The Farm, Salinas

One of the joys of homeschooling is the ability to learn by doing and to take our classroom on the road.

We have a great homeschool group who put together activities for families.  I’m a huge advocate of homeschooled children belonging to social groups, having friends and developing their social skills as well as learning about the world around them.   I’ve said it numerous times before but the fact that so many schools have cut funding for art and physical education as well as the lack of languages being taught in elementary school just don’t sit well with me.

And yes, I can say this knowing that the twins are in pre-school outside the home and also knowing that we may not continue homeschooling next year.  What we choose to do is to take each school year as it comes and if things need to be changed then we are open to exploring our options.

In my perfect world, my children would attend a ‘traditional’ school a couple of days a week and learn from home the remainder of the school week.  This would give them the best of both worlds, a qualified teacher to teach them their core subjects, as well as social interaction with their peers, but also the ability for me to teach them art, get them involved in some form of physical education and teach them about the world around them with field trips, travel and classes outside of their home and school environments.

Anyway, I kind of trailed off for a moment.  What I did want to share are some photographs of a field trip we took recently to The Farm.  It was a great experience for the kids.  They learned how many servings of fruit and vegetables they should have a day, the differences between fruit and vegetables, they had the chance to touch farm animals, go on a hay ride, pick strawberries and we came home with bags and bags of fresh organic fruit, vegetables and eggs.