Lizards, Rabbit-Trails, and Balance

We spent part of the afternoon on Friday clearing out our courtyard so I could start getting things set up for our (3rd Annual!) haunted house, and when we picked up the sand and water table to move it to the backyard we found this little guy.

Scote immediately rushed in the house to grab his nature bag and field guide, and kept screeching to himself, "Oh, I just can't wait to research this!" and "What kind of lizard do you think it is? Do you think he is a carnivore?!! I hope he is in my book." and the like.

He is finally at that stage of independant reading (3rd-ish, I'd say) where the whole world of information (or at least most of our home children's library) is opening up to him. He still needs help on some of the larger and more esoteric words, but by and large he can find the information he needs by himself, and it was really gratifying to see how excited he was about doing his own research!

Days like this almost convince me to unschool full-time, but ultimately I think the kids thrive better with at least a few morning hours of challenge and structure, and I've seen such immense progress in our structured/sequential subjects (memory work, maths, Latin, history) that I can't imagine abadoning them...or at least not completely.

I guess what I am trying for, ultimately, is everything in balance.

A few focused morning hours of structured rigor in the schoolroom, and afternoons full of nonsense and play and nature where we can just follow the intellectual rabbit trail wherever it might lead. I imagine that is what made a good classical education in the past, that balance...it's a sort of Alice in Wonderland approach to education, I guess. Reading How Doth the Little Crocodile is so much more entertaining after having read How Doth the Little Busy Bee, otherwise you never even get the poet's joke at all! I think kids need the best of both worlds, to each enrich the other.

~EH