A Beautiful Mess BY JESSICA PRUKNER
Y
ears ago, when we began our homeschooling journey, the purpose was mainly to allow us the freedom to travel. My oldest daughter was enrolled in a private half-day kindergarten, and in that first year, we took her out for a total of five weeks to travel. I offered to take her schoolwork with us and do it on the road, but the school had a meeting and informed us that after two weeks of absences, they would not have the time to pull her schoolwork for us to take, so she would just receive zeros for those assignments missed. We happily accepted the zeros and traveled to beautiful places like Hawaii and Florida, learning all about the culture and experiencing the food, sights, and animals specific to these wonderful places. After that school year, we decided as a family that we would much rather our kids learn with a “hands-on” approach than have them sitting in classrooms, seeing beautiful places and creatures in textbook photos. So our journey began, and with it came lots of traveling to wonderful places.
The experiences have been memorable and impactful in many ways. Our experiences were unlike anything a classroom or a book could have ever taught our children. A decade later, the kids still tell me
26
