging in New Zealand and visiting Machu Picchu.

Some fears that keep floating in the back of my mind are that you can’t go a year without crying or getting hurt, and it’s harder to deal with being sad when you are away from home. Hopefully I won’t have many sad moments.

I promise my posts will get more interesting when the trip starts and I hope you will want to read them.

When my dad asked me if I would go around the world I said, “Sure.” Like we were ever going to do that!

The trip started out as a secret and something we could only talk about as a family – and with no one else. I never thought it would happen. I was sure it was just another one of my dad’s crazy ideas that would never be possible.

My dad would sit in his office all day researching and learning about other families who had done this before (I have no idea how he still earned a living while doing this).

I never really thought much about the trip until now, with less than five months till we leave.

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Slowly I am beginning to realize there is more to preparing for a round the world trip than logistics and financial planning.

There is an emotional dimension too, as we prepare to step out of our community and away from our friends and family for a year. This became most apparent to me as I watched my daughter struggle to tell her best friend about our trip.

I am also learning that the emotional preparation for our year away can be as challenging for friends who remain at home.

Last week I was fortunate to read an essay that one of my son’s best friends wrote for his sixth grade English class. In the essay he explained his reaction to the news of our trip and drew an inspired lesson from one of Nickelodeon’s wisest characters: SpongeBob Squarepants.

Here’s the essay Dana Cook, age 12, shared with us.

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