I still get amazed when the really cool learning stuff I read about happening to other unschoolers actually happens in real life - to us.

Today J came to me out of the blue and said, "I want to know how tax works". She had been counting her money ($2.24) and decided to spend it on some Chinese food for lunch. I told her that on take-out menus tax is usually included in the price and we went on to discuss sales tax, what never gets taxed, what always gets taxed, and the different percentages rates. This led to how much tip to leave at restaurants and she played with different totals and figured 20% of each. She said, "That's pretty cool! So, today I'm going to get a shrimp eggroll ($1.10) and a small wonton soup ($1.25). That comes out to $2.35, so I'll need another $.11, ok?". You got it, babe.

While watching Tom and Jerry, she asked me what "truce" meant. At the Chinese restaurant, she pointed to the tax on the receipt to excitedly show me it was the same percentage as the tax on the Toys R Us receipt from yesterday. She said she felt bad for her friends who are in school because they have to sit there and get told what to learn. Then she put in our new Schoolhouse Rock DVD (which has every cartoon ever made on it!!) and asked me questions throughout about a dozen of them (about gravity, prepositions, women's rights, inventions, etc).

As of today, B, my mom, and my sister are all supportive of W's homeschooling in September. My sister's comment was, "Yeah, you don't want to dummy him up at school" (and no, it wasn't sarcastic, lol). I watched the older kids at W's school being herded around like cattle through the hallways at dismissal today and wanted my son as far away from that as possible. PreK is only 2.5 hours, he wants to go every day, and is looking forward to the graduation ceremony in June. Otherwise I'd pull him now. K still won't budge on her decision. It's ok. I promised her I would never ask her about homeschooling again.

Link of the day:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/renaissance/escape_from_institution.pdf