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Road School was one of the most challenging and enjoyable parts of our year-long adventure, but alas, the last day arrived today.  I could see the children putting on brave faces to mask their sorrow.  All they can look forward to now is a bit of summer reading.  It was a bittersweet milestone. If the […]

Today we went to a high school with goats. It was a high school for kids who were very poor and had troubles at home. From 13-17 years old you were allowed to attend and when you graduated you got a diploma in agriculture. You got this because the founder of the school thought the […]

There is so much history in China… let’s take up the challenge to cover it briefly and discover how modern China got to where it is today. There is evidence of prehistoric man in China going back well past 50,000 years.  Pottery, stonework and other signs of village life start roughly 8,000 years ago.  Some […]

     THE LESSON We met our friends the Walters: Darin and Alison, and their kids: Oscar (12), Maya (10), and Hugo (5). Today, I was learning how to surf. Darin gave me a lesson on the beach. We used his surfboard on the sand instead of trying in the water. Darin told me several rules: […]

ประกอบด้วยแปลไทยด้านล่าง  (Thai translation at bottom) Rice has been eaten for thousands of years. For a while, people grew rice just like carrots; in a field of soil. Eventually, people found out that flooding the fields with water increased the quantity and quality of the rice. Farmers would plant seedlings in a non-flooded field, and when […]

Our guide Suzy brought us to the Floating Market, about an hour and a half south of Bangkok.   This market had water canals instead of roads. We stepped into a “James Bond” boat and whizzed down a series of canals. As we sped along, water sprayed as high as the boat’s canopy; I nonchalantly munched […]

As part of Road School, the kids are reading a textbook comparing eight major world religions.  In the Hinduism unit we read about an ancient Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana which means Rama’s Journey. We had never heard about this story, but it is just as important in the East as the Odyssey or Gilgamesh.  When […]

   In America, we all turn our televisions on and switch to our favorite news station, be it CNN or Fox News, or 7 News. Sometimes we hear bad things about the Middle East, and how there are extremist terrorists around every corner. Clips of fighting and barren towns, soldiers running and patrolling occupy your […]

My family recently participated in an atelier at the Louvre.  An atelier is a workshop and almost every museum in Paris offers them.  This one was about photography. When we arrived we waited with some other families until the photographer got there. She told us what was going to happen in French, of which I […]

So far we have been to three different cooking classes, Macaroons, Cookies and lemon cake, and Chouquettes. Macaroons: We went with our friends Colin, Matthew, and their mom Karen, to an English cooking class. Dad had class but he assured us he would be there for the eating part. There were four other people and […]

My sister and I have French lessons 3-4 times a week, with our awesome teacher Blandine. Our lessons are each 1 ½ hours long, and great fun! Back in your childhood, or maybe more recently, you may have heard that the French Teachers were strict, proper, had the ability to hit students with a ruler, […]

  The mission of Road School is for the kids to learn a solid school year’s worth of academics, yet keep the pencil and paper time down to two hours each day on the road.  The strategies for covering all the material in such a short time are to run for at least ten months; and […]

One of the topics in Road School is comparative religion. We wanted to study this because religion has such a great influence on history and culture.  Although the book we are using starts with Judaism and Christianity before getting to Islam (and then five more religions), we started with Islam so the kids could have […]

What?  July 1 is the first day of school?  Well, yes, if you attend Road School.  Road School is designed to replace 4th and 7th grade for the kids.  It is based on the Massachusetts standards, although we don’t have any MCAS.  And then it goes a bit beyond. Since getting out and seeing the […]