EXPLANABRAG

First off, thanks to last night's episode of Community, I have a new word.  I am using it to discuss one of those moments in homeschooling that appear in books and seem a bit far fetched.  You know the ones I mean, where a homeschooled kid makes some connection or chooses an activity that makes you wonder if their parents have put them up to it.  I must have mentioned the time I told Alexander that he had to read something (anything!!!) for a while before playing a video game.  He picked a book of science experiments he had checked out from the library, enlisted the help of his sister, and built a weather vane.  Even I had trouble believing that was going on.

Yesterday, it was Kathleen's turn.  I recently realized that she has never had to write anything in the standard essay format (five paragraphs...).  She has been writing fiction since she was five, but I wanted to make sure she could communicate facts in a coherent way.  A few days ago, I had her choose a topic she wanted to research and write about.  We looked some stuff up online at various sites, printed out the info, and she read it.  The next day, I told her about the five paragraphs and the purpose of each, while we were doing our hair; I love that by homeschooling, we aren't tethered to a desk to "learn".  After that, I started her on finding the topics she wanted to discuss and taking notes from the printouts.  She came to me yesterday to say that she was going to invent an animal, make up information about it's habitat, diet, etc., then write an essay on it.  Some parents might not get how cool that is, but as a former public school teacher, I can tell you that kids don't do that sort of thing often.  They might, if they had the educational freedom that many homeschoolers do, but as the current system stands, they don't.  A kid wanting to write MORE than what was asked of them?  A kid grasping the entire purpose of writing a factual essay (communicate info to an audience), before she'd finished writing her first one?  A kid tapping into her own imagination and creativity to invent her own animal (including "scientific" name) based on the guidelines of the factual information she had read?  

All in all, a great day of homeschooling.