I had one of those perfect homeschooling moments today. These are rare. Although we all enjoy homeschooling and prefer it to our other options here, it's not like everyday goes smoothly with our angelic children getting their work done before I assign it and beaming at me about how blessed they are to have me as their mother and their teacher. There are rough days. There are days that I call Rich from the bedroom and tell him to forget all that I told him our children being so bright and needing someone to help draw out their abilities. Last Monday, I told Rich that he'd better be home on time after work, because I was going out whether or not he showed up. I told him that I wanted to run away, he said that was fine, but I had to come back. I called another homeschooling mom friend of mine and we played hooky from our families that night visiting a bookstore and getting dinner and wine at a nice pizza place near our homes. I also forgot my wallet, so she had to buy my dinner. Which meant I drove there with no license.

Anyway. I was talking about a positive moment.

So, yesterday, after we did some history reading and talked about Roman numerals and Arabic numerals, the older boys wrote out the Roman numerals through 10, then 50, 100, 500 and 1000. Without my prodding at all, they decided to practice their Latin at the same time and wrote the Latin names of the numbers above the Roman numerals. They decided to work on their penmanship and write out the number names in English on the other side of their cards with the Arabic numerals. After Alexander finished, he showed me his work and told me how he'd figured out that mille was the root of millipede. And that it must mean thousand feet.

I was so thrilled. This is why we homeschool. This is what we were looking for when we chose the method of homeschooling we did. We want them to be able to learn, to deduce, to integrate information and knowledge. Now, I know fully that it is lots of little steps like this, and it won't be smooth sailing every moment of every day from here on out, it was a little encouragement to keep plugging at it.

Labels: Family, Homeschooling