Tell me a story...

Have you ever wondered if there is a spider web that is stronger than steel? How about what the cousin to the giraffe is? If you have, I invite you to hang out with Austin for a day. He is full of facts. For months we would allow him to choose three animals out of his animal encyclopedia for his bedtime stories. As soon as he was old enough we took him to a special class on hippos at the zoo. The zoo used to be a favorite stomping ground of ours as we would head there sometimes twice a week. He would want to stop and read every sign, and we would. I have known that Austin is a fact lover, and yet, I haven't really recognized it so much until recently. This is one of the things I love most about homeschooling, the ability to get to know our children as they grow into people and stop being toddlers (the other is that we usually sleep in until 8 and bedtimes aren't much of a struggle because we won't be pushing to get up the next day).

Over the weekend we were visiting a marine rescue and research center in Gulfport, MS. There was a presentation going on in our group of about 20 people and the presenter brought out a turtle and Austin immediately called out, that's a Hawksbill! A couple of days later we were at a different marine rescue and release center in Clearwater, FL and we were attending a presentation with about 75 people. They were playing a game where kids would come down and tell about different parts of the dolphin's body after choosing the playing piece. I never thought Austin would want to go in front of the crowd, but there he was waving his hand to play. He was called and he marched to the front, introduced himself as Austin and chose the Melon piece. He put it on the correct part of the dolphin (the forehead) and told that it was used for the dolphin's echolocation.

I am not sure if Austin's love for stories was something he was born with, or if this was inspired by my dad who would tell endless stories for hours at a time; the storyteller and the story follower. Any which way, this boy of ours has one of the longest attention spans I have ever seen in a child. He sits and listens to his audio books for 3 hours at a time (during non driving days) and is upset when I say it's time for a different activity. My mom was worried on Christmas because the only thing Austin asked for from Santa was the entire set of chapter books of How To Train Your Dragon, and that was his main present while Oliver was getting things such as as a remote controlled kite and Baymax toys. I don't think it's a question anymore if Austin really meant it. He is hungry to learn and wants to listen to stories, act them out, draw them, and illustrate new stories that he comes up with while I write out the words. My only job is to keep providing the information, the stories, and not squash his desire to learn, which I do, when I ask him to read. I don't think this is a unique problem as it is pretty common that children do not want to read until later, however, it is a unique problem for me, who is trying to inspire a kid who will most likely be entering back into a school situation where he is expected to read. Yesterday we had a conversation about it, "But Mama, all of the books for my level reader are things such as 'Mag has a rag.' They are baby books." And they are. Why should he care that Mag has a rag? Why would he care if Mag has a rag and wants to play tag when his other book is about his favorite dragon in the world and conquering bad guys and protecting the Archipelago?

So, I don't push. I push the stuff he is interested in. Instead of him reading, we work on word families and read stories about word families and draw pictures about word families. We just purchased a history curriculum that is all about audio books and accompanying activities, The Story of The World. He loves it. His math book is a series of stories about a math professor named Fred who is 5 years old, he loves it. We were out to dinner a couple weeks ago with my mom and between the five of us at dinner we were ordering three desserts. Oliver was having one to himself and the rest of us were splitting the other two. As we were holding a conversation Austin interrupted and announced the rest of us would each end up with half of a dessert because if each dessert was split into 1/4s and if we each got two 1/4s then we would each actually end up with a 1/2. I considered it a pop quiz that was passed with flying colors.

This teaching/learning relationship isn't new to us, and yet it is. He is absorbing information faster than I produce it and right now for the most part it is all on me to provide it to him. In my eyes, it is so obvious that when I remove the stuff that squashes him down he soars and that is such a fun and rich experience to be a part of. I have all the confidence in the world that when he is ready, he will pick up books and get lost in them the way he does his headphones, my job is to help him have the confidence to do the same.

Explaining to Chris how the ancient nomads became farmers in the fertile crescent.