I spent a lot of time over the summer planning the school year. One of the ideas I decided to adopt from other homeschoolers is the idea of a "4-day week." If I can fit all of my curriculum for the week into 4 days, it opens up Fridays for things like Academy and gym, and gives us time for field trips. In the past, if we went on a field trip, we needed to make up for it some time during the week, OR get behind. Unfortunately, I ALWAYS felt behind over the last couple of years, and it has been an awful feeling. However, we have not really been able to 'try it out', yet. Our first week, we had Friday off because we took a 3 day weekend for camping...and this week was the Labor Day Holiday. So, I have not yet had the opportunity to really enjoy the luxury of field trip days or 'almost no school' days.
Today was Friday. I had a full schedule for the kids. They asked if they could start with chemistry, which worked really well for me. Chemistry and Bible are the two subjects that require the most of "me" this week. (Next week it will be writing, history and Bible). So, I'm always happy when they want to start with those subjects. Our plan today was to start Chapter 3....'Chemical Reactions.'. I expected to spend about 20 minutes introducing the concept, reading the first half of the chapter, and being done. But, for some reason, the idea of "chemical reactions" was really exciting and interesting to both of them. They thought that if they could actually do the EXPERIMENTS, maybe they could blow stuff up! So, they didn't want to stop. They were genuinely interested and before I knew it, we had covered the whole chapter, had a lot of discussion about it, pretended to be molecules exchanging atoms with each other, etc. "Can we do the experiments?" they asked.
-----now, this is when the little voice in my head said, "excuse me....science is done now....you need to get on with your day.....there's math and grammar and Bible, etc., etc., etc..--------
Today, I ignored the voice. Thanks to PREPARING AHEAD OF TIME (thanks, Greta), I had all of the necessary supplies to move ahead and do the experiement, which consisted of mixing several household items, 2 at a time, to see what happens! Is there a chemical reaction? How do you know? Gas formed? Precipitate? Color change? THEY COULD NOT GET ENOUGH!!!! And so, they mixed. Once they got the hang of it, I left to take a shower. They were still mixing and recording their results when I came out. Eventually, they had to clean up because I had a doctor appointment (getting my back checked out).
Here's the cool part....later that evening, David passed on a playdate to continue on doing his experiments. He found all of the supplies that had been put away, and as he told me "I just want to see what happens. I didn't get to finish." (notice one of the pictures of him....it's dark outside). He just never got tired of it.
And, although I am not thrilled that we missed ALL of the other subjects today, I have heard and watched and seen many seasoned homeschool moms do the same. They told me that one day this would happen, and they told me NEVER to stop real learning when it is fueled by curiosity and passion. And, their children have a hunger for learning that I can only dream about seeing in my children. Today, I followed the lead of these wise women, and just .....let them be fascinated, let them ask (and answer) questions all day....let them learn.
YEAH!!!
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