Benefits

If anyone actually reads this blog, she's probably bored to tears of the homeschooling posts.  Unless, of course, she's a new homeschooler and avidly searching for other families like hers who are trying a new way of educating their children.  Then this may be a welcome stream-of-consciousness experience.

Regardless, I wanted to share how excited I am that I get to learn new things along with my son.  This week we've been learning more about the samurai, and today we watched a documentary on the samurai sword.  When Doran first told me he wanted to learn about the samurai I didn't think I'd enjoy the research involved with teaching him.  Boy, was I wrong!  

First of all, there is so much chemistry involved in making a sword in the first place.  That was fascinating in and of itself.  Then, as macabre as it may be, there's the fact that some metal was able to cut through human bone and muscle.  That's a strong metal!  And naturally the social aspect is fascinating, especially when it comes to women's roles in samurai culture.  

It was such a surprise to find samurai culture to be interesting to me.  As I studied the things I could pass on to him, I found myself wanting to know more and before I knew it, an hour had passed since I started researching information.  It reminded me of when I was a child and discovering my world, and it felt so amazing.  I thanked the Universe for the beautiful opportunity to share homeschooling with my son and look forward to many more beautiful experiences of this kind.

Just another day

One of the things I love about homeschooling is its portability.  He practiced math (his choice) while we were out having spontaneous breakfast. 

Field Trip!

Doran and I took a field trip today.  The books and videos I wanted to do on the next topic he wanted to study (Samurai) won't arrive until later this week, so we're taking this week to begin a nature journal and think about other topics we'll want to learn more about later.  Here are some pictures of our first official nature outing as homeschoolers.

Spinning the wheel to learn about different trees

 

Creating a bonsai arrangement

Playing in the fountains

Sitting in silence, observing our surroundings

A tiny snail

Recording our observations

The greatest joy so far?  Seeing my sweet boy show so much enthusiasm about, well, pretty much everything again.  A few months ago an outing of this nature brought nothing but a stream of complaints and it was so much effort just to get him to come along, much less enjoy it.  Today he was eager, interested and excited.  I look forward to so many more awesome moments like this!