Life is learning

My first exposure to homeschool came before I was even married. One summer day, feeling lonely, I walked across the street to introduce myself to the family I knew worked in another ministry on campus. The door was answered by a wonderful woman, Dee, who became mentor and friend to me in the next year.

She had three sweet little girls and one on the way, and she homeschooled them. I watched Dee parent them and talk about homeschooling - she mentioned how the smallest thing like seeing a firetruck drive by, or them watching her bake, was an opportunity for learning.

That lesson came back to me today when my son, who had been occupied measuring the living room furniture said, "Mom, do we have to go back to homeschool now?" We had read a book called Measuring Penny about a girl who measures her dog in every possible way, so the kids had grabbed tape measures and were hard at work measuring different things.
I said, "Ethan, you've been doing homeschool!" After all, he was learning, just at home.

One of the things I often hear is, "homeschooling is not school at home." In other words, you aren't trying to recreate what they'd have at school. But my personality demands structure, as does my time conscious son's, so while I want us to have an atmosphere of learning, I do find that I have a starting and stopping point each day. Part of my reasoning in that is that I want my kids to learn structure and how to be engaged in an activity for a prescribed time.

But as I reflect on our detour this morning, or the fact that right now Ethan is learning what happens when you burn rubberbands (yes, with permission - it's science!), or that earlier he observed the water tension on top of a cup of water and spend time reading about surface tension on the internet (more science!) I'm reminded that their learning isn't restricted to "school time."