Sometimes homeschooling is a key that can unlock a day of raucous joy. For our little homeschool, this kind of a day is usually turned on by using the flexibility that homeschooling gives us to react to a whim.
Today it was all about chilckens. The hub and I have been talking about chickens for years. We watched in-laws sucessfully raise chicks and the kids always loved being able to check the nests for eggs when they would go visit. We got hold of a coop and found a great place for it in the garden – that was about two years ago. It never seemed the right time to actually make the dive into the chicken pool.
But yesterday, the hub and I were talking and somehow we just decided that today would be the day. When I told the kids this morning, they were more excited than that fateful evening when I stupidly told my then four year old twins that the next morning we were going to Disneyland (I obviously did not think through the concept and so we all spent a sleepless night in the hotel room trying to calm the kids down). So it was a good thing that I learned my lesson and did not mention anything to them last night. Especially since apparently chickens beat Disneyland in our house.
Today we did do some of the normal schooling we would do on a Wednesday, but instead of a science activity, we designed and built a brooder – complete with homemade feeder and waterer (is that even a word?). This kind of flexibility is not generally available to children who go off to a school building every day. In fact it is not the kind of flexibility that many families who enroll their children in virtual charter schools can enjoy either. Even charter schools that allow you to teach your children at home have shifted more and more into immovable class sessions and appointments online with the teacher.
The freedom of absolute flexibility is really only the realm of the homeschooler.
And so, as The Hub puts it, we finally are becoming real homeschoolers as all real homeschoolers have chickens in his book (or maybe in some magazine or blog he read).
But regardless we will have fun and the kids are super happy.
And the joy is magnified by our flexible homeschool life.
