I Couldn't Have Planned it Better.

We hit our first frustration hurdle this morning while we were working on penmanship. I have been working with Hayden trying to help him transition into using lower-case letters in his name (Hayden as opposed to his sweet HAYDEN) and also working with him on our last name. He really doesn't want to, and so he was dragging his feet. Kennedy is just starting out with cursive, and I was correcting her slant (as a leftie, she wants to slant to the left). Needless to say, we were all getting pretty frustrated, so I sent them to the living room for a little break.

Next thing I know, I hear laughter and music coming from the living room. They were shouting out the names of countries (many of them tiny and unfamiliar to me!), looking for them on our globe (the electronic Leap Frog one, that has lots of identification games programmed into it), and dancing to all kids of cultural music associated with each country. Have you ever seen a 5-and-7-year-old try to belly dance to music from Persia?

And such is the joy we are discovering inherent to schooling at home, and that I have read about from so many experienced families who school at home. Even when my plans aren't being well-received, the kids can self-direct into other learning activities in their own time.....and we all know that kids dive in full-force when it's THEIR idea as opposed to an adult's, right? I know if I had planned that globe idea for them, it just wouldn't have been as fun!

And so, we had an unexpected yet very effective world geography element to our day. We also started a theme/unit study on dogs, and so we spent the latter part of the afternoon at the theater watching "Hotel for Dogs." What a cute, cute movie! And to think that this counts as school!

Tomorrow, Matt is planning an activity to help the kids make models of the solar system while I am teaching at CU. He is off to Walgreen's to buy tacks, and balloons, and has asked for string and cardstock and a host of other supplies. And he is totally "going to town" with this lesson on his own! I love this man and love seeing him engage so fully in this process.