Planking on the Pyramids, Discovering Dracula in Transylvania and other Homeschooling Experiences
As you know, we have been homeschooling (road schooling, actually) our kids over the last 4 years. This has made it possible for us to travel and minister together as a missional family. Boarding school for our kids was not an option, for personal and financial reasons. So they came along with us and involved themselves in all our projects overseas. And we have absolutely NO REGRETS about our decision to homeschool. And the kids are all happy we did it also.
Although sometimes its hard to produce the proper paperwork for universities. In our case, we were thinking we would be back in USA but are now actually based in New Zealand, where Abigail is attempting to enter the Polytech College called Whitireia.
Yesterday I was on the phone with a teacher at the Polytech who wanted a bit more substantial proof that our Abigail, now 17 and applying for entry, had not been sitting on a couch watching episodes of South Park for the last few years of her schooling.
So I sent her something . . .
This is Abi "planking" on the Giza pyramids in Egypt. No, I didn't mention Abi's various planking episodes in my email. But I did mention some other things . ..
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In the past 4 years, Abigail has visited many countries in which she took advantage of learning opportunities, cultural immersion, language training, historical studies, etc. She learned from experts in the countries and from daily schooling activities as well as completing directed projects assigned to her by her parents.
Highlights of these recent educational experiences are as follows:
- Abigail studied ancient Chinese history at the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven in Beijing, China.
- She studied war history at Gallipoli, Turkey, in particular the New Zealand impact as part of the ANZAC offensive.
- She studied East/West European reunification at the Berlin Wall, Germany and took a Jewish history tour of Budapest, Hungary (she had already visited Auschwitz-Dachau Nazi camp in Poland as a child).
- In Lisbon, she studied the impact of Portugal on the world through maritime exploration. Her text book was "The Worlds First Global Village".
- She has gained agricultural experience in shearing sheep, handling pigs, milking cows, as well as from gardening projects in New Zealand and olive harvesting in Portugal.
- She acted in a commercial for a New York production company to launch an American literacy project called Know How 2 Go It can be viewed online at http://www.knowhow2go.org/
- Abigail went to Transylvania, Romania to research the prevalence of bats and the myth of Vlad the Impaler and Count Dracula.
- She studied ancient Egyptian history at the museum at Cairo and on location at the Giza pyramids under the tutelage of Ibrahim Morgan, historian and Egyptologist. Of special interest was King Tut, who was about the same age as Abigail and, like Abigail, had ear plugs.
- At Lake Ohrid, Macedonia, Abigail researched the ancient cave churches and the early monasticism that produced the Cyrillic alphabet.
- She studied the art and scientific inventions of Leonardi Di Vinci at Venice, Italy.
- In Spain, Abigail studied the surrealist art of Salvador Dali at the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figures, and the works of Pablo Picasso in Barcelona.
- She studied the architectural achievements of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain, in particular the Sagrada Familia.
- She studied alternative building methods through participating in the construction of straw-bale houses, geodesic domes, yurts and helping to construct a self-build motorhome from an empty truck shell.
