Eltville

Europe is impossibly cute.  There are villages which I suspect many of the houses are made from Gingerbread, and I expect hansel and Gretel to come skipping out of any moment.

I can't imagine how it must be to actually live in one of these places.. probably pretty cramped if we were to be totally honest.

We visited a very cute little medieval village called Eltville which is on the Rhine.  It has a huge Schloss ( sort of a castle) over looking the Rhine. The gardens are still magnificent in winter and a place of peace and beauty.  No wonder so many office workers come here to eat their lunch. 

I have photos of me about 18 years ago sitting on the exact spot Morgan and Lilly are in the photos below.

This is a working well in the middle of the courtyard of the Schloss.  Its a long long way down to the water - which surprised me, given that the river was not far away and I felt we were fairly close to the level of the the bank.

Entrance into the gardens.

Peeping out onto the Rhine

The various faces of homeschooling

Where ever we go, I take the opportunity to make it into some sort of learning experience. Having no home base does make it a little more challenging for a classroom environment, so we have to do what we can. The wonderful thing about being in the UK and having National Trust and English Heritage passes, is that these organisations are set up to educate the young folk and have so many great resources on hand to make discovering history so much more exciting. There is normally some sort of treasure hunt or trail.

In Winchester, there was a drawing treasure hunt, where the kids had to fill in the gaps of images they found around the castle keep.  Such a good way to get kids involved and looking for answers! ( lets not forget their drawing and observational skills)

So whilst at the moment, their homeschooling is focused on history, we are jamming in in lots of language skills with recall, recount, research and expression; as well as mapping and geography skills.  Maths has taken a little bit of a back seat - but we continue with times tables and I get the kids to convert currency, add up shopping bills and look at what change we will get.

While we are in Germany, we will take advantage of the real life experience of language.  (and similarly when we are in Spain and France)

Halli Galli.. Game for homeschooling

Having landed in Germany, the kids are doing a bit of a crash course in German language skills. 

Games and outings are the best way - I reckon - in learning anything - in particular new words.  Here we are playing a completely mad game called Halli Galli ( something I HAVE GOT to buy and take with us..... lots of fun)  Its sort of like snap, but with a bell. There is defiantly plenty of language skills to practice identifying the fruit on the card and counting skills as well.

Every day, we will be focusing on a different area to learn words in German. I am hoping to cram as much as I can in over the two weeks we are here, making up for a years worth in a mainstream school!  We will be doing Spanish while we are on the Camino ( 2 months) , and french when we are in Paris and France ( 3 weeks) - so a bit of a smattering and appreciation for different languages.