Our Mexico curriculum? Doesn’t exist!
Or, at least, not in any formal way, which I’m sure you are all shocked to hear. We’re mostly life learners, really, with a smattering of Miquon and Reading Eggs and the like thrown in for good measure. We organize and prioritize our learning opportunities and resources by applying Project-Based Homeschooling overall, which gives us a consistency and continuity that would otherwise be lacking, due to my tendency towards extreme flakiness.
We’re on our way home this afternoon, so I thought I’d take a stab at listing a few of the teachable moments and learning opportunities we’ve encountered here. The kids wouldn’t know them as such, being that we work them into our day-to-day lives seamlessly, but I can see them easily enough to make a few lists.
By no means are we a ‘school-at-home’ type family. Not at all. That’s never appealed to us. I ran into a veteran homeschooler here in Sayulita, of the ‘school-at-home’ variety. They bring their school-y stuff with them when they travel. Worksheet, textbooks, on-line courses. Works for them. Not us though. That’d just stress me out. Too many non-applicable learning outcomes! Having to answer to a formal curriculum would totally cramp our current style, which is entirely interest-led, by the kids.
Perhaps we’ll use formal curriculum more when our kids get older and reach for specific academic goals, but for now, our ad hoc Mexico curriculum looks like this, in no particular order:
logistics, math, spatial relations -
- What do you need to pack for a trip?
- Numbers of outfits?
- How much or ____ to last?
- What does our luggage weigh?
- What to pack for a day at the beach?
- How many snacks for the day?
- What does that cost?
- Maps, directions, routes
- How do you make change?
- How to build a fort? How to build a better fort?
- What is a number? (Exploring adding, subtracting, multipying & dividing number values with Cuisinaire rods)
science & nature
beach:
- sea urchins
- crabs
- snails
- mollusks (wicked cool purpura pansa one that slimed E with rare and coveted purple ink!)
- tides
- sea glass
- waves
- stingrays (including what happens when they sting … our friend stepped on one!)
- pelicans
- fishing
around town:
- horses
- scorpions, praying mantis, unidentified bugs of all sorts
- snakes
- dogs
- cats
- geckos
- skinks
- cockroaches
- butterflies & moths
- dragonsflies
- construction
- cemetaries & funeral customs
- watching craftspeople working
- flowers, trees, shrubs, bushes, plants
home:
- chickens!
- cocoa pods
- birds nesting
- bird watching
- plumbing repair
- preparing and enjoying traditional Mexican meals
- recording inventions & recipes
ocean:
- boats & sailing
- navigation
- kayaks
- Marietas Island
- whales
- dolphins
- jumping stingrays
- fishing; catching, gutting, preparing, eating
- coastline
- swimming
- phases of the moon
- stars & constellations
art & literature
- drawing from observation
- guided drawing (“draw what I describe” aka. Police Sketch Artist Game)
- note-taking
- signs; reading & making
- conversations in Spanish
- conversations in English
- researching & reading about what we discovered on any given day
- daily read-a-louds
- independent reading by Esmé
- number/letter recognition & play by Hawk
- grocery lists
- arts & crafts
- folksongs
- traditional Mexican festivals, customs, music & stories
I’ll keep adding to the list as we go home and recollect our five weeks here in Sayulita. We can’t wait to come back!
[ ps. It's tricky to arrange a trip of this length on a chef and writerly income. Many of you have emailed with questions about how we were able to finance this trip, but that's another blog post. Let me put it this way, in a nutshell: we stay out of stores and restaurants (at home and while we're traveling), and are proud of the holes in our underpants.]
