Lincoln Children's Museum

While our time in Nebraska continues into the harvest season, we've been seeking out new places to discover out here on the prairie.
A week or so ago we decided to check out the Lincoln Children's Museum. It is part of our ACM membership, so we received a 50% discount on the cost of admission. For under $25 all six of us enjoyed a fun afternoon of play and exploration. Let's look at some of the highlights of this museum, shall we?

We've jokingly observed that we're on a tour of 'Water Tables Across America', because our children inevitably find water tables to play in just about everywhere that we go. The Lincoln Children's Museum was no exception.

This particular water table is both huge and incredibly detailed. One half of it highlights the water cycle including clouds, rainfall, runoff and rivers. The other half teaches about beaver lodges and how their dams impact how water flows from rivers and streams.

You can't really visit Lincoln, NE without expecting to see a structure made of Lincoln Logs, can you? This 1.5 story skyscraper model is created entirely out of the wooden toys named for our 16th president.

Eliza and Stephanie went of a jungle safari in the animal exploration room. Looks like they picked up a little friend on the hood of their Jeep!

Caroline and Ian are piloting a simulated airplane on the flight level of the museum.

Meanwhile, Eliza was driving the baggage truck around the simulated airport.

When in Rome...

Eliza pretends to drive a harvester through the cornfields in this simulation while Ian looks on.

Again, when in Rome...

The only thing bigger than corn in Nebraska is University of Nebraska Cornhusker football. Of course, Ian got to practice his spiral throws, catches and punting on the field inside the museum!

One of our favorite stops in any children's museum is the restaurant or kitchen area. The Lincoln Children's Museum has a small pizza parlor inside where you can see Caroline is assembling the pizzas to the exact specifics that her customers have ordered.

Ian loved the auto body and maintenance shop. Here you can see him designing how he wanted to re-paint the truck via a CAD program. Obviously, he chose brown, just like our trusty truck.

Eliza can sniff out baby dolls anywhere! Here, she and the rest of the girls are taking the baby dolls through the hospital level of the museum. The girls are playing the roles of doctor, nurse and mother to the baby who is needing care.

We had a great visit to the museum and love that with our membership we can explore museums like this one across the country for a nominal fee. While each is unique and highlights the local culture and values, the consistency of similar exhibits at museums across the country is nice to reinforce concepts that our kids are learning as we travel.

Roadschool 2013-2014 with the Simpson Six

One of the first questions that we're usually asked when we meet new folks on the road is if we homeschool our children. To me, that seems like a no-brainer, since enrolling them in a dozen different schools and preschools over the course of the school year seems rather ridiculous. But perhaps that method works for some families who travel fulltime?!

We have enthusiastically embraced keeping life simple, and for us, homeschooling is the simple solution to educating our family while we travel. While there are many avenues that one can follow in order to homeschool, we've spent much of the past year working through what works best for our kids--and what doesn't work--and fine-tuning the details of how we homeschool on the road.

If you'd like to read about how we started with homeschooling last summer, you can read about that here. While the basic tenets of what we're teaching remains the same, we've refined our methods a bit and have made a few changes as our children develop.

So, for the 2013-2014 school year, the following resources are helping us provide the backbone of our homeschool program for our kids:

A sample of some of the books and resources that we are using as we homeschool this year.

Core Curriculum

We enjoyed working through Sonlight's Core A program last year, and this year we are continuing with their Core B+C, Intro to World History. This is a one year condensed study of world history from Creation through present day which incorporates our History, Geography/Cultures and Literature. We opted for the condensed curriculum so that we can pace ourselves through world history at a rate that works best for us, and also so that we might move on to the next level (American History) a little faster than if we stretched world history over two years. Since we cover a lot of US History and geography as we travel, we'd like to get to that as a curriculum focus sooner than later, but we need to cover world history first, in order to help our kids see the bigger picture of history and geography.

Our Sonlight Core also includes a Bible curriculum, but I've chosen to compile our own which is more appropriate for where our children are at in their spiritual development. Therefore, we're using the Bible resources that came from Sonlight as supplemental this year.

We really like that Sonlight presents material through lots of great literature and history books from a Biblical perspective. We use the curriculum loosely and I create a lot of extension projects and activities, depending upon what connects with our kids.

Reading and Language Arts

We have found the Sonlight readers to be a great asset to our girls' reading and comprehension development, so we are continuing with those this year. Lydia is working through their Grade 3 Readers and Language Arts while Caroline is doing the Grade 4-5 Reading and Language Arts program. The reading books are spot on with our girls' reading levels, are of excellent literary quality, and are highly interesting to the girls. The Language Arts program that corresponds with the readers is on the challenging side for the girls, so we spend about 15 minutes twice/week, on average, working through new language rules and concepts one-on-one. The Sonlight Language Arts program also includes Spelling at this level, so we are utilizing this as our resource for teaching Spelling this year as well.

Ian has also started working on pre-reading skills this year, so we are using the BOB Books readers together to practice letter recognition, letter sounds and pre-reading together. He's also working through the Victory Drill Pre-Drill book to emphasize letter sounds and practice writing his letters. Later this year he will begin with Victory Drill Book as he begins to learn phonics and moves closer to beginning to learn to read.

In addition to the Sonlight Language Arts and Victory Drill book, we're also using Queen Homeschool's Language Lessons with all three kids. Caroline is working through Language Lessons for the Very Young Book 1, Lydia is using Language Lessons for Little Ones Book 3, and Ian is starting Language Lessons for Little Ones Book 1. These short daily lessons include picture studies, narrations, poetry appreciation, copy work, phonics, and creative writing.

Penmanship

We have seen significant progress in the girls' handwriting skills as we worked through A Reason For Handwriting over the past year. This year they have moved onto the Transition level. While we are still working on printing, this worktext also includes cursive. Caroline will likely begin learning cursive writing later this year. Lydia will likely require a few months of additional printing practice before beginning cursive writing, in which case I am considering Queen Homeschool's Printing With Pictures to help bridge the gap for her until she is ready to begin learning cursive.

Ian has been working on writing letters with the Victory Drill Pre-Drill book, and later this year he will begin with Handwriting Without Tears Pre-K level.

Math

Math was our greatest challenge over the past year. While we started out using Saxon, we quickly discovered that it was not a good fit for our kids. I loved teaching Saxon when I taught 2nd grade in the classroom, but for our two girls it was not a great fit. So, we abandoned that mid-year last year and I created our own math lessons to help the girls solidify their basic math skills.

This fall, they are beginning to use Teaching Textbooks Math 3. This is a computer-based program for their math lessons along with workbooks which have the lessons and practice work printed for them to use as well. The girls are enjoying it so much that I'm having to remind them that we are only doing one lesson each day. I'd say that's a good problem to have!

Ian is using our math manipulatives most days to practice his numbers, ordering, simple addition and subtraction and sorting. He has also begun using Queen Homeschool's Picture My Numbers! to help solidify his number recognition and to work on writing his numbers. It also includes picture studies that we do together to help reinforce number recognition. When he completes this, he will move on to beginning the Math Lessons for a Living Education: Book 1. This is a 5-book series of 180 daily math lessons per book and uses a story format to teach math concepts. For Ian's learning style, this seems to be the best beginning math program that I've found for him.
We are also supplementing with the MathTacular DVD series to help demonstrate some of the math concepts that we are learning in real-life situations.

Science

We have added Sonlight's Science A program to our studies this year. It is a comprehensive Biology, Botany and Physics program geared for children age 5-7. It also includes a DVD to watch almost 100 different science experiments that correspond with our lessons, as well as 2-5 different experiments that we can do together each week.

We also are incorporating a nature study at least once/week where we are exploring the environment where we are, researching either the plants, animals or other things that we discover in the environment, and we are creating art based upon what we discover in our nature study.

Bible

While we started with using the Bible curriculum that came with our Sonlight core curriculum, I quickly assessed that it was not on par with our children's needs. So, I have created our own 30-week Bible curriculum that is based on lessons from the book Leading Little Ones to God by Marian M. Schoolland as the cornerstone for our Bible study this year. Along with the lessons in this book, we are learning memory verses every 1-2 weeks which tie into our readings and are using the Sing the Word: A New Commandment CD to help us with memorization. Our main goal for Bible this year is to answer the big questions about who God is and our relationship with God. We're working to make sense of the Bible stories that we read beyond their historical context and connecting them with the bigger picture of God's character, His works in the world throughout history, and God's relationship with his creation.

Speech Therapy

While Ian's speech and articulation have improved significantly over the past year, he is still working to close the gap between where his speech abilities are and what is age appropriate. He continues to use the Articulation Station app to help with challenging sounds. As he works more and more on his pre-reading skills, we are transitioning away from the app more and more, but he does still practice his speech using this program a couple of times each week.

While our methods of roadschooling continue to evolve, we're enjoying the journey and are thoroughly enjoying living and learning together each day. Overcoming the steep learning curve of deschooling and discovering how we each learn naturally was a big part of our first six months on the road. Fifteen months after launching, we are now much more comfortable in our rhythm of homeschooling and are looking forward to where this next year will take us as we continue learning together.