Yesterday, I took Jacob to his kindergarten well-child visit. We started kindergarten in August, but I never got around to taking him in for his shots, since I wasn't forced to by public school. The doctor was asking all sorts of questions, including what we were doing for school. After I told her we were homeschooling, Jacob said, "Yeah, but we're behind. Sometimes we don't do anything for... like, one or two months?" I laughed self-consciously and muttered something to the contrary.

When we got home, I tried to explain to Jacob how even if we don't use every school book every day, we are learning things every day; how even if it doesn't seem like school because it's fun, that it still counts as school at this age. I further explained how although we sometimes get behind in his science, history, or geography books, we aren't behind in his reading or math - in fact, we have been able to skip ahead in math because he had already mastered many of the concepts, so that is the reason our "workload" in that area has been less.

Anyway, it was kind of funny, even if it was embarrassing to me. I'm glad he doesn't think we are doing school, in a sense, because that means he doesn't feel like it's "cramping his style." On the other hand, it makes for difficult explanations to authority figures. I'm glad he doesn't think we're doing school when he practices writing words and sentences on scraps of paper or on the white board, when we play "games" of adding or subtracting numbers that Heath or I come up with on the spot, when we challenge him to fill in the missing number in a skip-counting sequence to keep him still at a restaurant, when we ask him to tell us the time, or allow him to sneak coins from Daddy's change basket so that he can gleefully count how much money he's collected. I'm glad he doesn't think of our bedtime reading from a chapter-book and the Bible as part of his school work, that he doesn't find it unusual or particularly scholarly when I casually discuss with him the next day what he and Daddy read the night before. That's just a part of normal life.

Perhaps more people would home school if they knew how natural and simple it can be. I know many don't because they are not otherwise at home full-time. But if you are already home full-time, then it is just a matter of seizing on opportunities that are constantly presenting themselves. Getting to observe and take part in my children's learning is really a blessing and the best part of my day. (I'll tell you about the hard parts of my day in a different blog entry...)

I do have a curriculum (which I highly recommend if you're interested), a lesson plan, and objectives that I constantly refer to, but I am often able to work the material into our lives in a very natural way simply by making the books available, offering to read to them, and talking to them about anything and everything in the world. I know as we move into first grade, second grade, third grade, and beyond, the material will require more sit-down, concentrated work to master. But hopefully, our habits of learning, pursuing knowledge and mastery of skills will be so ingrained by then that it still won't feel much like "school."