Schoolwork Is as Schoolwork Does

We are running late on school today. Why? Well, when I went to get Nate started, it seemed he was engrossed in writing a computer program. You see, he's doing Computer Science Pure and Simple this year and it teaches programming through MicroWorlds EX. Both boys love the program and every time I turn around they are whipping up some program or another. I didn't have the heart to stop Nate this morning, and he doesn't seem to believe that when he does this for 'fun' he can mark off minute boxes on his tally sheet.

When he was finally finished, he looked sleepy to me and I suggested we play a game. We pulled out Blokus. It's our current second-favorite game. We couldn't play Apples to Apples 'cause we only have two people at the moment and that game requires more. But Blokus sure looked to me like a study in strategy, logic, math...basically, it was schoolwork again. Don't tell the boy, k?

The other day, my mother tells me, Nate was chipping away some concrete in her basement to make way for the plumber. He commented that he'd like to take a more brute-force approach but he was afraid he'd "jeopardize the structural integrity of the floor." Mom asked him where he got that, and he said he'd been watching Engineering an Empire. Schoolwork disguised as fun yet again. Or is it the other way around?

I'll have to make him do some less-fun schoolwork sometime today, but it's nice to see my theory that kids will learn without being forced is holding its own.