Day 254: Snorkeling at Jemeluk Bay — A Restaurant Revelation — James Homeschool Update

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I woke up to another onslaught of bad NFL news. The Skins lost to the Cowboys and Drew Brees, my fantasy team QB is out several weeks with an injured hand. 

That said, if unfortunate football news is the worst part of your Monday morning, then life is pretty good. And here in Amed, it is: perfect weather every day; no bugs except an occasional fly (we’re convinced they spray like crazy at the villa); great villa layout; absolutely no plans.

I worked out in the gym and then met Margaret and the kids at breakfast. Before ordering we video-called Cleveland friends Kelly, Allyson Jules and Kellan. Great to catch up with them. It was a year ago this weekend that we went to Jamaica for Allyson’s 40th. Super fun weekend that feels like a decade ago. 

It was during that trip that we came up with the idea to start this year of travel in Kingston, visiting with Didi and her family. 

We took the hotel shuttle 10 minutes down the road to the black pebble beach of Jemeluk Bay. We started with lunch at Sama Sama — a little place attached to a home stay hotel and steps from the water. 

The food was good and cheap — we ordered 4 main courses, 2 beers and sparkling water for about $30 bucks. 

But James and Willa together ate less than half of what they ordered. We’ve learned we really need three mains for the four of us, but James and Willa rarely agree on what they want to order. Then I had a revelation: why the hell are we always letting them order what they want? Restaurants are our new normal for meals. We didn’t let our kids order their meals for a normal dinner at home — why should we do it now. From now on, we’re going to order for the kids, ensuring that they share when necessary and eat a diverse range of food. It’s shocking that it took us 8+ months to figure this out.

After lunch we walked down the beach to a better snorkeling spot. We rented a couple beach chairs and one set of snorkel gear. This beach had more tourists than we’ve seen in all of Amed so far this week. 

Jemeluk Bay is a pretty awesome snorkel location — equally as good as Lipah Beach. Only about 30 yards out from the beach the coral was gorgeous and there were countless tropical fish. No sea turtles today but I did see a couple huge, incredibly bright sky blue starfish. I brought both of the kids out for a short swim. They shared a rented life jacket and used their own goggles. Both saw the coral and plenty of cool looking fish. As it started to get deeper and there were more fish they both got a little tentative and asked to go back to the beach. I’m just happy they got a glimpse of this underwater world. 

Back on the beach, Margaret busted James straight ogling a trio of cute bikini-clad french girls frolicking in the surf for a solid 10 minutes. Don’t think he blinked once. This is one of many incidents this year that have us believing James is most likely straight.

To get back to the main road from the beach we had to walk through this family’s mini-farm.

We stopped by a market to pickup some mangos and cold beer (essentials only) then got a ride back to the villa. Here’s a view of the bay from our ride home.

It was nice to come home. We all jumped in the pool then spent the afternoon chilling, reading and playing games (more Yahtzee!). We ordered dinner to the villa then headed to bed. 

I ended my day watching the second to last (and critical) episode of Big Little Lies (Season 1). Margaret convinced me to watch it and I’m glad she did. So good. 

James Homeschool Update

We’ve done school after breakfast every day here in Amed. James and I post up at the dining table in the kitchen / living room area. Margaret and Willa are in the master bedroom. 

Both kids have had several positive, productive days in a row — no arguments getting started, no whining and no tears from Willa. 

I’ve mentioned “doing school” in so many of my posts but I rarely give more detail. 

James and I spend 90 minutes to 2 hours covering math, reading, writing and occasionally some science. 

Materials: 

  • His journal notebook — used for our daily “welcome message” and schedule as well as a weekly(ish) journal entry 
  • Various workbooks we’ve carried / ditched throughout the year
  • A stack of homemade sight word flashcards
  • Several games with varied lifespans (best have been Zingo Sight Words, Tiny Polka Dot, various games with a 52-card deck including blackjack)
  • My iPad Pro (maybe the MVP here) — used for learning apps / websites plus access to our kindle library in full color
  • Apps / websites: We’ve tried a bunch but these are worth noting: 
  • Books: We read mostly on the Kindle iPad App and we’ve bought dozens  from Amazon this year. We will occasionally purchase a paper book but since he’ll only be interested enough to read it 2 – 3 times they are often not worth the weight / space. 
  • A small pencil / marker case (includes scissors)

We start in his journal notebook. I will write a welcome message / questions (h/t to Blue School) and a schedule for the day.  James likes knowing the plan (just as our tour guides) and likes checking things off as we complete them (who doesn’t?). 

Here’s an example of a welcome message, journal and schedule. 

Math

The foundation of his learning has come from games. We’ve been playing the Tiny Polka Dot games (and their 52-card deck equivalents) since day 1 of the trip. 

We regularly go to the Khan Academy website for videos and exercises. (Funny that I watched Sal Khan tell the world about this product at the 2011 TED Conference— the only one I’ve ever attended.) 

We supplement with occasional workbooks we find during our travels.

James can add and subtract in his head for 0 – 20 and can add two 2-digit numbers in a line or stacked. We’ve worked a lot on finding “friendly numbers” so when adding 23 and 45 he knows that you can pull out 6 tens which is 60 and then add the ones, 5 and 3 are 8… so 68. We’ve recently started carrying tens. He’s comfortable with subtraction 0 – 20 and can also do subtraction for some 2-digit numbers 0 – 100 but we haven’t yet covered borrowing. 

Just this week we’ve started doing some geometry and measurement in Khan Academy and he seems to get it and have fun with it (I had to look up the definition of a rhombus). 

As his reading has improved he’s also able to do more word problems on his own which is cool to see. 

Reading & Writing

At this point in the year our daily schedule usually includes some combination of:

  • Reading / writing the welcome message / questions
  • Sight words (flash cards or a game)
  • Phonics (workbook or a game)
  • James reading aloud to me and me reading aloud to him

For a while he would write the welcome message and he gained a lot of confidence repeating similar stuff every day. But he eventually got bored of that so now I write “welcome questions” that he has to answer — either multiple choice or write-in answers. 

We have homemade sight word flashcards and have used a bunch of different games. Zingo has been the most consistent — earning space in his bag for months now. He seems to have a good memory for these common words and rarely stumbles on the same word more than a few times. 

We will occasionally knock out a page or two in a reading / writing workbook that we’ll pickup along the way and then ditch when we’re done. We’ve dabbled with some apps in reading / writing including Khan Academy Kids but nothing that we use as consistently as the “grownup” Khan Academy site for math. 

Once a week or so he’ll do a journal where he draws a picture and a write up. The journal isn’t his favorite thing to do and he has pushed back on doing it more than any other activity — but as he writes them I know these entries will be priceless in the future. We’ve taken photos off all the entries and put them into a slide deck document — just in case we ever lose a journal book. 

James knows his letters and fully understands the concept of putting letters together to make words and sentences that have meaning. There are several common words he can spell on his own. He knows the difference between capital and lowercase letters but he’ll write with whatever feels comfortable in the moment. He’ll occasionally mix up the direction of a lowercase b / d and often writes the letter S backwards. But overall his speed, confidence and clarity has improved a ton in the last several months. 

We typically read books (via Kindle iPad App) at the end of our school session. If he has the energy (and the book is interesting) he’ll be willing to read to me. Sometimes we trade off pages. He’s currently at that point where every day you can see material progress — and that is aligned with our discovery of these superhero / Avengers books that are “I can read Level 1.” Here’s a screenshot of my iPad Kindle library as of today.

He loves the super hero books. I’m reading him the “Ballpark Mysteries” series. And Willa just started Harry Potter!!

The challenges of teaching James:

When he’s tired or not in the mood, he’ll revolt against school like he would never do with a real teacher. I’ve learned to just tell him that I’ll wait until he’s ready — he likes the 1 on 1 attention so he quickly reverts back to wanting to get to work. 

He’s a perfectionist, hates getting answers wrong and rarely thinks his journal drawings are any good. In Khan Academy if he gets one of the 7 quiz questions wrong he’ll insist on taking the quiz over again (with different questions) so he can get 7 out of 7. 

Last challenge: he’ll kick my aging ass in memory games. 

Final thoughts:

People often ask how homeschooling is going. My standard answer is that it’s been both the most challenging and the most rewarding part of our travels. Recently, it’s been more rewarding than challenging. 

Coming into this year it honestly didn’t occur to me that I’d be teaching James to read. But watching this kid progress from zero to finishing early reader books with little or no help has been one of the many incredible joys of this year. 

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