don’t blink

Thank you Komodo Dragon, Thank you.

Last Friday was the best day of homeschooling I think we have ever had. It could not have come at a better time, as I was starting to have real doubts about what we were doing. I was beyond frustrated. But just like that—it all turned around.

It started with a Komodo Dragon.  Fin casually asked me how big a Komodo dragon was, I blew it off at first and told him we could find out later but then I though…HEY! that is something he could just look it up on his deck of animal cards so we broke out the cards and found that a Komodo Dragon on average is about 13 ft long. Well that doesn’t mean anything to a 5 year old—so we got out the tape measure, some masking tape, and a marker…and measured the length out in our living room.

O yea…now the fun starts…all of a sudden I have a VERY excited and a VERY interested student. I mean hyper excited…HE wants to measure more animals, HE wants to write the names on the masking tape, HE wants to pick the next animal we measure…Did you catch that?  I said he WANTED to write…I didn’t have to make him he WANTED to write.

So like I said he was excited but he got even more excited when we had to measure the Anaconda, because this required us to to open our apartment door and go into the hallway and up the wall right out of our apartment. He just thought that was the coolest, funniest thing ever.  But he was absolutely giddy about going into the hallway and having to use the entire hallway for the measurement of the Blue Whale.

So you might be thinking big deal your kid measured some stuff. Here is the big deal this one singular exercise covered all our learning bases not for just the day but for the week…
He was reading
He was writing
He was doing math and comparing
He was learning scientific facts about animals

and most importantly he was HAPPY to do it and didn’t want to stop. We finally had to stop because we had to change out of our pajamas, otherwise I really think he could have gone on measuring all day. I am so so so happy this happened. Not only because he learned a good amount but I learned a huge amount. So here is my take away form Friday:

1. Real learning should be hard to stop. In other words the lesson shouldn’t be dictated by time or place or a checklist. I want to have to say to Fin we HAVE to stop so we can eat lunch or go to the bathroom  because we  need to move on with our day…and even then he should want to keep going…asking about those things we discussed throughout the day, then I can see and know he is digesting and really gnawing on the lesson.

2. Fin learns best in these circumstances. These are the situations where he learns and is happy to learn. There is no whining about having to sit and write now, arguing about TV…what we are doing has his full attention.

3. Sometimes going out of the box is best and by box I mean our apartment. We didn’t have to go far…just opened the door and in the hall and he was loving it…Turning things on there heads seems to speak to Fin in a real way.

4. We can do this. We really can do this homeschooling thing and do it in a successful way where we are both happy. I have had my doubts over the last couple of weeks. Real, real doubts but I do believe now, that we can make it work…I just have to learn to follow the leader…and that leader is Fin.

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