Cool Walk

Our first hour of school was on the road this morning. Literally. Our son was worried that the cool morning air would have been replaced by the usual heat if he had to wait until snack time to go outside. He didn't think the weather would wait; so he couldn't either. The whining was insufferable.

In an unusually PRESENT moment, I paused and hugged each of them. By the third hug I knew he was right. The crisp air might not keep and this was the point! This was one of the reasons we were homeschooling. So we might enjoy the privilege of accepting life's gifts as they come.

I picked up our early reader poem book, took a peek at the teacher's manual and said "let's go!" The excited faces were quite the reward. And there would be more self-awarded "gold stars" for me.

There's a long, winding, sand-filled "dirt" road, about a quarter mile long, from our home to where our mailbox sits on the side of State Road 51. And it was recently refilled (not sure by whom). It was like walking in a very long sand box.

While we walked we listened to word sets and shouted out the longer word in each set. We read the "T" poem and picked out the rhyming words: "bunch" and "lunch." Our pre-schooler and toddler practiced spelling out their names and writing letters in the sand. We completed a very competitive step-count race; each turn asked our our son to take somewhere between 6 and 20 small-to-big steps and our daughters to take somewhere between 1 and 10 tiny-to-huge steps.

I thought it was over then. I let them be. Just be. In an effort to keep myself grounded, I began to count steps. But then an idea struck.

I made a hypothesis and shared it with them. Bet them it took me 400 steps from that very spot to the mailbox. They weren't so sure. Some thought less. Some thought more. Each time I reached 100 steps I paused and wrote the number in the sand. I was wrong. There were quite a few steps left to the box when I knelt to write 400. But something amazing happened.

We've been working on pattern recognition with our Dimensions Math books, so I asked our son a question. "What do you notice about these numbers?" And he noticed! They all had two zeros. That's right, I encouraged him. Counting from the right, the third number is the hundred! The second is the ten. "So what number is this? And this?" And he had it. Just like that, I'd managed an "extension" of the pattern and counting-by-tens lessons we'd done the last few days and the best part...he got it!

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy...unlike most other things about being a working mom raising, let alone homeschooling, three (even with great help). I was on a natural high. And because I know all good things must come to an end, that was where I called it quits (or pause). We just walked the rest of the way back in peace.