All Things Anne

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, and for anybody who isn’t familiar with our family, we homeschool. There’s one special thing about most homeschoolers, it’s a neat little secret other people don’t know. We aren’t exactly conventional. For instance, and it’s probably the most well-known reason, we can go to school in our pajamas. I remember when I was young, my cousin thought that was the neatest thing, that we could go to school in our pajamas! At the time he was quite envious and wished to quit public school in favor of homeschool!

Not every homeschooling family is the same, but I think I can speak for the majority. Anything can count as school. That, really, is the homeschooling world’s best-kept secret. Or maybe not so kept, but anyway! For instance: One year, Dad shot a deer on our property. Guess what we had that day? Biology! Or how about when the twins find an interesting-looking bug? Entomology! Time for dinner? Home ec! Going shopping? Makes a good field trip!

The way things work in our house, is we have some hardwork and some softwork. Never heard of those terms? I just made them up! Think about it–for a computer, you have hardware and software. Hardware is things like the motherboard and CD drive, software is programs on it. Hardwork–schoolwork which requires a book, notebook, and pencil. Softwork is school on the computer! The kids do Language Arts on the computer, math, handwriting, and spelling as hardwork, and phonics as vocalwork. (That means it’s out loud. It actually sounds like they have a lot of fun in there!)

Now, what I really wanted to talk about is math, in particular. Or, how Eric does his math, in particularly specific. He really hates doing school. And he has a computer. Well, he isn’t allowed to use the calculator until he’s graduated, so he found another way to incorporate using his computer with his school. See, he’s got his monitor on this little file cabinet; a crate with a book (usually his mathbook) as a mousepad beside him, and then his chair, of course. The keyboard sits on his lap. Well, one day I happened upon him, doing his math. He puts his feet on the file cabinet, so they’re bent, with his mathbook open on his lap, and his keyboard on his knees.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“My math!” he said, looking up at me.
“On the computer?”
“Yeah! I’m typing my answers into Word.”
Turns out, he emails his Word documents to Mom every day.

A couple days ago, Mom said “Yay, my daily garbage!”
I thought to myself, “She gets garbage in her email daily, and she LIKES it??” But I said, “You get garbage in your mail and you like it?”
She laughed. “That’s what Eric calls his math answers!”

And that, my friends, is how we do school at our house!