Learning from the Side Lines

Although I haven't written much about it, homeschooling Courtney has been a big part of our year here! It has been so rewarding to learn right along with her! The biggest challenge for her has been math but it's the area where she has excelled the most! She says that history is her favorite subject. Clayton and I have also enjoyed preschool time in the mornings while Courtney is at Chinese school. We've been concentrating on learning the letter names and sounds and he's even started putting some words together. One thing I didn't expect was how much Clayton would pick up just from listening in on some of Courtney's lessons.
The other night Clayton asked Shawn to help him build a magic box out of these foam mats. Shawn began fitting the blocks together. Clayton interupted by saying, "Daddy! You are making a cube! I wanted it to be a rectangular prism!" And we thought he'd never talk?!

Another example of how much he is learning from Courtney's lessons is in science. I was doing the dishes and Clayton decided he would "organize" our silverware drawer. I was thinking it was already arranged pretty well but it gave him something to do so I didn't object. When he was finished he was so proud to show me his finished project. At first look it appeared to have no organization whatsoever. But he quickly pointed out, "See! I sorted them by their properties! Here are all of the metal things. Here are the plastic things. Here are the wooden things. These are the rubber things. And all of these things are cutters!" I'm telling you, the boy's a genius!