Well, we recently attended a fabulous homeschool conference hosted by the Family Resource Center (FRC) (www.frc.info) and everyone had the opportunity to experience a fire drill. This fire drill was actually begun by a young toddler reaching over his Mom and yanking the fire alarm. What resulted in this fire drill was unlike those in school because everyone, including the kids, was very eager to get back to learning. Huh? What? They wanted to get back to learning? (I can see your mind trying to process this most confusing statement.)

See, the difference was that every person that was there WANTED to be there. The FRC offered 65 unique kids workshops that the adults could attend with their child. Everything from “Building a flashlight” with MIT Edgerton Center teaching it, to Nature’s Classroom teaching “Mad Science” was offered and everything in between. Every child could select up to 15 workshops over the two day conference. The children left with an enthusiasm to investigate more and frankly so did the parents.

I think my husband thought the conference would be similar to his experiences in school which often included lengthy, monotone lectures. And so as we discussed which workshops our daughter would take, he politely recused himself and left the decision to us. At the conference, on multiple occasions I would walk into a workshop to see him hunkered over a project with our daughter or he would come out telling some unique fact about the Federal Reserve Bank.

“Do you know how much money the Federal Reserve Bank just in Boston moves in one day?” As I skeptically looked at my husband’s enthusiasm I quietly said, “No.” “They move $3.4 Trillion every day!”

The most remarkable example of this was the “Mad Science” workshop. I have never seen more kids and parents excited to explode soda bottles or make gel by playing with diapers. I saw many parents sitting equally attentive as soda exploded everywhere and diapers were shredded.

In the end, we all had a great time but my husband announced that in the future he wants to help pick the workshops! I guess there is no concern for lengthy, monotone lectures. So, if you ever wondered if homeschoolers have fire drills the answer is yes but they are unlike any you have ever seen because these folks aren’t worried about how to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, they are only concerned about having a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious time!