Homeschool – start of summer term

It’s hard to believe we are already two thirds of the way through our Worldschool adventure as we embark on summer term at Newton School. There are definitely things the kids miss about real school, particularly their friends, organised sport and being taught by actual teachers with skills and knowledge beyond our specialist subjects of rocks (Helen) and the second world war (Jim), but this trip has allowed them to learn in a different way, build on their life skills, resilience and resourcefulness and learn things which might not fit into the primary school curriculum. We’ve covered a lot in the spring term as we travelled across the South Pacific and through South and Central America.

Core subjects

Key to the kids learning has been making sure we keep up with the basics; literacy and maths in line with what the children would have been learning at school. Following the school curriculum, in maths this term a big feature for Odessa has been getting to grips with her times tables. Adding a little competitive edge to the learning, she has been able to race against her school friends in an online app. Rafe has been working on division (luckily Jim has been on hand here to help with the methodologies), fractions, percentages and statistics. We’ve been reading the same books as their classes for guided reading, with work set to accompany these texts, as well as reading general interest books. The Kindles have been brilliant here, as well as for listening to audio books and podcasts on those long bus trips and at bedtime. Favourite podcasts include Greeking Out by National Geographic, But Why? From NPR, You’re Dead to Me on BBC Sounds with Horrible Histories mastermind Greg Jenner and Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls.

Geography, geology and natural history

The vast scenery of South America, from the windy mountains of Patagonia to the wonder of the Bolivian salt flats means that the natural world has featured prominently in our learning this term. We are all glaciology experts now. As well as visiting a number of real life glaciers, trekking on the ice and across moraines, the Glaciarium museum outside El Calafate was an excellent resource for learning about the formation and life of glaciers, and of course the risk to them with climate change, a common theme in our learning. In Vanuatu, we learnt how the island nation is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and weather events such as tropical cyclones, with the occurrence of these storms increased as the impacts of climate change are seen. These risks combined made the UN declare Vanuatu one of the most at risk countries for natural disasters. Unfair, Rafe observed, as the Pacific nation is carbon negative, absorbing more carbon than it produces. We’ve also seen a lot of rocks and geological processes in the Andes. Rafe made the mistake of asking about the differently coloured rocks in the Cuernos del Paine and probably heard more than he required around the intrusion of a pale granite mushroom shaped laccolith into the dark Cretaceous shale formations, a mere 12 million years ago. Still, it was a four hour hike and he had nothing better to do….

The wildlife in South America has also been incredible. Can there be a better place for nature than Chile – with penguins, pumas, guanacos, condors and flamingos to spot? I think not. At the brackish lakes in the Atacama we learnt how flamingos thrive on a diet of microorganisms and brine shrimp, and in doing so consume carotenoids, turning their feathers vibrant shades of pink. Another piece of learning which the kids both loved was around the now extinct megafauna, huge relatives of modern animals including giant sloths (the milodon) giant armadillos (glyptodon), sabre toothed tigers (smilodon) and the macrauchenia, a relative of llamas. The cause of extinction isn’t exactly known, but does coincide with the arrival of people into the region at the end of the Pleistocene iceages. Further back in time, Patagonia was also home to some pretty impressive dinosaurs, always a winner. The tiny but brilliant Museo Paleontológico Bariloche was a great resource here. We’ve seen some astounding night skies in the South Pacific and in South America, with views of planets and the milky way, including the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in March. We visited the Atacama, famous for star gazing, at full moon, so we couldn’t see as many stars as we’d hoped, but we did learn a lot about meteorites at the wonderful Museo del Meteorito in San Pedro de Atacama, and went on to do further research relating to the topic.

Culture – ancient and modern

Seeing how people live in different parts of the world, learning about their culture and about long lost cultures was one of the big opportunities we saw when starting out on this trip. Knowing we’d have a large piece of time in Spanish speaking countries, we started learning Spanish gradually using the Duolingo app, so that once we arrived we were all able to make some basic conversation. We’ve all been learning and picking up more of the language as we go. The kids are pretty good at introducing themselves and asking other kids with a ball if they can join in. We happened to be in Guatemala for holy week (Semana Santa) which is a very big deal. It was fascinating to see the Catholic traditions, harking back to Spanish colonial times. We learnt about the Inca people at Lake Titicaca, birthplace of the civilization and spent a week in the Chachapoya learning about the fascinating culture here in the foothills of the Andes which predates the Incas by more than 500 years. In the Atacama desert, we saw maps of the stars carved in stone and used as a calendar to dictate when to plant and harvest crops.

War and Peace

Vanuatu, home to the largest US military base in the South Pacific during WWII provided the backdrop to learn about some obscure bits of war history. Crucial to support the war in the Solomon islands and Papua New Guinea, more than half a million service men and women passed through the islands between 1942 and 1945. Changing the island forever, the Americans left as swiftly as they arrived, leaving their infrastructure of roads, telecommunications and airstrips behind, as well as thousands of tonnes of vehicles, weaponry and other assorted junk dumped at sea. Over in South America, we learnt a little about the different claims over the Falkland Islands, and why landlocked Bolivia has a Navy. Their Pacific coastline having been lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific in the late 19th century. Both Bolivia and Peru lost resource rich land to Chile in the dispute.

For the summer term, we’ll be in North America and Japan which will provide their own unique opportunities for learning as we head into the final term at Newton School.