Author: Devona

The Brazier Academy

Devona 0 Comments

I’m taking a break from the Gold Rushing series to write a bit about our homeschool. Moving to California afforded us the opportunity to try a whole new life. With the girls still so young, it was not so risky to pull them out of their traditional school experience and see how home education would serve us.

Now that we’re a whole month in and some of the first hiccups are past, I’d say that we’re doing quite well. Just like with every kind of lifestyle choices, I’m never squarely into one philosophy or another. So our school techniques are reflective of that eclectic dynamic. We’re using a montessori-based math curriculum called Shiller Math. We’re reading aloud as a family every afternoon. And using the Common Core to keep track of what skills/concepts they’re expected to know in Science for their grades and doing the work with books from the library and websites. For Spanish we’re going to work through Rosetta Stone together, and for History we’re using The Story of the World. 

Is this the best plan? I have no clue. But it’s the plan for now. It took me this long to get our weekly routine in order. But the daily ebb and flow was worked out very quickly. Daily we start before 9 and school-at-home our way through the morning seat work. Then in the afternoons we do a more un-school, screen-free education method. By 2pm we’re pretty much done with “school” and head out for errands or to the park. We enjoy hiking, biking around town as a family, or watching a show to two together.

We have park days two or three days a week with other families who are either homeschooling, or live in our town and have preschoolers Cressida’s age. On Thursday we have swim lesson. And I plan to add a couple more activities for the girls as our schedule settles in a bit more.

So that’s the quick and to-the-point update on what’s going on with The Brazier Academy. Stay tuned for more as we get some photos of our work, and have some fun projects to share… like the sun model we’re making out of paper machè.

Gold Rushing- part 2

Devona 0 Comments

So, it’s been weeks since I started this story. I should have known it was going to be hard to jump into life, but the Optimist in me had the Realist on mute. But here I am again, trying to remember what happened just a few short weeks ago, back when we left Ohio to travel west like pioneers.

The plan was to get started at 8 am on Monday morning, drive like wild-women through to Wisconsin, and camp with tents and camp fires and marshmellows.

Chicago was our major stumbling block. We tried to go straight through on the skyway route.

Never again. It was at a standstill at some points so that it was actually not insane for me to take this picture from the driver’s seat:

Once we got going again, we were two hours behind schedule and putting up a tent would have been a really poor plan. The sun was going down, the mosquitos were thick, and the food was not yet eaten. So my mom and I decided to grab some coffee, some Subway, and drive as far into the night as we could. We’d made it to highway 90, so it was a straight shot. All we had to monitor was the gas tank and not falling asleep.

I drove the first shift, going from 7:30 to midnight into Minnesota. There was nothing to see there but stars and a few semi-trucks. Mom dozed in the passenger seat and the kids and dog all snoozed in the back. Around 11 or so there was an electrical storm in distance and I struggled to keep my eyes on the road, squelching the temptation to watch the lightning dance from the sky to Earth, over and over like a blue devil. I wish I could have taken a photo. I want to remember that forever.

We grabbed a few ZZZs at a rest stop with the doors locked and the seats laid back. Then we woke, switched seats and Mom drove the next three hour shift until the sun began to rise but we were too tired to keep going. We pulled into another rest area, right near the border of South Dakota, and really zonked out. Olivia was awake in the back, reading to herself while the rest of us slept. When we finally awoke at 7am or 8, we made coffee in my electric kettle in the rest area and brushed teeth and changed clothes. It was not the cleanliest day of my life…

 

That first marathon burst of driving was exhausting, but was a blessing in disguise, because it afforded us the time to stop a little bit out of the way (read: 3 hours) at the home of Laura Ingalls in De Smet, South Dakota. I’ll stop here for tonight, but look for some awesome photos and a great story about the Dakota stretch in the next couple of days! 

Gold-rushing- part 1

Devona 0 Comments

Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that we’ve recently moved from Ohio to California. Recently, as in, we moved this past week. I’ve been posting photos on facebook because I just wanted to share them as we went. But now I’m going to put them in context.

When Rob took the job at Twilio and we came to San Francisco together to search for a home, we came with open minds about where to live. We considered looking in the city proper but I couldn’t figure out where we’d put our canoe, and how the school system works. So East Bay it was. Searching for a home was both stressful and exciting, and we narrowed the towns down to Orinda and Pleasanton. Some of the people Rob works with were joking that we moved from Ohio to Ohio in California, but there are big differences. The weather for one thing! But also there are tons of thriving local businesses, smaller yards, and much higher home costs.

We applied to rent a small home near downtown Pleasanton and a larger but older home in Orinda. We didn’t get the house in Orinda, someone else got it over us, and the small home in Pleasanton just wasn’t sitting well with Rob. We had no more time to look at houses, and we were literally on the plane home when Rob emailed our realtor asking her to look at a larger house we hadn’t had the chance to see in town. Long story short, we applied to rent it sight-unseen and got it.


Thus began the frantic transition to California. Rob left Ohio on August 15th, and the girls and I planned to take a cross country drive beginning September 9th. My mom volunteered to come along as we made the trek, stopping in South Dakota, and Wyoming on the way.

The voyage was amazing, and I really feel like we’re striking it rich here in the Golden State. I’ll tell the story of our trip in at least two more installments coming up in the next week or so. Hope you’ll come back as check in to see all the amazingness we discovered.