Snow doesn't mean a day off for homeschool kids!

March snows are wet and heavy - and yet another unrealized benefit of car-free living - you don't need to clear the  driveway to get the car out.   Which gave us time to go snowshoeing.


10 plus inches of snow was great for getting the snowshoes out and wandering around the neighborhood.   Schools were closed all over the region, but the library was not.  My son's writing workshop is a program for homeschoolers run by our main library, so a quick phone call determined that they were indeed on for Wednesday, as were play auditions later in the afternoon and Wednesday Night Live, our church's midweek gathering for food, music, study and fellowship.  So we left the snowshoes home and trekked to downtown.  Most of the trip was through shoveled sidewalks or down alleys that were easy walking and once downtown the sidewalks were in good shape, but about two blocks of the trip, the walks were not clear and the city snowplow had covered the sidewalk with gloppy, deep, slush-snow.   It took just a little longer than our usual trips.

The buses seemed to be off schedule yesterday, just based on when we saw them going by. Today they are back on schedule so Pete and I made our usual Thursday afternoon jaunt out to the suburbs for homeschool art class.  This was a program he began a few years ago, so we had always done it with a car.  When we went car-free, this was one of the pieces I wondered about.  Turns out, it works just fine.  We take the regular city bus to the end of it's line and transfer to the flex-link bus.  It can drop us right off at art class, but we usually leave home early so we can get lunch across the street, pick up a few groceries at the overgrown Kroger Marketplace and the come to the library branch for Pete's class.  We go home the same way.  It has turned out to be a nice Thursday mom and son time during the travel.

We are fortunate to live in a city with a very active homeschool community, so there are no shortage of activities to choose from.  Even nicer for us, living close to downtown and close to many of the parks and  facilities  that offer programs are within a 30 minute walk, and less by bike or bus.   I was a little concerned about some of the things Pete has gotten involved with as a homeschooler and becoming a car-free family, but to date, we've not encountered any insurmountable problems.

I'll write more about homeschooling in future blogs.