8/28/2006 Cuenca. Getting educated.

We started home schooling on Monday. The kids were eager to begin and had definite ideas about how work should be organized and information communicated. The first couple of days were a great success until I called the group together for their first history lesson on Ecuador. We were planning a trip to the museum that day and I figured we should all have a broad overview before the trip. Midlife lesson number 341: never lecture to an 8 year old ask or ask them to take notes during a lesson. It took us 20 minutes to get through the first two sentences of the history summary that I had printed off the internet. The first few minutes went something like this:
“There is evidence that people..”.
“Stop Daddy, I can’t write that fast. T H E R E I S, how do you spell evidence?
What does evidence mean?”
I tried to begin again, “You don’t need to write down everything, just the reall y important things and I’ll tell you what those are. So there were that people lived in Ecuador 10,000 years BC. Does anyone know what BC means?”
Liza was already on the verge of tears. “Daddy, I have to write down everthing because that’s the only way I can remember it!”
Things only got worse from there as I tried to explain that the purpose of this exercise was just to give everyone a general overview of Ecuadorian history so that the museum would make more sense. Everyone except Jacob tuned out at that point and I realized that my teaching skills needed some serious improvement.
My history fiasco notwithstanding, home schooling has been a success. The kids really enjoy doing it every day and Liz and I have enjoyed helping them. I’ve learned pre-algebra again (but of course act like I remember it all from my school days). Fortunately, I’ve got a fairly good grasp of 3rd and 6th grade math although the terms they use these days are confusing. We’ve tried to get in a couple of hours of home schooling a day unless we are going on a field trip (any trip out of the house is considered a field trip). At night, the girls want homework to do which can be taxing if you’ve had a couple of Vodka and tonics. But that’s another story.
We ventured to a couple of Museums on Ecuadorian and Incan history this week. The first was filled with relics of early tribes from different areas of the country. The second included life size representations of Ecuadorian homes from coastal, highlands and jungle areas as well as extensive Incan ruins, an aviary and gardens with indigenous species that are important to Ecuadorian history. All of us were struck by the incredible diversity both environmental and anthropological. The result is a cultural stew of indigenous, Incan, and Spanish, overlaid with a topping of US influence, mostly from the media. I could spend more time educating you on Ecuadorian history but I’ll spare you the lecture until I improve my teaching skills.
The kids all seemed to really enjoy the museums and a lunch of regional specialties that included Mota (boiled corn that looks like popcorn but tastes more like potatoes), Roast Pork, Pollo, Yucca, Hominy, and some sort of sweet cornbread wrapped in banana leaf. More about the food in a future entry.