Education where you find it....

It's no big secret that we plan on homeschooling. I've done hours of reading on the subject- reasons, methods, opinions, resources- you name it. We have several friends that are homeschooling, so I've spent a great deal of time both in the company of homeschooling parents and homeschooled kids. Dave & I are both convinced that it is the right choice for us. The reactions of others is often interesting, running the gamut from incredulous to completely supportive.

As Dillon has reached and is in the midst of typical preschool age, I thought I'd start documenting some of the educational stuff we do. We feel like life alone provides an immense amount of education and don't really- at this point anyway- subscribe to any kind of formal plan. So, we don't work on ABC's or numbers or anything that typical preschools do. This isn't to say that we don't talk about those things, we just don't do it in any kind of organized- "let's learn about ABC's" kind of thing. We feel like we have a house and environment full of interesting books, toys, things, conversation, friends, and opportunities and that it provides an incredible amount of education.

One day last week, Dillon asked me why space shuttles had wings. The general rule around our house is that questions about flying objects are best answered by Daddy. So, yesterday morning, Dillon again pulled out the coffee table book we have on Space, crawled in Dave's lap and asked again. They spent about the next half hour talking about rockets, satelites and shuttles. Today we were reading about sea creatures and read a page on plankton and how lots of sea animals small and big ate plankton. She started telling me that it was what balleen whales ate, but not toothed whales like killer whales and sperm whales- they eat meat. It went on to Narwhal whales which aren't really toothed or baleen and what they eat (it's meat, by the way- we looked it up).

Highlights from the rest of the day-
-We picked up a pomegranite at the grocery store since we'd been looking at one on a CD case a few days ago and had talked about what they were. I noticed it & pointed it out, she asked to get it so we could see & taste the seeds.
-We also came home with Clementine oranges. Dillon wanted to make juice out of them, so we got out the little hand juicer thingy & she had a ball- and made some pretty decent orange juice.
-Dave came home early & she wanted him to build her a glider from a box of those balsa wood airplanes that have been around for years. They spent a few minutes talking about how aglider worked.

Am I bragging? Sure, a little. Mostly I just want to have something in writing for future's sake. She amazes me in her ability to absorb things that are interesting to her and I think it'll be fun to look back one day to see what her interests were at this age.