BLENDING HOMESCHOOLING, REAL LIFE AND VIDEO GAMES

Jack's Homeschool Classroom

It's been nearly a year since Diego Lee Rot took his son Jack out of BISD, midway through first grade, asking me, his grandfather, to take over.

Jack and I can both relax as we've put some academic distance between the little boy and most of his peers, while finishing up his fourth grade workbooks.

Diego and I have had phone conversations about introducing more "real life" skill sets into Jack's education.  Last year, Jack learned to pump and pay for gasoline at Stripes and order at Burger King, necessary know-how for the real world.

This morning's nearly flat tire in Diego's F-150 gave us another opportunity to incorporate "real life" into Jack's education.  

As we drove out Military Highway towards Garden Park, I told Jack:  "I want you to watch carefully and write down everything the man at the tire shop does."

Jack's actual notes:

"Put a jack under the truck and lifted it up.
Took off the lug nuts and pulled the tire off.
Put more air in the tire.
Put the tire in a bathtub.
Took the tire off the rim and put a patch on the inside.
Put air in the tire.
Put the tire back on the truck."

While Jack may never work at a tire shop, he knows the process, a "real life" skill.  That sequence will be part of tomorrow's review.

When Jack's dad proudly told me that Jack had created an "arm" for his Minecraft character, going to Minecraftskins.com , I asked Jack to explain.

The picture above shows Jack trying to tell me something about pressure plates and debugging on Minecraft.

I don't know shit about the video game, but I'm told it teaches some programming skills.

"That's fine, Jack.  You can play AFTER completing 4 pages of 'Grammar' and 'Reading Comprehension.'"

My philosophy on education?

The 3 R's are necessary, actually imperative, but the need for "real life" and video game skills can't be minimized  or underestimated.