Peru

Sometimes I am asked if I plan lessons in advance. I don't think I have even planned a lesson in my life, let alone in advance! Often something unexpected comes up and we find an opertunity to learn more than we were expecting. There is certainly no 'planning in advance' but I guess there is some preparation on my part.

We have been taking a break from reading the Discworld books, and started reading Anthony Horowitz's Power of Five series. The first book just happened to take place mainly in Yorkshire, so we were familiar with a few of the settings. The second book however takes place in Peru, a country that we know very little about! What a chance for home education!

First of all, Horowitz has obviously done a lot of research, and through the book we are introduced to the shanty towns, and the wealthy. They travel through Peru to Cuzco and Nazca, and the descriptions along the way are wonderful. We got the trusty old geographical atlas that we have in the bedroom, and started following the trail.

As usual, when looking at the atlas, we turned pages and looked at the weather, the composition of the soil, precipitation, and so on. From there we went round looking for deserts that were not made of sand!

I also got onto a fellow home educator who has a boyfriend in Peru, and she gave us information about where she has been, and where she was travelling to the next week as well as a bit of an idea of what it is really like out there. From there we went back to the atlas, and also onto Google Earth.

Google Earth is a home educator's dream! We spent over an hour looking for the Inca temples, the shanty towns, and the lines in the earth at Nazca. We also looked at the social side too. In the book there is very little about the average Peruvian. We knew that there would be some very wealthy individuals, but we at first thought that their middle classes were not very weathly as we could find no swimming pools. Then, all of the sudden we found the wealthy suburbs of Lima complete with swimming pools!

One of the features of Google Earth is the photographs that you can click on. Some were the typical glossy photos of Churches, so we could study the architecture of those, but there were also a lot of plain ordinary houses in there too, which gave us a piture of what life is really like.

It was also interesting to see the overhead view of how the cities fit into the mountains, and then look at panoramic photos of the city nestling in amongst the mountain.

We were even able to tie chocolate in! Peruvian chocolate was mentioned in the book, and I found some Fair Trade Peruvian Chocolate in our local supermarket. I bought some and we all had a try of it, even Ram, who usually refuses to eat anything other than white chocolate. I was proud of him for trying it, but pleased that he didn't like it, so that I could finish the rest of the bar!

We hadn't planned to study Peru, and I had had no idea that was where we were heading, but that to us is what autonomous home education is all about; taking opportunities when they are offered.