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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Taking the Show on the Road

As I mentioned in my last post, we packed up and headed off to spend a week in a hotel in the city nearest to our home while our truck (at 2013 F 250) spent the week getting a mobility makeover!
The passenger seat was replaced by this seat which comes out of the truck and lowers so I can transfer onto it from my wheelchair.

Then the canopy on the truck raises so that the lift (the thing with the red straps) can rotate out to the side and lower down to be attached to my powered wheelchair....which it then lifts into the bed of the truck.

Then the canopy lowers and protects my chair and lift from the elements.

And back up the seat goes!

A week in a hotel with two children can be challenging, especially while teaching them as well. We did pretty well, though we did do a lighter load of school work, for our first attempt at homeschooling away from home.Thankfully,the hotel has a fabulous pool for kids (Amy swam for the first time!) and is within walking distance of a mall etc. I also have a cousin in the city who has children who are our girls ages.....they swam together for hours and hours! And the girls escaped to their house for a home-cooked meal! Eating out every day got old fast - though nothing compared with the winter 2008 when hubby,Lacy and I spent 2 months hanging out in a hotel room during the last 2 months of my pregnancy with Amy (our small town was not equipped to deal with my high risk pregnancy).



Walking to the mall - the weather was very hot and sunny for September!






Next time, it will be easier because I will be better organized and even more prepared-if that's possible, LOL. I do need to figure out how schooling while we are actually on the move should work-as it was just a three-hour drive each way we didn't bother schooling on the days we were driving. When we are traveling to and from our winter destinations there will be more days on the road and we will have to figure out a way to at least get the basics done on those days-or ahead of time I guess?
It happened to be Supermans birthday while we were there...we had a fancy meal out.


Anyhow, we have been home for a few days now and are attempting to get back into the swing of things here, crossed a few more things off our list today after a doctor's appointment to get six months of our prescriptions written and to stop at the courier to pick up the last box of dozens which contained six months worth of my medical supplies. We have our bank account set up correctly and a tentative date to leave (the week of October 21, we hope). There are still many many many more things to do, and only a month in which to do them! Time to break out a master list...

Repacking the boxes of supplies....

Guess where all the extra boxes are now?

Thursday, September 12, 2013

On the road...

Packed to the gills (sans trailer) and off on our first roadschool trip to our nearest City where our truck will be modified so that I can get in without my Superman lifting me in! And so I can take my power wheelchair in the back! Full report to come....

Friday, September 6, 2013

Schooling Our Children

I briefly toyed with the idea of homeschooling our children while our oldest was still a baby, but when the time came we sent her off to kindergarten at our tiny, rural, local K-7 elementary school.
Lacy, heading off to Kindergarten in 2008

She did well and thoroughly enjoyed her first four years at the school, she had great teachers and we had no reason to be concerned until a troubling note on her report card brought us in for a parent-teacher conference.After that conference, we were shocked and dismayed to realize the shortcomings of our educational system-lacy had been in a three grade split class (3/4/5) where the teacher, the matter how capable he was, could not possibly cover all the recommended curriculum. While we have no particular ideological reason to believe that children need to cover the curriculum at a certain time, we were shocked at the response from the district superintendent and others which was basically "that's how it is, they will learn what they need eventually"! Well, that was reassuring...NOT!

After much thought and consideration, we decided that the following school year (Lacy's grade 4 year) we would pull her from the local school and enroll her in a local distributed learning (sometimes called distance learning or correspondence school) program. A distributed learning program is still a public school, and the student still receives report cards, while the parents receive the support and guidance of a licensed teacher as well as resources and a small amount of funding. It is not technically "homeschooling" but our particular distributed learning school is fairly flexible in how we choose to meet the governments PLO (prescribed learning outcomes). My husband and I feel strongly that it is important to us that our children be fully ready to reenter the regular school system at any time if that is what they need. Therefore, we have stuck with the distributed learning school for this year, in which my youngest daughter has started kindergarten. I spend a great deal of time searching for unique and creative ways to meet the PLO and trying to engage the girls in active learning, while having fun, while ensuring that they get an excellent education. It is a lot of work, but I thoroughly enjoy it.
while those were our reasons for starting homeschooling, more and more reasons to continue our becoming apparent. I am fully confident that academically the girls will excel, one on two attention will do that at least, but feel in the long run homeschooling will enable them to be well-rounded, confident, capable, young women. Lacey had some great friends at school, and they are generally sweet girls she is still friends with, but I am so glad that neither she nor Amy will have to deal with any of the normalization/socialization that goes on in the schoolyard. Lacey will not be teased about not being stick thin, Amy will not be teased for her glasses and eyes that cross when she has them off, neither of my sweet girls will be tempted to engage in mean girl type bullying and both will have ample opportunity to develop a strong relationship with us, their parents instead of their peers (for more on that I recommend reading Hold onto Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld).
Lacy and Amy on the first day of grade 5 and K - 2013



So, our children would've been learning at home whether or not we decided to go adventuring in our travel trailer. We look at the travel as a grand opportunity to expose our children to different environments and types of people throughout North America-I will be doing my best to coordinate their schoolwork with the particular region in which we are spending the winter. We also hope to be able to explore our own magnificent country with them-but not during the winter, LOL.

This past Wednesday, was the first day of (school) for us and so far the first week has gone splendidly. It will take us a bit to find our groove, and lose it again, but we will work it out together as a family because that's what we do.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Camping with Friends

We spent the Labour Day weekend camping with friends at a free forestry campsite 40 km up the lake from our home.it was an ideal campsite, small with just six sites but situated beautifully. The lake was nice and shallow for swimming in the fisherman caught lots of fish-mostly nice sized troutbut also a small lake char. Not to mention the company, which was very pleasant-the kids got along great and played nonstop.

This was our last camping trip before heading off on our adventure in October and it only reinforced our decision and heightened our excitement about the upcoming winter.we didn't forget anything too crucialand the trailer functioned well for our family-though both the husband and I CAN NOT WAIT to have the lifts installed. On that front, after returning from camping we got word that all has been approved so now we just wait for an install date.

I took a lot of photos (laughed at myself when I caught myself thinking "I should take a photo for the blog") so I'll post a few of those now, as I must rush off to get ready for the second day of teaching my two daughters here at home. The first day went really well, and hopefully I will get a post up about the first week over this next weekend.
little monkey 
our friends daughter on the path to the beach-directly from our campsite!

sand toys and rocks?why not?

the only problem with catching lots of fish...

is gutting them all

waiting for the fisherman to come back. 
inspecting her big sisters catch

all eight! Of them

not squeamish, but by the last day she didn't want to fish if she'd have to gut them...

our dog loves to swim... Wonder how he'll do with the ocean?

it was such a fabulous beach for swimming... Shallow for ages, and sandy.

it's always nice when the people you camp with have toys! Off for a quad ride

the scenery was just fabulous, when the lake is like this it reminds me of molten silver


just a precursor to the fabulous sunset to come...

we were treated to a beautiful sunset one night


we live in such a beautiful country, it will be hard to leave but good to know that we will always come back.