Does something ever happen that makes you think, "Wow, I really am a homeschooler!" It could be your kids' delight over learning, the odd places you have school lessons, or the unique ways you teach your kids. Although there are many different types of homeschoolers, I bet you will see yourself in at least a few of these descriptions crowdsourced from Sonlighters.
You Know You're a Homeschooler When ...
- Someone asks your children what grade they are in, and they try to help each other figure it out.
- You have a strainer labeled for science, not food.
- You have math lessons timed to the length of the dryer cycle.
- All your classmates are siblings.
- When you send your son off to college and he emails you and tells you that organic chemistry isn't that hard and then gets an A.
- You school by the sandpit or snuggling on the bed.
- You have to secure all the flashlights in the house because the children will read all night.
- Your kids are playing Simon Says with directions like pretend you are an oblique line segment!
- The kids' play involves storks on the roof because you just finished reading The Wheel on the School.
- When the conversation you are having about middle school chemistry is so in depth that a college sophomore majoring in engineering asks you if you have a degree!
- The kids think it's normal to pause movies for impromptu history lessons.
- PE is going on a hike in the woods.
- Your teenagers love talking things over with their parents and don't mind being seen in public with them.
- You use a picnic bench, an oatmeal container, and a hula hoop as a model of the ear canal and eardrum.
- Your kids bring pencil and paper on the grocery shopping trip so they can figure math problems as you go down each aisle.
- You try to figure out just how many subjects one trip to the grocery store can cover besides math.
- You get new pajamas for your back-to-school wardrobe.
- Your children get together with their friends to play The Boxcar Children.
- When your kids beg to watch TV and then turn on a documentary.
- Your daughter wants to have a party and invites seven other homeschool girls to join her in working at the church food closet on a weekday morning.
- You're reading to the kids on the bathroom floor while waiting for the toddler to potty.
- Your daughter is filling in a blank on a questionnaire that asks, "Where do you go to school?" and she writes, "Under the dining room table."
- You sing The Continents Song in the shower.
- A snow day means you get to shovel the driveway after you finish your school work.
- Your dining table serves as a school desk, a science lab, and an eating surface.
- You know what the phrase Box Day means.
- Every baking recipe becomes a lesson in fractions and measurements.
- You constantly need more bookshelves.
- Your son calls out from under a huge fort, "I love this math, Mom!"
- Your kids have no idea what grade they're in.
How about you? Do you have a good finish to the sentence "You Know You're a Homeschool When ..."? Leave it in a comment below. Let's keep the humor flowing!
Your kids favorite place to do their schoolwork is somewhere up in a tree.
You’re on a first name basis with the librarians at multiple libraries .
You have to tell your 3 year old, "Yes, shh!" in church when he is reading all the numbers on the board that tells which hymns will be sung, over and over and over again, because he is obsessed with numbers and letters.
You encourage knives in school because your oldest son listens better while whittling.
Your 3 year old randomly spouts lists of elements because his older siblings memorized the Periodic Table Song earlier this year.
Your oldest child regularly disappears her younger brothers' school books so she can re-read them.
Also, #28. Every year, one of my summer vacation projects is to build another bookshelf.
When you pull up to the library and your 7 year old say "Look Mom, classic Greek columns." Or when your family is being seated at Red Robin and your 4 year old points at the wall and yells, "Look Mommy! Van Gogh's Starry Night!"
When you are on a summer holiday and arrive at the Canadian Confederation Building in PEI and your 6yr old runs up to a statue and cries out " Mom, they even have a statue of Samuel Tilley!"and then proceeds to explain to the tour guide what role Tilley had in the making of Canada. -Proud mama moment
You know you're a homeschooler when...
...you're so excited to have your kindergartner start a "real" math book (level K), but you find yourself skipping through it in 3 weeks and moving on to grade 1 math so that he learns something new!
...when he wakes up, your 5-year old notes that the sky is blue today....and then proceeds to explain to you why using some fairly big words.
#17 made me giggle. We are in need of some new Pjs. Our get worn out fast from wearing them so often!
When your 8 year old stumps the zookeepers with animal behavior questions... and take over the whole discussion.
When your six year old quotes Archimedes to an astronomer at the local science center and then explains levers and fulcrum.
Your 7 year old son goes to the hospital for stitches and when asked about if he knows what stitches are or consist of, replies: "No, we have not yet made a research on that yet"! Julie GB, Qc Canada