Once a trouble maker, always a trouble maker.
We went on the greatest homeschool field trip a few days ago.
We watched 6 sweaty grown men tap dance on metal stuff to really loud music for an hour. What’s not educational about that? I was going to link to a video of them but all the videos I found were kind of strange and they seemed to be different guys. I guess we didn’t get the original Tap Dogs for our show but I’m glad because our guys were a lot more manly, showed a lot less leg, and did a lot less hair flipping.
Homeschoolers get to go on the best field trips. You don’t have to wait for someone else to decide to take your child to one of these events and your child doesn’t have to take a long, noisy, uncomfortable bus ride, stand in line for several minutes but for what seems like hours while they’re waiting to be herded through some boring museum. Can you tell I hated field trips as a child? Instead, you just call up any museum, art center, or event and ask for tickets for your homeschool group and then you invite all your friends. We have gone to all sorts of museums, concerts, plays and other events. Most places will give you a fabulous discount and lots of events are, even more fabulously, free because they offer student matinees as a service to the community. (Tap Dogs was free. Tickets for the show that night were sold out and cost up to $40 each.) For the shows they usually say not to bring small children and babies but I have never had a problem taking all my children. I just go with the intent to sit in the foyer with my baby if I have to but they always let me go right in. What difference does a baby make in a concert hall full of thousands of school kids?
It’s so much more fun going as a family. We get to walk right in. I don’t have to raise my hand to go to the bathroom but my children still do. At a museum we get to stop and read and look all we want. No one is going to slap us in the face if we step out of line to stand under a shade tree in the blazing hot afternoon sun. Yes that really happened to me in 4th grade and I was traumatized for life. No wonder I homeschool. From now on when people ask me why I homeschool I think I will say, “Because in fourth grade I got slapped for trying to avoid heatstroke.” How can anyone argue with that?
The Real Muscles
A couple months ago I decided to stop holding my kids back and get out of their way so they can do great things and become who they were meant to become. My first step was to let Muscles buy a unicycle that he wanted. He’s done a couple crazy things since then but I’ve noticed changes in smaller ways. He seems more confident and he is having a lot more fun with life. Last week he got up and spoke in Church and he had to embarrass his parents and make everyone laugh. He started with this, “Roses are red, violets are blue, I like to bare my testimony and so should you.” I don’t know where he comes up with this stuff but that’s got to be the funniest joke in the world to an eleven year old kid because he was very proud of himself.
Today he gave another little talk about how obeying his parents helps our family. He asked for some ideas with the talk so I said, “Tell them how you wash dishes and take out the garbage every day and tell them how you babysit for me and always keep the pellet stove full and tell them you fixed the old broken jeep while your Dad sat on the couch and…” He interrupted, “Are you just trying to show me off?”
“Of course!!!”
Why shouldn’t I? If he can be a show off, why can’t I? So how did the funniest kid in the world make them laugh today? He consented to tell them that he washes dishes and takes out the garbage and then he said, “In fact, I’m so helpful that I got up with the baby this morning so she wouldn’t wake my Mom up and then we were all late for Church because my Mom slept in.”
What a sweet kid.
Photos
We were talking about the show on the way home and I said, “Ya, I got a video of that part. It was cool!” And one of my children said, “You weren’t supposed to be taking videos of the show.”
me – “What? Why not?”
them – “Before it started they said not to take pictures or videos.”
me – “Well I didn’t hear that. They probably meant no flash photography. Why wouldn’t they want me posting photos on my blog? It’s just free advertising for them!”
Once a trouble maker, always a trouble maker.
I did draw the line at posting my own video. I do have some ethical standards you know.
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