(Note: this is Part 1 of several posts I want to write about our learning experiences on the island. In addition to our planned lessons, we have learned through our experiences. These are more text heavy posts, but that’s partly because I haven’t been writing in my paper journal so I’m putting my words down here, on-line. 🙂

Aside from math (which Sylvia does with Sophia, and Lily does with me), we have been studying the geography and history of Central America, Honduras and Roatan. We can now all name the 7 Central American countries and their capitals. Can’t say I had mastered that before now. We’ve also talked about US foreign policy, particularly in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1950s-80s and I have especially enjoyed that. Growing up during part of that, I recognized lots of names: Daniel Ortega, Sandinistas, Oliver North. But until now, I couldn’t really tell you much about any of them. I have a much better understanding about that era now. And the girls got lessons in communism, the Red Scare, Ronald Reagan, and US foreign policy. 🙂

Just like in the States, I am homeschooling the girls during our stay here. They have some work from their public school classrooms back home – Sylvia in particular has to keep up with her math – but we are also learning about the island around us. We spend the mornings at our apartment and in the afternoons we often venture out to explore.

We have also studied Honduras, the Mayan civilization (which includes part of modern day Honduras), and Roatan in more depth. Roatan’s history is fascinating. The indigenous people are long gone, after Spanish explorers first came here and brought their diseases. The oldest population of current residents are the Garifuna who were deported from St. Vincent in the late 1790s. About 40 years later, British settlers, followed by newly freed slaves, came from the Grand Cayman Islands. Roatan was even under British rule for a while until 1850. Most recently, Spanish from the mainland have been coming over in droves looking for better opportunities. And finally, we have the North American tourists and missionaries (Canadian more than US) who come for a visit and then decide to stay. It all adds up to a super interesting cultural experience on the island.

One more topic of study has been marine biology (coral reefs in particular) and a little bit about Darwin and his theory of natural selection. I have been leading the science class for Sylvia and Lily as well as the Christman kids. It has been super fun to have all 5 kids together to play games, do activities and learn together.