This One's a Keeper

I love, love, love Homeschooling my kids, most of the time. Sure we have days when I don't want to do anything and the kids fight all day long, but for the most part I really love it. It has been a year since we officially started on this crazy journey, although I feel I've been doing it since Doodle was born. That was when we started learning together and it has not stopped. There has not been a day when we have not learned something new together. All the kids are like big sponges. They just soak up every drop of information that comes their way. Beano is especially porous. He has question after question. The thing about Beano is he really retains what you tell him and can tell daddy almost word for word what he has learned.

When the public schools got out for summer vacation I did a big sigh of relief and thought "Yes, summer vacation, I need a break!" I was fully prepared to take the whole summer off from "school" and just play and have fun all day everyday. Three days later I changed my mind. The kids were going down hill fast. You see, we had all gotten used to our morning school routine. It gave us a reason to get going in the morning. We had to eat breakfast and get our selves dressed. It gave us something to do after breakfast, something we all enjoyed. So when that structure was gone it was not pretty. All summer long we have done a very watered down version of school. Some days it did not happen, but I did not stress about it. Some days school lasted 1/2 hour, which I was also fine with. But we love the structure of a day with school.

A few weeks ago at our weekly trip to the library we found one of the coolest books ever. It is called

A Drop of Water by Walter Wick

. It has the coolest pictures of water doing different things. It explains surface tension, evaporation, condensation, how snow flakes are formed compared to sleet, how water reflects versus refracts light. I learned so much, not to mention the kids. We made our own rainbows using water. It seems like every other page we would put the book down to go play with water and try the "experiments" the book was explaining. We made water condensate on a cold cup, we saw how the water molecules move faster in hot water than cold, we saw how water expands when it gets colder and freezes, we played with surface tension, we made thing float and sink. I really loved this book. There are some books we find at the library that I just have to end up buying, this one is definitely a keeper.

The great thing about this book is that you do not have to be a homeschooler to enjoy it. The pages read fast and the experiments require no prep time. Even if your kids are too little to understand the concepts I can guarantee they will love the pictures and they will love playing with water and watching all the cool things it can do. If your kids are older they can do the experiments themselves, they are super easy and fun to do.

Next time you're at the Library do me a favor and check it out,

You'll be glad you did!

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