Washington School

I got a little carried away with the Washington School thing. I spent hours googling and downloadng stuff about Washington D.C. and the inauguration--including materials from a homeschooling site, which, can I just say, had a lot of misspellings and other errors. Then I went shopping. I bought cheap digital cameras, glue sticks, scissors, scotch tape, sparkly red, white & blue star stickers, and plastic folders with closeable flaps to put it all in. I bought hard-bound journals. I happened upon these cool things with the heads of all the presidents and information about them below that fan out like a deck of cards--and, of course, I had to buy those, too. Then I got a bunch of books from the library.

I spent virtually all day Saturday making the curriculum:

WASHINGTON SCHOOL
Saturday, January 17-Tuesday, January 20
2009

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Teacher: Ms. Nommie (Assistant teacher: Heidi Welsh)
Coach: Bepo (Assistant coach: Jake Plant)
Students: Heidi Welsh & Jake Plant

RULES
Learn Stuff
Stay fit
Wear warm clothes and comfortable shoes
No bickering and/or whining

ASSIGNMENTS
Reading about Washington D.C. and the American Presidents
Vocabulary words
Journal writing and collecting stuff to paste in journals
Drawing pictures and taking pictures to paste in journals

PROJECT
Students will create a “Washington Book” with writing, pictures and information about what they learned.

WASHINGTON SCHOOL SCHEDULE

SATURDAY/OUR NATION’S MONUMENTS

Field Trips
Washington Monument
Lincoln Memorial
Vietnam War Memorial
World War II Memorial

Learning, reading and writing with Ms. Nommie

Gym with Coach Bepo
Morning jumping jacks, catch & hotel hall race
Hotel swimming
Special event: Run the length of the Reflecting Pool

It goes on more or less like this:

SUNDAY/OUR SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS

MONDAY/OUR AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

TUESDAY/INAUGURATION DAY

We had orientation this evening. I brought Heidi and Jake to my house after school, they made the Washington School sign, made a list of treats to take in the car and another one of people to whom they wanted to send postcards. All this was done with a minimum of bickering...



...until we taped up the sign and Jake had a slight meltdown during the photo op. He was being stubborn about being photographed, but when Heidi said he was being stubborn, he burst into tears. "She's being mean, Nommie. She called me stubborn," he wailed. I tried to explain since he actually was being stubborn, she was only making a statement, which was not exactly the same thing. Needless to say, this did not help. Thus, there is no good picture of the two of them with their sign. Oh, well. The sign, itself, is very cool--as you can see. Especially Jake's drawing of Obama, wearing sunglasses and a red tie and Heidi's flag with "Proud to Be An American" underneath. (I was tempted to add "finally," but restrained myself.)

The rest of the travelers, Jake's parents, Jenny and Jim, and Heidi's mom, Kate, came for the meal part of orientation: pot roast and pound cake, with Cool Whip and raspberries. Heidi read the curriculum aloud, punctuated by an impressive burp. More lists were made and a 4:00 departure time was set for Friday. Our daughters thoughtfully offered to let us take both children in our car and even keep them in our hotel the whole time we're in Washington. "Ha, ha," we said, like they were joking.