Science came a knockin

We have not officially started school yet but we are all ready. Even though I knew we would not be able to really get into school full on until after Kalysa's surgery, I have been fretting about our lack of school thus far. I have had several moments when the familiar feelings of failure have tried to creep in and I just know I am not giving my kids what they need. The Lord is so good, He reminds me of all the learning that has taken place regardless of our lack of "school time" and He eases my mind. As I think back, I realize(again) that homeschool is not school but a lifestyle. We have done lots of learning. There is all of the keeper of home training that I have been going through which in turn is being passed on to my children. The new cooking experiments we have all been involved in. The old set of encyclopedias we found at a garage sale and spent a whole afternoon to look through. The notes I have left the girls to "feed the dogs" or some other small chore that has really enforced their reading skills. The girls have gotten out some of their workbooks and done several pages on their own and in turn started teaching their baby dolls how to read and do math as they play school. Kenyon and Jacinta did a few language assignments as soon as we got our new book in the mail. The rest of Kenyon and Jacinta's curriculum arrived last week and they (and I) have gone through the books with great anticipation of the things we will be learning this year. Everyone has completed at least 1/2 of their handwriting books. I bought them at the convention in May and they worked on them through the summer on their own. The box of SRA reading comprehension cards is always out and Kenyon has gone through several more when he is looking for something to do. I have used both of our new science curriculum for children's church lessons. These are a few of the things the Lord has brought to me to show me that we are learning all the time. Whether we sit down at the table for a few hours or not, we have been learning. Since school is no longer an 8-3 experience, anytime a learning opportunity arrives we jump in-so you can imagine how excited we all were when we had science knock at the front door. I have mentioned before about my husband's love of doing surveys and many of the free items we have received to try and fill out questionnaires about. Today UPS arrived delivering a box with a label that read CAUTION: DRY ICE MAY STILL BE PRESENT IN THIS PACKAGE......KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. So of course, I immediately called all the kids to the kitchen to come see!! We quickly placed the frozen pie that was meant to be the item delivered in the freezer and forgot all about it and began our learning. We dumped the dry ice into a pan, watched it smoke, got out the encyclopedia and learned how it is made, how cold it can be, what damage it could do to us if we touch it our ingest it, and the fact that it never melts but goes straight from a solid to a gas. We dumped water on it and watched this gas just pour out and felt the coldness of the smoke. We watched the water bubble violently as if it were boiling even though it was so cold that frost was forming all over the outside of the pan and on the cutting board on the counter. We welcomed this arrival of science and enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to learn all we could. The kids asked question after question and jumped up and down giggling and squealing with glee at all they were learning and seeing. They experimented by pouring salt and hot sauce on the ice to see if it did anything else. They poured some of the bubbling water onto the grass to see if it was cold enough to freeze the grass. They played and laughed and soaked up everything they could until the last piece of ice had transformed into a cool cloud of smoke before their very eyes. They learned-without sitting down at a desk and taking notes and doing worksheets and having equations written out on a black board-and they are excited about it and can't wait to tell daddy all about it when he gets home and they will remember this without having to do a test on it.
This is why I LOVE HOMESCHOOLING!!!