Tour of Sundance – Part 2

Back by popular demand, Katie and Jessica return to present to you the second part of our cinematic tour of Sundance!

We shot these scenes not long after we published the first part of the tour, when we were staying at our last campsite in Scotia, New York. Putting the final film together has had to wait a while, unfortunately… since the movie was “in the can” we’ve been too busy getting ready to travel home, unpacking and restoring our lives to some semblance of normality.

So as I said in my previous post… we do hope it was worth the wait.

Enjoy!

Oh, and just like at the cinema, make sure that you watch until the very end of the credits… you never know what you might see.

– Keith

Tour of Sundance – Part 1

Last December, Katie, Jessica and I began to work on a movie as a road-schooling project. The girls decided to put together a tour of Sundance, to show everyone what our home for the year is really like.  Katie and Jess worked together to plan the shots and come up with the script, and then I acted as the director and cameraman.  It took us a whole day just to write and shoot the exterior scenes… and then we stopped.

Well, it has taken us FIVE months to finally get around to combining all of our footage into a final edited whole.  That’s why you’ll see Death Valley in the background, even though we’re now back on the east coast!  We hope it is worth the wait.

So here it is… a tour of home, Sundance the RV:

– Keith

Travelling With Children

A lot of people, both back in the UK and who we have met along the way, have been a little surprised that we have embarked upon this crazy adventure with our children in tow. The equation was simple, really – we can spend our lives waiting to have an adventure in our retirement years, then spend hours telling our children all about it and boring them with the photos we take, perhaps even inspiring them to take the same path sometime in their later years, or we do it now. Together. We make memories and have adventures that will last for all our lifetimes. Simple, really.

On the road together

That is not to say that RVing our way around the US with two children is easy – but it certainly hasn’t presented as many challenges as I had feared. We have set some guidelines as a family that have ensured that we rub along together reasonably well – I will share them with you if you are interested!

Learning as we go

Learning new things!

Rules:

The girls drew up their own set of rules before we set out in Sundance. When we first arrived in the USA we spent some time looking at the early pilgrims and the journey on the Mayflower. The first settlers drew up a set of laws called the Mayflower Compact so we have our own Sundance Compact! It is pinned on the fridge and we refer to it all the time!

Travelling:

A lot of our days are spent travelling long distances, spending hours in the truck while hauling our home from one state to the next. Although it’s the name of our blog, we don’t want to listen to an interminable loop of “are we nearly there?” so we do opt for in-car entertainment for the kids. I have an objection to the use of TVs in cars; what is the point of travelling, when the journey is just as important as the destination, if the kids miss it all because they are gazing at a small screen? Our concession to boredom is audio books. We have listened to some together by playing them through the truck’s stereo, and the girls both have their own iPods that I load with new stories before each long journey. So far they have worked their way through the last two books of the Harry Potter series (Katie), the complete collection of Narnia (both) some gems from Enid Blyton (both), a few Jaqueline WIlson novels and a selection of other contemporary stories. Next we have the complete LIttle House on the Prairie collection to listen to!

Sightseeing:

When we are seeing somewhere new the girls spend as much time looking at the scenery as we do. In National Parks, they look out of the windows – partly because their junior ranger challenge usually has a scavenger hunt, partly to spot wildlife and mostly because, on the few occasions when they haven’t paid attention, one of them has missed out on something! We discuss our route and destinations together, for the most part. The girls help plan what we are doing next and also enjoy plotting on a map the routes we have travelled.

Maps:

There are not enough walls in our RV to display all our maps! We have one of each state we have visited, and on each we have drawn our route, our stops along the way and our destination. We would love to have all these on view but space simply doesn’t allow it, so we just have the current and previous state on display. In the toilet. Which means that we all come from the smallest room with a comment about where we have been and where we are going next!

TV:

When we picked up the RV it came with a very small TV in the main bedroom. We switched it on once to check it worked (it does!) and since then we have not plugged it in again. The shelf in the living room which is meant for a TV is decorated with fairy lights and houses a printer and our laptops. Instead, where there should be a screen you will find a whiteboard with our collection of fridge magnets and scribbles about our current location. I honestly don’t know where we would find the time for TV viewing anyway – our days and evenings are just too busy! If we need a bit of screen time, we can watch a DVD on the laptop but this happens rarely, and none of us seem to miss it.

Being helpful!

Friends:

This is a tough one. In the summer, the girls were surrounded by other kids and had a great time socialising with new friends. This happens much less frequently Now that American kids are back at school, but we still do run into children of the right age occasionally. Some live at the RV campgrounds, some are home-schooled, a few are on holiday. When the girls do find children to play with they are very excited and keen to socialise! Katie is keeping in touch with the friends she has made along the way and with friends from home by email and has also managed some “FaceTime” conversations with her old school friends.

School:

We haven’t spent as much time doing formal schooling as I had anticipated. We have completed a few topics together and every day the girls are both set a Morning Challenge – a worksheet to give them a focussed way to begin the day. On the other side of the coin I also think that they have been learning a lot more in an informal way than I thought possible.

What better way to learn about types of rock, than to go to a place where igneous rocks were formed there by a volcano just 100 years ago, or to drive along a valley lined by cliffs that pre-date the dinosaurs? How about seeing how the penal system works by being shut in a cell in a real prison, or talking about erosion while walking through a disappearing landscape. Every part of this vast country has a modern history that began with the European settlers and also a history of the native people, whose stories and traditions are a real and beautiful way to re-tell past events. Every day the girls see and experience something new and exciting, and these are things that they will remember forever, not just a piece of paper that will be filed away in a folder and forgotten about at the end of term.

Early morning sewing crafts

Once in a lifetime experiences

I’ll be honest – we have all had “one of those days” from time to time, and we have yelled, disagreed and sulked (I include myself and Keith in all of these!) but these times are few and far between. On the whole, we have been amazed, laughed and loved… and continue to do so.

– Em X

Roadschooling 2

Working hard!

As we have headed west, the girls have been exploring how the early pioneers of America made their journey westward.

We have looked at how Lewis and Clark explored the area of the Louisiana Purchase and headed west until they found the ocean. We have stood where they stood, overlooking the Missouri River, and stared across the plains that they travelled.

Where Lewis and Clarke camped overlooking the Missouri River

We have been looking at how the pioneers would have travelled in a covered wagon and Jessica had a wagon ride herself and found out just how bumpy and uncomfortable it could be! We have seen some original furniture and kitchen equipment that travelled with the homesteaders and talked about what they would have taken with them and what they would have to leave behind. We have visited one of the last surviving prairie homesteads in South Dakota and seen first hand what a sod house was like. We all dressed up as homesteaders, and I held a chicken – and then realised I’m scared of chickens!

Chicken hysteria

We have had a lot of fun – we talked about how pioneers would have to pack their belongings so that they survived the journey. The pioneers put their delicate plates and other items, including eggs, into containers of flour and corn to cushion them along the trail. We decided to find out the best way to protect eggs while we are travelling, too! Katie and Jessica both took and egg and tried to find the best items they could find in our RV to protect them. Both used a combination of socks, rubber bands, tissue paper, tape and cling-film and Katie used a plastic container stuffed at both ends to cushion their eggs. Then Keith dropped them from the roof of the RV. As you can see, neither egg survived the impact… and the socks used didn’t come out of it too well, either. Next: the science experiment to find the best way of removing raw egg from white socks!

Katie’s egg. before the drop…

Jessica’s egg. Carefully wrapped.

Egg dropping

Oops!

Yuk!

Pure joy at egg dropping!

When we visited the Prairie Homestead in South Dakota, we saw examples of rag-dolls made from ripped up table cloths and old clothes that the pioneers would have made for their children. So we used a spare bed-sheet we had and made our own. Katie’s doll is called Rebecca, after the child in a story about pioneers she has read, and Jessica’s is called Rachel. Although she really wanted a boy doll – I couldn’t work out how to make dungarees. A skirt was just so much easier!

Doll making

Our wagon-train dolls

We have been talking a lot about Native Americans and how their way of life was affected by the arrival of Europeans. We have discussed the impact on the environment of westward expansion. We have seen and touched buffalo hides and discussed how the buffalo was important to the way of life of the Indians.

We have also been doing english and maths worksheets (Jessica loves number work – I found myself saying to her earlier today “stop doing maths and go outside and play!”) and the opportunities for geology and geography are so exciting. Jessica made freinds with someone who had a geology kit, and had lots of fun cutting up rocks to see what they look like inside (answer: they looked like rock.) We have talked about renewable and non-renewable sources of energy, water conservation (we are having to do that a lot in our RV!) and climate change.

Hopefully these hands-on activities are making education real and memorable for the kids. They certainly seem to be enjoying everything we are doing!

-Em X

Roadschooling 1

Since the children’s teachers may be reading this, I thought I should mention something about their education this year!

A big part of our discussions when planning this trip were around the children’s schooling – would they miss too much? Would they fall behind? Would they fit back in to school when we return? We decided to take the plunge and do a little home schooling (or road schooling!) along the way, hope that the experience of travelling for 12 months would enrich their lives enough to outweigh anything they may miss out on while out of formal education. A good friend of mine home schools her children and they are the most polite, friendly, erudite and eloquent children you could ever hope to meet. If we can manage to do just a little of what she achieves with her small people then I think that Katie and Jessica will be fine.

We have started a little haphazardly but I think that we are heading along the right tracks. We are not sticking to any formal school hours, but assuming that every new experience will be an education and any more structured learning will be a bonus. In our ‘sit down’ lessons so far we have been looking at Pilgrims to America as our first topic. This fits well with Katie’s recent topic on the Tudors and covers Geography (we have looked at their journey on the Mayflower), History, RE (we have talked about religious oppression), English (we have read diaries and written our own) and some PSHCE, where we have talked about the Mayflower Compact, and written our  own Sundance Compact – a list of rules that we have all agreed to follow! Next we are going to look at Westward Expansion, including the first fur trappers, Lewis and Clarke, the Oregon Trail, the California Gold Rush, Cowboys and Homesteading. Luckily there is loads on the internet to help and I went to Barnes and Noble yesterday to get a book about wagon trains. As a history graduate, I love this topic work. I’m probably having more fun than the kids are!

We have also brought some Maths and English workbooks from the UK with us. Jessica has keenly been ploughing through her maths book, without prompting and for fun! Katie has been spending time doing a little maths and a lot of writing thanks to her English books.

Oh, and we have also been talking about alliteration. They are having lots of fun making alliterative headlines for pretty much everything we do!

We have also been observing things as we pass them and trying hard to make our days informative. Keith and I have had some really great chats in the car about rivers, glacial rock formations and the geography of the areas we have visited. A few times the girls have been listening, too!

Education is another one of the challenges we are facing this year and another exciting part of our year together.

– Em x