goes a long way. 5 year old Blue Boy is full of questions. My job is to do my best to answer them. If I don’t know, then it’s to the internet we go. Today started with what makes earthquakes happen? Well, I know a little about faults and plates, but not enough to satisfy his curiosity. Away to the computer. In no time at all, we learned about the magma at the center of the earth, the layers of crust, and that most earthquakes are never felt. But why do they happen? Turns out, these plates are always slowly shifting, and when they meet, it’s called a fault line. He found the North American plate and Pacific plate and Indian plate right away. When these plates meet at faults, they rub together, causing a release of energy that rumbles and bumbles its way to the surface, be it slightly or trememdously. Obviously the tremendous tremors are the ones we feel. We also read that the plates shifting and touching causes layers of crust to be worn away, reducing the size of the plate, bit by bit. After surveying the picture of plates across the screen, he immediately deduced (rightly or wrongly, but it made sense) that clearly the Indian plate had been rubbed quite a bit, losing much crust, as it seems to be the smallest plate. Well. Sounds good to me. He asked if we live in an earthquake zone, so we learned that those places are most often largely on and near the faults we can’t see. Like California. He saw that it lies on the fault made up by the Pacific and North American plates. So yep. Lots of earthquakes there. Like we see on the news. Why do they still live there, he wondered. I just don’t know. And it’s expensive. Makes no sense to me.
So we read a bit more, learned a bit more, and somehow were led from earthquakes and faults and plates, to electricity. Maybe we said something about if an earthquake happens, one may lose power. Why do we lose power. Well, our lightbulbs and oven and hair dryers and hot rollers are all plugged into the walls, and powered by electric transformer things, and if that source of power goes, so does our ablility to access that power. Where does the power come from? Well, it’s all electricity. What’s electricity? OK, other than Ben and his kite, I couldn’t answer concisely enough. Back to the internet. He was soon shouting out to his brother and sister that electricity was “discovered” by Ben Franklin with that kite and lightening experiment, that lightening and electricity are the same thing, and that all electricity is made of the movement of electrons in atoms, which everything every where is made of. Well how does it get into our house? So we went on to Thomas Edison, and the Kinetoscope, and the electric lightbulb and phonograph. And do you know what? Ben and Tom were homeschooled. Tom’s teachers and Dad even thought he was somehow retarded, definitely unmanagable. And extrememely poor in math. Huh. Shows what a little freedom in learning can do.
And from there, somehow, the solar system. Maybe it was the talk of the storms that produce the lightening, somehow got us to the sun, the sky, the earth, and we were on to the planets in the solar system. Jupiter is the biggest planet, has no rings…Saturn is the next biggest, has rings…Pluto is the smallest and the Earth is third from the sun, he told his siblings. Excited. He absorbed it all, and asked for more. What is the hottest planet, I asked him, Mercury, which is closest to the Sun, or Pluto, which is farthest? Mercury, he stated. Why, I asked. Because it’s closest to the Sun, and the Sun is hot, he declared. So, he asked, why is Texas so hot? OK, back to the drawing board. Bring me the globe. We found the equator, and talked about its position relative to the Sun, verse the North or South poles, and their position. The light came on. Oohhhhh, he figured out, then anything closer to the equator is hotter. Texas is closer than South Carolina, but here, Mexico, is hotter than Texas. And up here (pointing at the Artic) is coooold! Yes, yes, yes. And he couldn’t quit running in circles declaring all his newly acquire knowledge. He was thrilled, therefore, he’ll most likely retain it.
As I type this, he has returned to the room, glancing out the window at the trees in our back yard. Why do we have trees, Mom? Um, to give shade, house animals, and help us breathe by helping to create oxygen. How do trees create oxygen? Oh good grief. It’s a process called photosynthesis, and we’re into our third hour of impromptu “school”. I’m going to need some food and drink before we head into that. And a chance to rest my eyes, fingers, mouth and brain. This is living and learning, and loving to learn. This is stuff he’ll keep in his head. And I’d put these 2 hours of sitting together, discovering, up against at least 2 weeks of classes, drills, tests, worksheets, coloring pages, and flashcards. We covered nearly 3 units of science! And he’s only 5. And after I insisted on a break, he asked for “stuff to do”. So is now, doing a word find on Edison, and filling in words and colors on a solar system page, and a drawing of the Earth’s tectonic plates.
These are the moments that get me through the sometimes crud of having the children with me nearly all the time. And the proof, to me, that it is about being available to meet these curiosities, as it is happening. In the moment of interest and excitement. True learning, and the love of learning can’t be planned. It’s not easy, but it’s awesome. Kind of like having these children in the first place.
P.S. And lest you think, Wow, they’ve got this unschooling thing down, at the time of this post, I’m still in my jammies and the house is a wreck. Can’t do everything.
