Homeschool Discoveries

There’s no doubt that each kid is a unique individual.  I’m sure that this will be true even among my three boys, but I see this difference so strikingly between my daughter (Miss M — she will be eight in May) and my oldest son (Mr E, turning five later this month).

Miss M had a “brainstorming” sort of assignment in her Spectrum Writing workbook last week.  First she needed to make a list of topics she is interested in and knows something about.  Then she picked one of those topics and listed everything she knows about that topic, as well as a list of questions she would like to know the the answers to related to that topic (yes, that’s a grammatically awkward sentence, I know).

Mr. E heard Miss M and I working on this (Miss M talked me into being her scribe so we could get her ideas on paper more quickly).  He wanted to do the same thing.

Check out Miss M’s list of things she knows something about/is interested in:

• Horses
• Tea Parties
• Art
• Book and Reading
• Stories about Pets
• Sea Horses (her “expert day” topic at co-op last year!)
• Cooking
• Bunnies
• Tennis
• Dancing

Now check out Mr. E’s list:

• Fighting
• “The Avengers” Super Heroes
• Star Wars
• The Heart of the Shield (a secret weapon from a series of stories about knights)
• Tree man, an action figure (hmmm…I think he made this one up!)
• Clone Troopers and Storm Troopers (yep, more Star Wars)
• Guns

These lists could hardly be more different, huh?

I think I got even more insight into my two oldest kids in the next step of the process.  Miss M picked “bunnies” for her next step and we wrote out a nice list of facts she knows about bunnies, as well as some good questions.  Mr E. didn’t actually want to do exactly what Miss M was doing for his assignment.  He wanted to give me a list of questions and topics — things he is wondering about or wants to know about.  It’s a great list!

• “The time of history” (he clarified that this is “stuff from a long time ago”)
• “Roman people in Italy” (Fascinating…not sure if this was a random guess on his part or he remembers us reading about the Roman Empire months ago and where it was located)
• People that knights fought in the time of knights
• What were the weapons of people that knights fought?
• How are crayons made?
• How are crowns with jewels made?
• Why do we have bones in our bodies?
• Why do we have joints in our body? (I pointed out that we’ve been talking about bones and joints in science, but he said his “why” questions had not been answered yet)

He also told me he wants to build a robot, made a real model airplane (not one made out of paper), a model airplane “launcher”, and his own Star Wars movie.

Fun stuff, and fun questions! So, I thought I would ask Miss M a question that might lead her to make a list like Mr. E gave me.  Her response was that she wanted to learn more about horses (that’s her “expert day” topic for our co-op this year), and that she just wanted to read lots of books.

I pressed her a little bit, and she said yes, she did want to do more art projects, and learn history as we read through our history curriculum and learn how to play tennis through the park tennis program again this summer…but what she really wants to do with “extra” time is immerse herself in all kinds of stories.   She wants to read stories, write stories and “play” the stories.  I was the exact same way at her age!  I had insatiable curiosity about things like science and computers as I got older, but when I was a second grader…I was cleaning the library out of stories from my favorite authors and series too.

I just love the different ways that God has created my kids and the differences in their interests…it makes our home an even more lively and exciting place!

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