I was standing in the shower thinking about how much I enjoy my life.  Having the kids at home allows me to participate in their lives more.  When they are learning something, even struggling with something, I get the opportunity to not only work through it with them, (which can be totally exhausting and frustrating sometimes) but I also get to enjoy the rewards of seeing the little light bulbs go on in their heads and faces when they finally get it!  We get to share our lives together in a way that we would not be able to do if they were off at school all day.  Sometimes I forget that I have seen Chloe all day and that my husband has not had that benefit.  When she is gone so much at the gym,  it makes her rare night home that much more important for Joey to see her and for us as a family.

Another reason popped into my head as we were recently playing a “game” of World Geography Trivia.  For Christmas I gave Jayden a Countries of the World game.  It has a set of thick cards with outlines of countries with their names and flags on the front.  On the back of the cards there are 3 “easy” and 3 “hard” questions.  We have yet to play the actual game.  Instead, my children are excited to get out the large world map that we have attached to a piece of plywood and take turns picking a card.  We then find the country on the map, talk about what continent it is on, what it’s capital city is etc.  The cards then cover other things like what is largest or smallest city, what countries are on the borders, location of oceans, history facts etc.  To my children this is a fun game!  If I were not homeschooling I don’t believe I would have or buy such resources of education to have around the house as we would not have the time to use them.

One of the original draws to homeschooling was the idea that we could explore what we wanted, when we wanted too.  We have taken a trip down the Panama Canal, learned to classify animals, done plant growing experiments, grown mold, fish and tadpoles, climbed into the tallest trees of the Red Wood Forest, spent time in the Cretaceous Period with many dinosaurs, traveled back to Ancient Greece for the first Olympic Games, then journeyed to the present to explore and experience the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and even went underwater to experience the Titanic sinking.  All of these thing we accomplished at our pace (and during this school year). Some things we may have only scratched the surface of and others taking the time to delve  in as deep as we chose.   All while still doing the “boring, no fun stuff” like daily math, spelling, grammar, handwriting etc.

I have had the opportunity to relearn and experience so many things on my journey with our children.  Some day I might even be “Smarter than a 5th grader”!