After two glorious weeks in Maine, we headed about six hours south to the southern tip of Rhode Island and were instantly rewarded with a 10 degree temperature increase. And rain. After our first evening there exploring the campsite, it rained for three or four days straight. No matter; we had spent a lot of energy exploring Acadia, so I was ready for some homebound days. 
We’ve fallen into a comfortable pattern with our formal roadschooling. Of course, most of our days are location based and would be considered field trips. So we have lots of rich conversations about weather and history and geography as we go. But I’m also following a few formal curriculum for literacy and math.
For reading lessons for my Kindergartner, I already had a book that I picked up when I taught K and 1st in the Mississippi Delta: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It teaches phonics, sight words, comprehension, and letter writing in about 20 minutes or less a day. It’s a little unconventional, but Franklin has been ‘ready’ to read for awhile, so he’s doing a good job. We’re about half way through the book and his decoding skills are pretty solid.
My second grader’s reading has really flourished in the past few months. We spend a lot of time reading out loud to all of the kids and used to ask him to read one page, then two, three, etc of whatever chapter book we were reading each night. But now he reads to himself (and lately out loud to Franklin) every night after Joe and I finish reading their bedtime stories. Joe most often reads the stories and chapter every night and uses amazing character voices – and the best thing is now listening to Cooper read aloud to his siblings and use voices as well. Every week we try to visit a local library and the boys rush to find Ninjago reader books.
So, instead of finding a reading curriculum for Cooper, we’re focusing on formal writing instruction. He’s had a hard time with all of the writing he was asked to do at school last year. I would see it with completing homework but also when I could observe him in the classroom. He does not like inventive spelling – he likes to do it right. So he pares down his thoughts to words he knows how to spell.
I’ve taken some of the ideas from Brave Writer (especially the love and support in the Jot It Down stage) and incorporated them into our weekly routines. We’ve done some copywork and also write with real context – blog posts that he dictates and postcards that he dictates and I leave blanks for him to fill in. But I think that explicitly teaching spelling rules is really what he wants – especially now that he’s an independent reader. I ordered All About Spelling Level 1 and we’re about halfway through it. It’s below his level (CVC, CCVC, CVCC words so far), but it has done wonders with his confidence. He now coaches Franklin on spelling words and wrote a thank you card to my parents with two sentences without any help or additional prompting from me. At the beginning of this trip it was a battle to get him to fill in blanks or write one sentence. So, we’re about halfway through level 1 and I’m ready to order Level 2 in the next week or so.
For math, I had been doing the daily calendar time with Franklin and talking about math through cooking and everyday applications, but was feeling a little lost until I talked to my aunt in Assateague, who recently retired as a math teacher and teaching coach for other teachers in Delaware. She boosted my confidence in looking through the Common Core resources online and the next time we had stable wifi I found the exact curriculum that our school in Nashville uses (thank goodness I went to Family Math Night!). We’ve been doing 4-5 lessons a week (K and 2nd grade curriculum). This has made me feel so much more confident about where the boys will be when we reenroll them in school. If we were homeschooling for life I might not worry about it as much, but since they will most likely be returning to school, it’s good to know that they won’t have any gaps in learning from the math standpoint.
So that’s the roadschooling update. Now back to what we found in Rhode Island! On Tuesday, Joe took the laundry to a laundromat and the kids and I went to the library. While there, the librarian invited us to join them for their Halloween party that Thursday night, so we planned to return. After the laundry was done, we picked up Joe and drove around a rainy Narragansett.
The storm had stirred up the waves over the breakwater by Judith Point Lighthouse!
After the rainy expedition, we had a poetry tea party and listened to a recording of Longfellow’s The Ride of Paul Revere. I think I didn’t make a post about it, but on the way to Rhode Island we stopped in Boston and had a Boston Cream Pie from Joanne Chang’s Flour. Driving through the city, we talked about the Boston Tea Party and Revolutionary War and eventually Paul Revere… so finding the poem through Nashville Public Library was perfect for our Poetry Tea Time!
This little one is learning a lot too (especially a love for books from her older brothers)… and potty training! I was kind of glad to be ‘stuck’ in the RV so that we weren’t too far from a toilet. 
Thursday night the kids dressed up in their costumes and we headed to the library for a parade, crafts, a story teller, and (of course!) treats. I didn’t get a pic, but here’s one from Joe:
On Friday the rain finally stopped, so the kids and I headed out to explore again. 
On Saturday we all went back to the break water and climbed over most of it. 
Then we headed to Newport to walk by the famous mansions on the Cliff Walk. It was a lovely day in a really beautiful, historic town. 
The next day it rained (again!) and we packed up and headed to our friend’s cabin outside of Narrowsburg, NY. The roads were covered in accidents and we hydroplaned a lot. Turns out it was a huge storm that took out a lot of power all over the Northeast, especially Connecticut.
At one point while braking on a hill, about half of my dashboard indicator lights turned on. I pulled off to consult the owner’s manual – it was the vehicle stabilization and anti lock brake system, so I could keep driving, but figured we might have to visit an auto shop soon. I only had GPS coordinates (not an address) for our next destination, so I took a deep breath and hoped that Joe had gotten there without incident… and if the coordinates were wrong, I hoped he would be waiting there for me! Thankfully, the coordinates were correct and Joe was there, ready for a week in Narrowsburg.
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