From New York City we headed to Cape May, NJ to officially start school for the girls. Cape May is located on the southernmost tip of the Cape May Peninsula in eastern New Jersey. Surrounded by ocean beaches on three sides, the quaint resort town was the perfect place to slow down after the Big Apple and to sort out how all of this school stuff was going to work (spoiler alert: it was harder than I envisioned-go figure!).
Thus far on our road trip, the girls have been doing a bit of directed learning; we especially like this online finance course. But mostly, they’ve been learning more organically as we research new areas, learning about local animals, geology, ecosystems, and history.
As we planned for this year away, we considered several school options for the girls: online school, homeschool, and/or private vs public school once we got to South America. In the end, homeschooling won out because of the freedom we’ll have of not being tied to any one place or one particular schedule; the price was also right. I won’t lie that I’m excited to introduce topics they wouldn’t normally get in their public school and to challenge them in ways they’re not normally challenged. For their curriculum we’re using a wide variety of different programs for the various school subjects; some are online and only available when we have decent cell reception and others are completely book-based.
In Cape May, we stayed in an Airbnb house about 5 miles from the beach and settled into our new routine of school from morning until mid-afternoon followed by exploring and beach fun. We took runs on a nearby bike path and found a large park for PE workouts and soccer training.
We had our first Peace Pie (yum!) and our first swim in the Atlantic Ocean. The sand was so fine compared to what we’re used to and we’d never been to beaches with so many organized umbrellas!
Back at our rental, the girls treated Andrew and I to a ‘spa evening’ one night and a ‘date night’ another night. For the date night, Andrew and I started with tasty appetizers, wine, and adult conversation on our private balcony followed by scrumptious dinner and desert, all prepared and delivered by the girls. It was fabulous!
Our six days in Cape May flew by! In our time there we didn’t explore nearly as much as we wanted to and were used to, given the new constraints of school. Not a complaint, but certainly an adjustment from our ‘summer’ schedule. Transitioning into teacher mode was a lot more challenging than I expected and I had a lot to learn those first days; for example, the ‘3-4 hours’ of school that I had planned was actually taking 6+ hours and it was only half of the subjects! There’s no doubt that the girls needed that time to get back into a school mindset as well.
Cape May was a wonderful getaway and we’d love to come back someday for a true beach vacation. If nothing else, there are a lot more Peace Pie flavors we want to try!
Work hard and you get pampered! I like it!
We’re hoping it’s the beginning of a trend ;).