Homeschool Socialization

Last week, I was invited to speak at a Bible Study for older women. There were about fifteen women there between the ages of 60 sixty and eighty. They jokingly called themselves the “praying grannies.”

As usual, I took both children along with me to the speaking engagement. Their backpacks were crammed with math and grammar books and an “extra book to read when you are done with schoolwork.” Ha.

As we drove to the edge of town onto two-lane country roads, and I began to see large fields and propane tanks, I knew there was no “schooling” going to happen this morning. My son looked out the window and began to talk about all the animals he would find when we got there.

True to his word, he spent the entire 3 hour period outside. At the end of the day, he had seen a snake, a hummingbird, a fledgling robin, a nest of ladybugs, and a nest of millipedes. The highlight of the expedition was when one of the old ladies, Shirley, joined him outside. She helped him put the fledgling back in its nest and dug up some worms for him to feed to it.

Watching Shirley and Daniel poking through the bushes and digging for worms, my daughter said to me, “I didn’t know old people did things like digging for worms and feeding baby birds.”

I smiled. The way she and her brother saw and related to old people would never be the same. Old people aren’t scary or boring, they can be fun! I don’t know if you could wish for a better lesson in socialization. Can you teach that in a classroom? Maybe, maybe not. But you can learn it when you hang out with old people.

Later than evening, we got math done. We put grammar off till the next day. As always, we read late into the night. I would say we got a solid education that day. And that is my homeschool socialization story.

Blessings,

Sade