Thursday, September 27, 2007

Alcohol, Fast Cars and Dancing Girls aka adventures in homeschooling

Yesterday when it was time to do schoolwork, I just didn't feel like hitting the books. Most of the time I override this and make us all buckle down anyway, but this time I decided to see what our options were. One of the advantages of homeschooling is the freedom it gives us to explore interesting topics. So I checked what was on the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and the History Channel and found that the History Channel was running two or three shows on Prohibition and the 1920s. This being something of a "rock-em/sock-em" period of time in American history and I decided it would be a perfect subject to study with three boys. We watched the shows and talked during the commercials and looked up information on the internet (In fact, this was the best find: The Lawless Decade). They seemed to soak it up and I was proud of what we'd learned--so proud I gathered them around their father when he came in from work and asked them to recite what they'd studied.

"Bootleggers invented Nascar!" cheered my youngest, who loves anything that involves cars.

"One rumrunner was shot while he was running away from the law and he drove his boat with his feet," said my fifteen year old. "It was cool!"

I sighed. Joseph would save me. I could count on him.

Twelve year old Joseph replied without hesitation, "We learned about alcohol, fast cars, and dancing girls". To illustrate the dancing girls (flappers) he wiggled his butt and waved his hands in the air like a flapper.

Their father just looked at me with raised eyebrows.

Next week we're going to study Quakers.

And, yes I do know they were religious revolutionaries (branded heretics by the king and kept right on preaching against the Church of England), but the boys don't. And they won't. For a long time.

don't

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