Road School

Every parent who watches her toddler grow into a preschooler begins to develop her picture of the first day of Kindergarten. There awaits somewhere in the future a picture perfect moment of a cute kid with a new hair cut and new clothes wearing a backpack too big for her little frame and holding a chalkboard sign with a decorated "First Day of Kindergarten" inscription for the world to see. Kindergarten is milestone and it's a tear-jerking moment for kids and parents alike-- the young one leaving the nest and out to experience the world on her own, making new friends her parents haven't made for her, learning new things from someone other than Mom and Dad, and coming home with stories to tell and a longing to go back for more.

Well, we didn't get any of that. Tradition escaped us at a definitive moment in time-- it was months later we hatched our plan to embrace non-tradition in light of that moment (See "The Post I Wasn't Going to Write" for more). In that decision, the experience all of her friends would be having would not be one she would have, nor would it be one this parent had pictured in her idyllic image of the start of school.

What do we have instead? Better than all that. We have Road School.

Even before September 5, 2017, her first day of school, Evelyn had been learning more than her five year old counterparts could learn in the traditional life she easily would have known in our old life. She had already collected more Junior Ranger badges than anyone we know-- even other travelling kiddos we've met on the road. She knows more about lighthouses than one could possibly imagine, and knows under which conditions to find agates on the beach in Oregon. I could go on and on about all the wisdom she has gained and the circumstances under which she has gained it, but I simply don't have the time to cover the depth and breadth of that kind of content at 11:00pm on borrowed time before baby sister wakes up.

I do, however, want to elaborate on this process.

Evelyn meets people left and right. She yells "Hi!" at new neighbors and has made friends we never would have thought to make along the road this past year because she is quite simply Evelyn. People from all over the country have remarked what a smart girl she is and have made conversation by asking her if she is in school. She has always proudly returned the entire story of how "We are travelling ALL over the place, and I get to do HOME school!".

I enrolled her with a partner school in the charter I work for and instead of meeting in person, we get to meet her teacher virtually each learning period. We got to handpick curriculum and have it delivered to where we anticipated staying around the start of school, at a friend's house in Washington. It was a fun week of awaiting the arrival of the UPS truck with big boxes labeled with her name! She got to unpack new books, clocks with working hands and gears, chalkboards with rainbow chalk, stickers, and even a new Ramona book-- and it all managed to reach her wherever home was parked. It was like Christmas!

Managing a new schedule with our crazy lifestyle hasn't been easy. I thought that selecting kits that had pre-scheduled curriculum would be the key to managing this new task of educating our child with all these new books, but this teacher mama quickly discovered that there are no lesson plans like my own lessons plans, so I scrapped the handy pre-made schedule and forged ahead to made it our own. This makes for some late nights with page tabs and planner in hand and a lot of hours familiarizing myself with the materials we now have crowding a cabinet we cleared just for road school supplies, but it's a small price to pay.

There was the matter of school shopping, though. This is one experience I didn't want to bypass for all other abandonment of tradition. A girl living in a trailer can sometimes look an awful lot like she lives in a trailer. Scruffy hair, dirty clothes, and scuffed knees all come along with the territory. And hey, a girl's gotta be a girl! But, every girl deserves new clothes to feel good about to start her Kindergarten experience, so as soon as we got into a town (a small and rather interesting town in western Idaho at that), we got to shopping. She tried on clothes and shoes and left with bags she was excited about. This is one thing this mama wasn't going to compromise!

I also enlisted baby sister's help to pick out some school supplies while our Kindergartner was hanging out with Dad one afternoon. Kailyn picked out the perfect kitty binder for big sister's work. Evelyn loved the binder so much she slept with it the night we brought it home!

After we were outfitted, we were ready to put this new schooling to work.

When we stumbled across a historic section of the Snake River in Idaho where pioneers in wagon trains forded the river risking all they owned with the help of Native Americans, we parked the home in their campground and stayed a few nights. We went to customizing the experience: reading about pioneer life, labeling Idaho on a map, indicating North/East/West/South for their crossing, and actually showing her where it happened from our RV window.

This was Glenn's Ferry, Idaho. We visited their Interpretive Center, walking distance from our trailer, where Evelyn got to pack a covered wagon, having to decide what should stay and what should go and being sure to pack things geometrically to maximize the space. After realizing toys and furniture had to be left behind, she straightened her shoulders and said, "Hey, we have our own covered wagon, and we get along just fine!"

Not every day of Road School can be as perfect as this one was, but I'm grateful she's learning the world by living it and the sky's the limit as far as our curriculum is concerned. This week, it's rivers and canyons because we're only 5 miles from the site where Evel Knievel attempted his jump across the Snake River!

No, we didn't get our idyllic pictures of that first day of Kindergarten. Heck, I didn't even make a chalkboard sign. But what we did get is all this... and our year of Kindergarten is only just beginning!