Not long ago, my four year and a half year old daughter read the words “Maxwell House” on a coffee can, followed by “Chicken Broth. Low Sodium.” as I stood, dumbfounded, stirring soup on the stove.
Every day, I’m amazed at how my children seemingly wake up with new skills they didn’t possess the day before. My curious little girl is burgeoning into a real, emerging reader it seems. While people have told me that 4 is too early to be reading, she’s sneaking off to read and write words that she finds in books, cards, bottles of glue… I couldn’t stop her if I tried. She, like every child on the globe, is simply wired to learn.
And I thought “what if we (adults) were like that?” What if we soaked up the world around us with that kind of thirst and effort? What if nobody could stop us? What if our opinions rested on the shoulders of knowledge and growth rather than empty rhetoric and sound bites?
I believe our brains are capable at any age, of learning and forming new connections and pathways. I don’t think we stop wondering. So why do we stop educating ourselves? I guess the world kind of convinces us that we should spend our youth learning in order to become a _________ (engineer, doctor, teacher, etc) and then we do that and then we… Are done? The learning seems to stop and the ambition kinda dies. (Obviously this is not true with everyone, but is certainly the mentality of a large majority).
I’m becoming more and more aware of my own lack of mental growth even now, as I embark on this completely foreign territory of homeschooling in its most rudimentary stages. I’m finding that, even in our sporadic bouts of “practice homeschooling”, I’m learning more about certain topics than I ever learned in school.
I’m actually starting to wonder if my decision to homeschool isn’t a little self-serving….It’s my excuse to learn, too.
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I know next to nothing about American history, let alone world history. I absolutely abhorred these subjects in public school. Studying consisted of cramming facts and figures into my brain long enough to take the test, then promptly forget every last drop of it.
Most of what I learned felt disconnected and insidiously dry.
But I’m getting glimpses of how this could be different with homeschooling. One cold January day, we were looking for something to do, so I read a book to the kids about Betsy Ross and how she was a seamstress who designed the first American flag. I showed them what (very poor) sewing looks like by making a sock doll with them, which we naturally named Betsy Ross. Since that day, every time we’re driving in the car and there’s an American flag, the kids point and yell “Mommy look!! Betsy Ross made that!!’
And you know, although I knew the story of Betsy Ross somewhere in the deep creases of my brain folds, the American flag means more to me now. That makes me think … If that was just ONE day of “practice homeschooling”. What am *I* going to learn in this process? Forget the kids! I’m going to be a genius some day! 😉