Cultivated Lives: Homeschooling --> Family Learning

~ ~ Blogger had some issues over the last few days and erased any changes or posts uploaded during that time. I apologize for those of you who have subscribed to this blog for the repeat post... ~ ~

One of my favorite perks of homeschooling is that learning becomes a family adventure!

I remember as a girl my mom getting giddy about understanding something we were studying in a fresh way. She would always tell people that she loved homeschooling because of the great education she was getting.

As an adult, who received a fabulous education growing up, I can still vouch for that. While there is certainly a lot of me imparting instruction and training to them, much of it is a joint learning venture. And as I've learned with even the giving instruction and discipling process, there are still lessons for me.

Nothing quite brought this home recently like our study of the military a few months ago. I grew up in a home of three little girls. When it came time to study the military, we had no interest. I'm kicking myself now, especially since my Opa and his father were both career Army and my dad's father served briefly in the Navy. But no, that didn't appeal to little girls...

Times have changed and with three little boys, there were great whoops of excitement when this topic was introduced. We did boot camp, drills, awoke to reveille. They marched, learned how to make their beds military style, thanks to my hubby, an expert bedmaker. I'd probably be discharged for poor bed-making skills alone... One of their favorite parts was learning to properly salute from my Opa.

We learned details about how the military is structured and its various branches. I finally have a fairly good understanding of ranking now. Although the boys were too young for some of the information, I still found myself reading some of the 'older' kids books and gleaning information that I could then pass on to them. This was most definitely a JOINT venture.

The end of our unit perfectly coincided with an airshow that happens only every two years at Luke Air Force Base. {providence} We were all primed and ready...

The boys sat in the cockpit of a helicopter...

...and I genuinely marvelled at the controls!

The boys and I were all giddy and could tell the difference between an Apache and a Black Hawk helicopter. My husband has an amazing knowledge of military aircraft. He was able to fill us in on even more during this particular adventure!