We’re here!  Holidays… for real!  But, much to the kids’ chagrine, it’s not going to be all fun and games.  No way.

I prepared long and hard so that we would have interesting things to do, that made for fun, clever ways to achieve some academic outcomes without feeling like we’re actually achieving academic outcomes.  Lapbooking.  It’s a joy.  Despite this being but our first very day at it… a joy!
Like I said… I worked long and hard.  I put together pages upon pages of resource material so that we could thoroughly cover, to first and fourth/fifth grade proportions, Mayan Civilization and Oceans.  Did I say long and hard?  So, I have this organized box full of the kids stuff- prepared items to cut out/colour/fill-in/glue/whatever to add to their lapbooks.

I also have a folder of wonderful activities outlining various aspects of these larger topics.  Things to do.  Ideas for lessons. Terrific information to keep me in a flow of learning… so that I wouldn’t be staring at my shoes, wondering what to do next.

I think it’s on my dining room table.  2500 miles away.  Let’s just say, it looks like I’m gonna get to know my shoes.

Today is the last day home before taking off tomorrow.  There will be no structured school today… OK, there was little to none yesterday too- so, sue me…. I am too busy cruising the blogosphere putting together my little bitty community newspaper before we leave.  In theory this little rag should actually write itself, in that, my friends, neighbors and community compatriots are clamouring to submit their respective bits and pieces of individual community perspective… but, um… no. I will write it.  From largely my own individual community perspective.  In truth, I have a few very generous contributors, for whom I have grown to owe my life to depend on, providing a voice other than my own.

But, back to my point about no school today…. newspaper day for mom means:  don’t ask me for food… don’t ask me for drinks… don’t ask me to turn on the t.v… and certainly don’t ask me to log in to Webkinz because you’ve lost your password.  Please, just leave me be.  I am squeezing out creativity in the form of community news… and believe me that takes some creativity!  And so I sit… blogging.  Ignoring children and their needs… blogging.

Rather than neglecting my offspring, consider it a stirring of the creative juices.  And you can also consider it a valuable exercise in independence for my children….

I have spent the past many, many days preparing for two lapbooking units for my two boys.  This is my first real effort in creating study units.  We are going to be gone for a month and I figured what better- and less cumbersome- way to take on these units than through lapbooking.

In my quest for information I have found some amazing stuff.  People are doing great things in lapbook and thankfully recording their efforts in the form of blogs and flickr.  Which I too shall do so as to assist others new to lapbooking in the process… because, surely, if I can do it… anyone can.

There are printing pages for animals…. There are free map pages, outlined maps specifically, also for printing…. and places to spruce up the lapbook itself with all kinds of creative little book ideas of all shapes, sizes and complexity!

The tough part for me was finding free stuff.  Sure I could go and drop $20 bucks a pop on ideas and templates, but really, people, it’s all out there free for the searching!!  Fellow homeschoolers as well as other organizations and institutions, education advocates all, are tremendously generous in what they provide.

We are taking Mayan Civilazation and Oceans on the road with us.  We are going to our beach shack- truly a shack, I assure you- in the Yucatan… so these are particularly relevant to our experience there. We may also do up smaller versions on the impending federal elections- Canada and U.S.
We’ll catch up with B.C. Explorers when we get back.

Oh, and make sure you head on over to BlogNosh Magazine to get a taste of some straight talk with Straight Shooter!  A great post of hers… hand-picked by yours truly… will be re-published in its entirety over there Tuesday morning- that’s tomorrow, folks.  Believe me, she gives good laugh!

So, despite the best of intentions a whole lotta nuttin’ happened on the academic front while we were away. However, the kids got great cousin-time, grammy-time and endless pizza-time.  Not to mention the abundance of beach-time… that is, when the freakin’ weather decided to cooperate.  We smiled smugly to ourselves as we left the dropping temperatures of our Rocky Mountain Valley in happy anticipation at another kick at the summer can, heading south to Virginia and then on to the sunny Atlantic coast of Delaware.  Wouldn’t ya know it, they too get to enjoy unseasonally cool temperatures… the second day we arrive.  And last the entire week.

A perfect lesson in irony for maniacs.

But we’re back in the saddle, so to speak.  We’re home.  I’ve been organizing like a fiend, trying to get some kind of system in place that not only takes care of our homeschooling schedule here at home but on the road, as well.  I am tired of feeling guilty with our lack of structure.  Despite being fairly ‘relaxed’ in our approach…  however, there’s relaxed… and then there’s just so pitifully ill-prepared and disorganized that nothing is getting done.

So, a big thank-you to cousin homeschooling nine kids who has shown me a few fundamental strategies for reigning in this circus… and alleviating what is fast becoming a perpetual case of the homeschool guilts!