Homeschooling at Walt Disney World

The last month has been a blur!  The holidays were wonderful as we spent time with family and friends.  We took a few weeks break from our homeschool work and did a bit of traveling.  Now we are feeling fresh and renewed (at least I am…not sure the kids would agree) and ready for some interesting adventures in the new year.

During the month of December we watched the new Disney TV special called “Prep & Landing” (actually, we watched it several times because we loved it!).   In case you missed it “The half-hour holiday special reveals the never-before-told tale of an elite unit of Elves known as Prep & Landing”.  It was a funny look at all of the high-tech work that goes on behind the scenes to make everything run smoothly on the big night of Christmas Eve.

I’m not sure what it says that I found myself inspired by an animated TV special, but one morning during my daily walk with our dogs I decided that instead of calling our homeschool efforts “unit studies” it might be more fun to think of them as “prep & learning.”  In the past I have always tried to do a few activities before our visits to WDW so that we can relate our home learning to a hands-on learning opportunity.  I will still do that, but I’m also going to try to find a few simple things to help us document our learning and experiences.

I may not have all of the high-tech tools and skills that the elves have but I’ve decided to let the internet be my friend as much as possible.  My goal is to find basic materials that I can use to help guide our efforts.  I’ve realized that I am somewhat creative, but I’m actually better at finding resources and tweaking them to fit my needs.  I’ve always been a fan of the expression “don’t reinvent the wheel” (and for those that are familiar with strengths, I’m a true Maximizer) so I’m going to use my talents to find resources that already exist and make them our own.

I’ve mapped out our plans for the next few months – I’ve considered the subjects we’re going to be covering and thought about how we can tie that work in to our trips to WDW.  Here are a few of the topics we have on our agenda – a book club using books with a tie to WDW (Jungle Book, Peter Pan, etc.), plants, animals and their habitats, states, and American history, to name a few.  As we move along I’ll share some of the “prep” activities I find, and then let you know how well they support our “learning” and real life adventures.

…now, if I could just find a few “elves” to do all of my internet searches I’d be in great shape!!!