My boys are involved in a fine arts program called Master’s Academy of Fine Arts.  They have fine arts classes every Thursday an hour from our home and I drop them off and my husband picks them up; bringing them home.  This past Thursday he pulled me aside and told me that on the way home the boys were messing around in the back seat and one of them said “Oh, it’s Time4Learning now!”….  We talked about how nice it was that it is always in their heads and they use it as “catch phrases” during normal time.  I enjoy when he has alone time with the boys and hears for himself how much they talk about Time4Learning.

But my most favorite part is when they are done with a lesson and are so excited about something that they do research to find out more.  It usually happens in science and social studies but sometime something is mentioned in other parts of lessons that they want to know more about.  In the past I have encouraged them to “research” something when they have had a question but now they do it just because they want to.

Having both boys about at the same level encourages scholastic interaction between them and usually one will begin to research something and the other one migrates his way to see what is going on.  Discussions begin and it is neat to sit back and watch the interaction.   I enjoy seeing them brainstorm, research, and discuss things that they have questions about and it usually leads to more in-depth conversations.  This is only the beginning for them and is setting the groundwork for down the road when I begin to assign actual research projects and they know how to get information, come up with ideas of their own or build off lessons that they are studying.

It will be nice, a year from now to go back and see how nice the year has been; we are almost half way through and I can’t get over how nice it has been for our whole family.