Since we are at present a one-car family (as opposed to being a zer0-car family during a good portion of the last couple of years abroad), sometimes we have to get creative about getting all our transportation worked out. Today the children and I took Tony in to work so we could grocery shop. He works from home in the afternoons, so we picked him up after spending some time lunching in the park.
It worked perfectly. Our only problem was how to fit in the homeschooling we normally do between 10:00 and 11:30. Fortunately, most of our schoolbooks are available as audiobooks on librivox, so we can take them along in the car. If I had a working mp3 player, I would use that, but at least our car cd player does play mp3’s, so I was able to burn all of the books (and our music by Hildegard of Bingen, our term composer) onto two cd’s. We also brushed up on our Italian with a half-hour of Pimsleur that the children would never have sat still for had they not been buckled in carseats.All we have left to do for today is math, copywork, and picture study, which should take a combined total of perhaps 25 minutes. So I’d say our first day of car-schooling was a great success.
Being at the park, of course, also afforded some opportunities for nature study. We saw a small flock of these beautiful American White Ibises (Eudocimus albus):
I looked them up afterward (which is why I even know their name) and found out that they can interbreed with the beautiful scarlet ibis. In fact, some scientists consider them two varieties of the same species. They repeatedly stick their bills about six inches into the ground, presumably searching for insects.
Aren’t they pretty?