My oldest son (I have 3) lives in Columbia, Maryland. It takes him about 45 minutes to come here to visit me in Annapolis. He goes to the Kennedy Center at the Watergate in D.C. (I am so old, I can remember when those buildings were not yet built and there really WAS a Watergate concert held in the evenings. We sat on concrete steps built into the riverside and the orchestra, usually the NSO, was on a barge out in the Potomac!) all the time, and to the museums and art galleries there, and ditto in Baltimore. A wonderful, central place to live.
One of my daughters teaches First Grade in Kansas City, Missouri and she keeps her kids alert and interested by teaching them a Geography curriculum I wrote for her. This is the third year she has taught it, and she won a large grant of money from the school district to aid in teaching it. Little kids are dying to go to school and learn "stuff," and get bored in a hurry if it is just reading, writing and arithmetic. Her first graders know their world map better than most American adults by the time we get to the end of the year, plus there are 40 or more countries they can tell you all about. No politics, religion, finance (except they learn to count to 10 in the language of each country), or much history; they learn six year old stuff. Each year, each child writes an essay on their favorite of the nations studied. Most seem to love Thailand; apparently because the kids there ride elephants! They recognize and draw and color all of the 40 + flags and simple maps. If you ask them, as Becky always does, thinking questions about the different places, such as: "Can you think of a big difference between Switzerland and Japan?", they will all think hard until at least one raises their hand and gives exactly the answer she is looking for.
Switzerland is surrounded by land and Japan by water! Mind you, Becky has never pointed this out to them. She is teaching them to think, read, spell (they adore those big words!), count, and be aware.
