The Difference

Today I shared on the Sonlight Blog

about how homeschooling is like taking the back roads.

Family Road Trips

Today I'm blogging about traveling with kids.

Check it out on the Sonlight Blog!

Living Geography

Learning is a lifestyle in our family... and the learning doesn't stop even on vacation!

We love to learn more about the places we visit. Often I will make up "trip journals" for the kids before we leave by printing out worksheets about the states we will be visiting. These are fun for them to work on in the car as we travel through each state.

Here are some sites that have state printables:

• USA Coloring Pages - Apples4theTeacher.com
• States Coloring Pages - Crayola.com
• State Outline Maps - ColoringCastle.com
• America Color Pages - Friends Across America
• State Emblems Printables - KidZone Geography
• Colouring Book of Flags: United States
• USA Printables

Our route this year takes us through 10 states:
I'll be sharing more travel-related learning activities here during the next couple of weeks. I'm also posting scenery pictures on Ramblin' Roads, if you care to follow along!

Bears' "Ploughed Field"

One thing I like to do on road trips is stop and read the historical markers along the way. As we traveled south through eastern Idaho today, we saw several. This was my favorite one of the day:

LONG BEFORE MINERS AND RANCHERS
SETTLED STANLEY BASIN, BEARS
DOMINATED THIS AREA
When Alexander Ross and his Hudson's Bay
Company trappers stopped here, September 20,
1824, they "observed at some distance the
appearance of a ploughed field, and riding up
towards it, found a large piece of ground more
than four acres in extent, dug up and turned
over. On getting to the spot, we observed
no less than nine black and grizzly
bears at work, rooting away," eating
camas, onions, and wild celery.

This was the first day of our 2-week road-trip. Stay tuned for more interesting things we learn along the way!

Sight-Seeing on a Budget

Next month I have 2 homeschool conventions to attend on back-to-back weekends... one in Boise, Idaho and the other in Seattle, Washington. Allowing for travel time, we would only be home 3 days in between, so we've decided to just enjoy some sight-seeing on those extra 3 days!

Several months ago a friend told me about City Pass for Seattle. It is a package of tickets to 6 different attractions for about half price! They allow 9 consecutive days to visit the 6 attractions for that price. (In our case we'll have 3-4 days, but I think we can fit it all in!) So we'll get to visit the Space Needle, the Pacific Science Center, the Museum of Flight, the Seattle Aquarium, Woodland Park Zoo, and take the Seattle Harbor Tour cruise! All of that for just over $50 per person!

What I like about it is that all of those "attractions" are educational as well as fun! You probably couldn't get into an amusement park for one day for that price. This is my kind of sight-seeing!

I didn't realize it when my friend was telling me about it, but I discovered that City Pass is actually available for 10 major cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hollywood, Houston, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California, and Toronto. So even if a trip to Seattle is not in your future, if you happen to be in one of these other cities and have some time, you might want to check it out!