Um, not THAT Kind of Abbey Road

We took the week off from homeschooling this week.

That is, we took a little break from our regularly scheduled curriculum (we ended up doing Sonlight Core 4 with Ian this year, with primary-level tie-in books and activities for the girls) to make room for all the other things I knew, and didn't know, were going to transpire this week. I wanted to be able to enjoy a few special things with the kids without feeling the slightest bit of stress about falling behind in our schedule.

(Schedule: (n.) A suggestion for how things should generally fall into place. Useful for staving off chaos. Meant to be disregarded at the nearest opportunity for High Adventure.)

There was Cub Scout schooling*. American Girl club schooling. Hike-in-the-woods schooling. Adventures in Odyssey schooling. Folk concert schooling. Netflix schooling (we watched this). Aluminum-foil-origami schooling. (Yup, Caroline's on a new kick!)

*This included building bridges and catapults at the den meeting, learning together about forest layers here at home, and doing some practical math stuff, like a coin-toss probability experiment and a statistics experiment in which Ian got his sisters and all his Friday Co-op buddies to help him survey people's favorite colors. You've never seen a group of kids so exhilarated over a math problem, all crowded around a clipboard and running around interviewing people, cheering "Green is winning!" or "Blue rules!" It made me think. When I was in elementary school, x number of years ago, I just don't remember it being a cool thing to EVER conduct statistics experiments on the playground. Much as I do occasionally wish for the chance to go to Target unencumbered by three Consumers in Training (I'm sorry, did I say "occasionally?" I meant, "almost daily"), it does seem like a small price to pay for the fact that as of yet, no one's ever made my kiddos feel stupid for wanting to learn something.

So anyway, we're at the folk concert today, sitting at Central Presbyterian for their free Thursday noonday entertainments, and after finishing a toe-tapping rendition of "I'm My Own Granpaw," the guitarist and lead singer inquires in that folksy manner required of folk singers, "So, who here likes the Beatles?"

My son's hand shoots up. I'm a bit startled. We haven't exactly covered the Fab Four in our music appreciation studies. How does he ...

"Honey," I whisper in a flash of insight, "do you mean the insects?"

He nods cheerily at me, like duh. And goes right back to drawing Bionicles on the comment card he found among the hymnals.