By Gloria Jones Ellis, M.A. – Educational Therapist & Co-Founder of Lighthouse Homeschool Solutions
We’re so excited to share that travel units are finally available on our Homeschool Solutions storefront! Their process of development has made this a long time coming. As you can imagine we at Lighthouse Homeschool Solutions are very excited to be adding new units to our curriculum and more importantly, to be adding units that can contribute to the wonderful world of worldschooling!
Prior to the pandemic, my own family set off on an ambitious journey to travel the world and expose ourselves to and engage with cultures on almost every continent. Unfortunately, we started our journey in September 2019, just prior to the pandemic. We had planned for a year of travel, but we were only lucky enough to get in five months before being grounded back in the United States for the next couple of years. Some wonderful things came out of both experiences, but I would never trade the joys and the challenges of traveling the world with my family!
Last week our field trip Friday explored the food of Guatemala. Reading Mayra’s blog post excited me and reminded me of the great experiences my own family had in Guatemala almost 3 years ago. The winter portion of our travels was focused on Central and South America; we visited the countries of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Peru during the six week period from mid January to the end of February. My husband is an organic gardener and chef, and my children (ages 7 and 14 at the time) are also very interested in food and cooking. We were also staying in close contact with my teaching staff and the girls’ peers in Southern California as we traveled. During this time, which was our school’s interim semester, each of the students were engaged in a long-term project where they could spend their school days learning about and presenting information on a topic of their interest and choosing. So, as we traveled, my girls decided to do their projects on the foods of Central and South America. They both attended multiple cooking classes and farm tours, and they each wrote a small book to present and explain what they were learning. For Mickey, it was all about chocolate – growing it, producing it, cooking with it, and of course eating it! Daisy’s project focused on creating meals from local ingredients; she and her father attended two different cooking courses (several hours each), one in Guatemala and one in Peru. In this way, we incorporated aspects of research, experiential learning, social interaction, and writing informational text into our travels. This is what worldschooling is all about!
Check out the photos below from our experiences with delicious food in Central and South America. You can also see the books my girls produced for their interim semester projects and read sections of our travel journal from this period in the Worldschooling section of our Homeschool Solutions blog. Furthermore, check out last week’s Field Trip Friday post in order to learn more about chocolate in Guatemala, and consider joining us this Friday as we learn about food in Argentina!
Chocolate Over the Years– Micaela Ellis
Good Food Makes Good Fortune– Daisy Ellis
Leave a Reply