For one thing, when you're homeschooling, you can sleep as late as you want. You move at your own pace, and you can always feel free to skip over something and come back to it later (or never at all).
But when the kids are in school, you're on somebody else's timetable and that somebody else is deciding what is important and what can be skipped. Whereas I would probably be inclined to say, "OK, this kid seems to understand what a fable is and what the different organelles are in a cell. Let's bag school and go to Rome for a few days," teachers in regular school want to see tangible evidence of subject mastery. For Mike, this has meant a lot of special projects this year.
Over fall break (hey, thanks for that, 'cause really there's nothing I'd rather do over a vacation than nag my kid to do his homework!), the mission was to "write a myth or a fable suitable for a children's book and illustrate it." Smart boy that he is, Mike asked himself, "What is the easiest thing I can think of to draw?" The answer was "sheep," and thus a myth (or maybe it was a fable--I can't keep them straight) was born:
It's really a cute story, and you can read the rest of it by clicking here.
He had another project in biology recently, which was to make a model of a cell. There were extra credit points to be given out to kids who made 3-dimensional models. Mike molded his cell's organelles out of clay (that turned out to be specially formulated NOT to dry out--OOPS!) and glued them onto a cut out styrofoam ball. Here is the finished product:
And here he is talking on it:
It's a cell phone. Get it?!?!
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