Getting the ball rolling again

Looking around, I'm overwhelmed by the different things a homeschooling family can discover together within a 80km radius of where we live. Today I sat and brainstormed some of the things we can learn about and discover together, and I know we're going to have a great time.

Ryan and Jed started journaling some discoveries more formally today by searching for a map of the province we are living in. George is located in the South Western Cape, and is actually further south than Cape Town is. They found it a bit of a challenge to copy the outline from a map to fill up an A4 piece of paper. Then Jed discovered that the Atlantic Ocean is on the west side of Cape Town and we  had to find out which ocean lies closer to us. The Indian Ocean ofcourse! Then they plotted George, Mosselbay and Vleesbay on the map, the different places we visited over the weekend. Our plan is to put more and more towns, rivers, mountains and other interesting things on the maps as we go along.

Ethan (and Aimee squeezing between us to count and see what was happening) did some estimating and measuring this morning. He estimated how many cups of water it would take to fill various bottles and buckets and then we actually filled them to find out how many cups it really did take. Its been so long since we did any writing of numbers that we actually first need to spend a little time do that before we can make any meaningful progress recording our mathematical solutions!

We don't actually have a curriculum with us. Our plan is for Ryan and Jed to continue with their exploration of the Eastern Hemisphere by means of the 'Explorer' they have. We'll also continue with Singapore Maths as our friends in Cyprus have kindly loaned us the necessary textbooks for all 3 boys. The rest we'll supplement by attempting to exhaust the resources of our local library.

Slowly but surely we're getting there, and will hopefully soon we'll be back in the swing of a harmonious homeschooling routine. I am also sure that it won't be long before we find other homeschooling families here in George that we can befriend and learn from. We are desperately missing our friends in Cyprus, and the many adventures we had together from which we learnt so much!