Elizabeth’s Blog

Oh, are we ever sad to leave Australia!  It has been amazing and wonderful!  Even though every time we open our mouths they know we are from America, at least they understand us and we understand them.  We are on the plane to China and already I can tell this is going to be a whole new adventure for us.  The Stewardesses barely understand English.  I asked for a cracker and got absolutely blank stares from two ladies holding a platter of crackers.  As Dorothy says “Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore”.  We are not in Oz (e.g., Australia) anymore either.  

Our school working is flying along.  The kids have done over 100 pages in their main math books and almost 50 pages in their other math book. 

The trick to motivating the kids, keeping them enthusiastic, and keeping their work level at high quality has been the most interesting thing for me to learn.  They are really self motivated and excited about many things.  For instance, they enjoy doing research and giving written and oral reports on animals.  If we had enough time they would do one everyday.

Gibson can spend hours reading guide books and trying to identify animals or writing a report about one of them.  He loves it.  They also like the fact that we (Ted & I) do reports as well.  Since we can’t interrupt each other during our reports Gibson wants us all to have little notebooks to take notes on other peoples reports and to write down questions for the end.  They had fun doing an Australia ABC’s list –it will make it to the blog soon.  Sterling had a blast doing fake brochures for places we have gone.  Bullo River and the Great Barrier Reef might want a few copies.  Everyday that we had a guide or had a tour of a museum or zoo I would take notes and put together quizzes for the next day.  It kept the kids on their toes listening and helped the retain more.  I am including part of a quiz from our last guide in Daintree National Park.  You might have fun seeing how well you do.

Australia was a great place to start in our quest to be able to map all the continents that we travel to.  I got blank laminated maps of Australia and every other day we would fill in 32 different water and land locations including territories, capitals, places we went, deserts (do you know that there is the Gibson Desert in Australia?) and seas.  It was a helpful way to recognize where we were going and by the end they could map all the locations freehand.  Asia is going to be a bit more challenging.

The hotel in Cairns hit the jackpot when we left because I could not bring to China all the Australia books we bought along on our trip.  Every gift shop we went in we looked for Wildlife guides, Aboriginal stories, stories set in the area, and books on specific animals.  We now have the Fieldings’ Definitive Guide to Reptiles in Australia (we could not part with that!).  Our book of Australian birds also went everywhere we went and is well marked.  We finished both the curriculum books that covered Australia and one that I found about Tasmania.  They were a fantastic complement to what we did out and about and I really liked the reading comprehension portion.  I am thrilled I will have similar books in China.

We are almost done with the Worldly Wise book.  The kids really like to do those pages; which surprises me.  There was a funny boy at Meadowbrook School who for Halloween dressed up as an old fashion prisoner with a ball and chain and labeled the ball “Worldly Wise” and put all his vocabulary words on it.  We are using those words and new words we come across for spelling words.  How many kids have Aboriginal as one of their spelling words?  I think I am going to get some other resource for spelling.  I know there is a list of the most commonly misspelled words.  I will benefit from that too. 

We finished one easy geography activities’ book and are half way through the next.  It has covered some great topics that are really pertinent to our travels including all types of mapping, latitude & longitude, hemispheres & continents, season & the earth’s orbit, day & night, & the earth’s rotation.

Art has been an area where we have not put as much focus as I would have liked.  The kids did paint our guide and Ted’s face with ochre and a native plant as a paint brush like the Aboriginals (call me a party pooper-  however, I led the way in licking a green ant’s behind).  At Uluru we saw cave painting and learned what some of the symbols meant.  We also saw some ladies sitting on the ground making Aboriginal paintings but we never got around to doing it ourselves.  It’s a bit like pointillism and takes a long time.  I wonder if the French knew about Aboriginal Art? 

When it comes to zoos, I should start with the fact that I am not a zoo fan.  They always seem boring, uninspiring and a zoo is a zoo whether it is in Boston or LA.  Well, Australia has totally changed my mind on that thought.  Every zoo or animal park we went to had lectures by the zoo keepers every ½ hour.  We would go from lecture to lecture and learn so much!  Not only would we learn about the species but also about the characteristics, history and personality of that particular animal.  It may be that U.S. zoos are too big or cash poor but just relying on signs at U.S. zoos is a shame.  I hope they expand their educational opportunities to visitors.

I have been so grateful to all our guides.  I hope they see this thank you.  The knowledge that they have at their fingertips is mind boggling.  The more they asked the kids, the more engaged the kids became – whether it came to trivia, recent research, or meaningful geology, science, history  or biology.  The information and energy they exuded was fantastic. 

To give you an example of what we do every night after a day out exploring, the following sampling from our quiz:

Last Australia Quiz (sample)

Who was the naturalist on Captain Cook’s boat?

What territory has the most biodiversity?

How many square miles is the Daintree rain forest?

What does Eucalyptus mean?

The kopok plant is a yellow flowering tree with apple like fruit.  When it opens, what is its interior used for?

How many Aboriginal people are there in Australia today?  A. 100,000 B. 400,000 C. 2,000,000

How many non-Aborigines live in Australia?  A. 1,000,000   B. 10,000,000   C. 20,000,000 or D. 2,000,000

4,000 years ago who came to Australia?

What did they want to trade?

What did they introduce?            

What is a placental mammal?

What marsupial lives in America?

Do all marsupials have pouches?  If not, list two without.

I have been so busy that it has been hard to get motivated to get on a computer. Just so everyone knows, my blogs will probably be few and far between. Ted will keep everyone more in the flow on our day to day life.

If our trip for some reason ended tomorrow, I would say it has already far exceeded my expectations and the learning that we have had has been far greater than I ever dreamed. That said, I am thrilled this is only the beginning and that we have gotten into such a good routine. We usually get up between 6 and 6:30 a.m. and the kids go straight to whatever table we have and start their work while munching on a banana or something. They usually choose to do math first and we do four pages each morning. Other daily items are 4 pages of worldly wise, 2 pages of geography, and Australian reading comprehension. Ted also spends time each morning with each of them on a University of Chicago book called Everyday Math, which is a terrific book.

Everyday I choose other things to alternate in and out for variety. Some examples so far have been: matching tracks to the animal, geography matching games, and lots of projects around Australia.

Everyone in the family chose an animal to report on. They researched their animal and then we all gave oral presentations after dinner one night (Gibson’s on wombats is on his blog).

Special readings so far include information on animals both non-fiction (Tasmanian Devils, penguins, echidnas, koalas, kangaroo, seahorses, seals, dingoes etc) and traditional folk tales, Australian etiquette (did you know that thumbs up is not polite? I keep catching myself about to do it!), the Opera House, and Tasmanian history.

They are keeping hand-written journals as well as their on-line blogs.

The kids can now take a map of the continent of Australia and freehand mark in 32 important locations including cities, oceans, states, capitals etc.

I make quizzes on what the naturalists have presented every couple of days to make sure the kids are staying on their toes and listening.

I am proud of how disciplined we have been (school is 7 days a week) and how much work we have already covered. However, it is not our morning working that is the most amazing — it is what we do afterwards with the guides. Since the focus of the trip is learning we have tried to have guides, naturalists and tours in as many places as possible. We learn and see so much more and get such insight that it is amazing.

A few of my highlights from the past two weeks are:

Behind the scenes tour of the Sydney Opera House

Attend Barber of Seville at the Opera House (I was amazed at how intently they watched)

Sydney Aquarium; focus on platypus and crocodile exhibits

Guided tour of Australian Museum; focus on skeletons & minerals

Sydney zoo to see animals we were giving reports on. Go in the cage and get photos with koalas

Blue Mountains with guide to see their “grand canyon” and get up close to wild kangaroos and feed wild crimson rosellas (a bird in the parrot family).

Tour of nature preserve in Tasmania by its Director, where the kids fed kangaroos, saw a mother and baby Tasmanian Devil, held a baby wombat (they are incredibly snugly!) and pet koalas. In addition to the great animal encounters the information that the kids received was fantastic.

Full Eclipse of the moon over the Tasmanian country side.

Tour of platypus & echidnas nature center

Tour seahorse breeding farm

Night time “hunt” for kangaroo, wombats and possum with naturalist

Walk through a rainforest with a naturalist

Feed a bottle of milk to an orphaned baby wallaby

Go to sea lion covered beach with naturalist

Walk with naturalist and find wild echidna

Find fairy penguins on rocks below our house with naturalist

T & G played baseball with team in Adelaide and had a picnic with families afterward

Hike around and then watch sunset by Olga rocks then go back to watch sunrise over Ayres Rock and hike around it with naturalist

Meet reptile specialist for touch and learn about animals around Ayres Rock. Sterling is the snake, lizard loving queen. Gibson liked the dingoes but we decided Scallop probably would not.

Night time astronomy lesson at Ayres Rock Observatory

Now can you see why I have been a bit busy to get on the blog! We miss you all. Keep in touch. Xoxox

Elizabeth

On the plane to Sydney:

I have been thinking about what type of journal I want to keep and have decided that, since the whole thrust of this trip is education for the kids, that I would focus on an educational perspective.

I have to admit that I am nervous about teaching the kids. Having no formal teaching degree and making the switch from Mom to teacher is a bit daunting. I know the kids are bright but it is going to be interesting figuring out their learning styles and what motivates and excites them. The other challenge is going to be finding the time to have them focus on the rudimentary items. I know through the travel experience, they will learn a ton during the trip, but they also need to spend time on the basics of math, writing, reading, vocabulary etc.

We spent a lot of time talking to educators and teachers and getting their favorite resources. Also, long-time friend Bambi Wood helped us enormously this summer, providing advice and extensive research into resources. She really increased our confidence that we could handle this process well.

Our goals are really quite lofty for this year. They include covering two years of math and wordly wise and doing a lot of journaling, writing and analysis. Keep your fingers crossed. It will be fascinating to see how much we like all the books. Ted has also gotten a ton of computer based educational products.

In Jamestown we did a test week of school before we started the trip. It was amazing how much work we covered during that time! I think that it was a very helpful and insightful week. I have learned that making it fun and setting high standards very important. I think this is especially important at the beginning. I know that Mother / Teacher relationship is being tested a bit. The math seemed a bit dry and boring. We have since gotten some additional more creative books to do along with the drill style book we have been using.

Today our first day of our journey was exciting and productive. After we finally got out of the house- no small undertaking- we drove to the Boston Museum of Fine Art for a guided tour of their Asia department. It seemed like a great way to give the kids a broad overview. We had a wonderful guide who did a great job bringing things to life. Afterward I had the kids write about three things that they learned. I think that might be a great way to ensure things do not go in one ear and out the other and help them analyze things a bit more.

We have a bunch of historical fiction and non fiction children’s books for each country. We have started the Australia books and I think that will help them get a better perspective on each country.

I will not list everything each day but here are a few other things we did today: I had a great time zone curriculum and explained the zones and looked at maps. We analyzed the time changes for the cross country flight we were on and I quizzed them with questions to try and stump them- with no luck. They really got it. Tomorrow as we are flying across the International Date Line I will incorporate that. It was fun to explain why a person on the east side of a time zone has sun earlier etc.

In mapping they looked at topographical mapping and how to read them from above, read the elevations, and create a profile elevation map.

There is also an amazing reading comprehension book that has page long articles on various aspects of Australia (i.e. Plant life, geology etc.) and then a page of questions to answer. Today Gibson did one on marsupials and also on people of Australia.