Homeschooling The Amazing Race

It's been a while since my last report on Gebel Family Homeschool.  So, I figured today would be a good day to update everyone on what we've been up to.

During those few very busy weeks, with visitors and life happening, our homeschooling continued but not necessarily five days a week.  At least not formally.  I'm becoming more and more of a believer in the unschooling principle that learning will take place regardless of how you teach. 

With that said, we did start a fun new way of organizing our studies before everything happened.  We're using The Amazing Race as the platform for history, geography, and cultural studies.  We enjoyed watching the show together in the past anyway.  Like any good homeschooler...I found a way to turn something we enjoy into school!  (Go Gebel Monkeys!)

So, what are we doing with it?  Well, we watch the show and I make a list of questions that I have or the kids ask during it and a list of activities we could do that might be similar to the challenges the teams take part in during the episode.  After it's over we track their travels on the globe.  The next the day we head to the library and get books on the country we just saw.  We read about it's history, famous people from there, food eaten, crafts and/or inventions, traditions, holidays, current events...whatever we can find to learn about.  We usually split the reading up over a few days and break it up with activities that we thought of watching the show or that we learned about during our reading.  I even found a website that plays national anthems - fun times!

So far we've followed the teams from California to Australia to Japan to China.  We've got two episodes taped and ready to go!  I'm really enjoying watching the kids grasp on to different things that excite them about each place.  Hopefully they're enjoying what they're learning too! 

So, all in all, it's going well.  I'm planning on focusing on art, music, and science when we're all done following The Amazing Race.  Our plan is for a year round schooling, so later this spring and into summer is when we'll be moving to these more creative subjects...just in time to get outside!  Woo hoo!

And that's what we've been doing.  I'll try to take more pictures soon.  I've not been feeling like a photographer lately, but I'll see what I can do!  I hope your homeschools (if you have them) are running smoothly and that you're having tons of fun learning with your kids!

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