The #5 reason that homeschooling is cool is that learning can happen at ANY time! A homeschool day doesn't start at 8:00 a.m. and end at 3:00 pm - even if we WANT all the 'work' to fin into that time frame, we are learning all the time.

Okay, so you are in the midst of an amazing biology dissection experiment and your student has completed all the tasks with it, following directions and it turned out perfectly. First off, this means you did not live in our house during Biology - we always hit a snafu. Once your student has finished with this master piece of an experiment, why not let him or her take it apart even further. Experiments are already a mess and who knows what they will learn on their own. Our youngest student dissected a nurse shark far past what was required and found an interesting ‘object’ within it’s eyeball.

School may be out of session for some homeschools during the summer, but our brains don’t just shut down because the books are closed. Spontaneous learning can happen all year long! We have had very bountiful harvest from our small garden this year (and there is even more to come as of this writing) so my two daughters have now learned about canning, preserving foods, botulism and genetically modified seeds and foods. They have learned what was not course set up and have gained a knowledge when they least expected it.

Most of our learning comes when we are interested or intrigued enough to dive deeply into a topic and enjoy the process. We don’t have to plan it ‘school’ to learn. Spontaneous learning is much more fun and well retained far more than most scheduled classes!

EnJOY your Family!

Donna L. Miller