Adrienne has entered into love of learning!

We homeschool. A lot of people ask me how or why I do it. Actually, it is so much fun (most of the time) and I could not imagine sending my children away to gain an education when all the love and learning opportunities are right here in our home. We homeschool the Thomas Jefferson way. In this style of education we focus on the phases that each child goes through. The first is the core phase. This is a time when a child explores through play and learns right and wrong and true and false. The next phase is the love of learning phase. In this phase the child starts to desire knowledge and bounces from subject to subject devouring information. My oldest, Emma Lynn, is 10, and has been in love of learning for a while now. We have a lot of fun together. Emma Lynn learned to read very early and has been crazy about reading ever since. She gains a lot of knowledge through reading and discovery.
Adrienne is a different child from Emma Lynn. I know every child is different, but she is really different. If she were in public school, I am sure she would be labeled as ADHD and I would probably be advised to medicate her. She has been a star "core" kid and I thought she would be in core phase for a while longer. She is 7 and has been reading for a while, but has not yet grasped a love of literature (let's put it that way). But Adrienne is fun. A lot of fun. She has this wild, loudness about her that just melts your heart and makes you want to climb a tree and play tag. She is the essence of childhood. Adrienne runs around and screams and gets in your face and kisses you. It's an honor to be her mother.
Today was a special day. It started off as a normal Tuesday: breakfast, music practice, stewardships (our word for chores) with plenty of complaining, school. School started with greek myths and then math. Then Adrienne starts walking around and pacing. This is not unusual. She stops and says, "I want to learn about how things work."
"What kind of things?" I ask.
More pacing.
"I don't know. I just want to look in something and find out about it."
"Do you want to take apart the microwave?" I ask sarcastically (not a stellar trait of mine)
"No, no. I don't know how to explain it"
"Can you give me an example?"
"I don't know how to give an example", Adrienne says, not frustrated but a little puzzled in her head. "I want to know how things work but I don't want to look in a book." I have noticed that our great "how things work" book has been in her room. Finally she says, "Like velcro!! I want to know how velcro works. I want to look at velcro and see how it works."
It was like a chain reaction. After studying the workings of velcro, (about which Emma Lynn wrote an impressive report) Adrienne wanted to read about the human body. This went into a lengthy discussion about the digestive system and we read a great picture book about the human body. Adrienne then needed to wrestle her sister to see how her body worked. Then we went upstairs to find Jesse working on the mandolin. He was using the piano to tune the new set of strings. This gave me an idea. I opened up the bottom and top of our upright piano and hollered to Adrienne. All the kids gathered as we took turns playing songs and looking inside the piano. (I took the opportunity to vacuum the cobwebs out of this piano). Adrienne was totally captivated. She was exploring all kinds of things. It was this love of learning breakthrough! It was one of the best school days we have ever ever had.