Homeschooling

We just spent 2 days driving from Ottawa to Nova Scotia. We've been doing the annual trip since moving to Ottawa 12 years ago, but normally have been doing it in 1 day. It is a brutal 16 hour drive doing it that way, but in exchange you get 2 extra days of vacation - so it is a toss up. But we've recently decided that we are better off taking our time to smell the roses, as it were. Rather than a grueling day beginning at 5am, we can casually get up at 7 and be on the road by 8, then retire for the day around supper time. And in the process, spend more time with the boys turning it into a wonderful educational experience.

We have always been big proponents of home-schooling, even if we did end up sending our kids to Public School. There is a really excellent Public School around the corner from our house, with an extremely diverse ethnic mix, so we decided in the end that it was most important to expose our kids to that. Besides, home-schooling can still be done even when the kids are in Public School, and learning should not end when the bell rings at the end of the day. We've always taken every opportunity to turn what we are doing into an educational experience for the boys, and that is no different on a long 2 day road trip. Here are some of the things they learned ...