Growing up, homeschooling always seemed like it would be a little boring to me. I mean, you literally stay home all day, right?

How far from the truth that really is.

There are so many things that happen throughout our days. Some are planned. A lot of them are not. And somewhere along the way, I started realizing just how many applicable lessons we teach our children simply by bringing them alongside us in everyday life.

Not long ago, a simple trip to the grocery store turned into a whole series of lessons about trying foods we had never eaten before.

It started with a starfruit.

There was some hesitation about trying it, and somehow that turned into, “Well, now we’re going to learn about it.” Before long, we were picking out several foods we hadn’t tried before.

And suddenly we had questions.

What does it taste like? What is the texture? How do you even open this thing? Which parts can you eat? Where does it come from?

Then you have something like a coconut, where there is even more to explore. You can talk about the water inside, the coconut meat, coconut milk, coconut oil, and all the different ways one food can be used.

All from a trip to the grocery store.

But these everyday lessons go far beyond food.

My husband has started taking moments throughout the day to teach about phone and internet safety. They have watched examples of how scams work and talked about how something dangerous online doesn’t always look dangerous.

Sometimes a scam looks completely innocent.

Those conversations give us opportunities to talk about what information we share, what we click on, what we should question, and when we need to stop and ask for help. Technology is going to be part of our children’s lives. Learning how to use it safely is just as much a life skill as learning how to use it.

Then there is money.

We use allowance as an opportunity to teach the difference between short term and long term savings in ways that actually keep our daughter involved.

It is one thing to explain saving money.

It is another thing when it is your money.

Suddenly, spending $10 means something when you know how long it took you to save that $10. Saving toward something bigger requires patience. Choosing something small today might mean waiting longer for the thing you really want later.

Those are lessons about money, but they are also lessons about patience, planning, decision making, and contentment.

And none of those lessons came from a worksheet.

That doesn’t mean we don’t use curriculum. We absolutely do. There is a time for sitting down, opening the math book, watching the lesson, doing the assignment, and learning the things that need to be taught intentionally.

But even our curriculum has started becoming a jumping off point for learning more.

More recently, my daughter has started asking if she can look up videos about the things she is learning in history. There are a few history channels and subscriptions on YouTube that we frequent, and she loves searching for another video about whatever subject she is currently studying.

I love watching that happen because I’m not telling her she has to learn more.

She wants to.

Something catches her attention during a history lesson, and instead of closing the book and being finished with it, she wants to know what else there is to discover. We might finish the required lesson and then find ourselves watching another video that explains the people, places, or events in a completely different way.

Sometimes hearing the same information presented differently is exactly what helps it finally click.

We do the same thing with science. We can read about how something works, but then we can pull up an experiment and actually watch it happen. Sometimes we find something we can try ourselves. One question leads to another question, which leads to another video, another conversation, or another thing we want to try.

And I think that is one of my favorite things to see developing in her.

I don’t just want to teach my children information.

I want to teach them to want to learn.

I want them to know that when they don’t understand something, they can look for another explanation. When something interests them, they don’t have to stop learning because the assigned lesson is over. They can ask questions. They can research. They can experiment. They can keep digging.

Because homeschooling has taught me that education is so much bigger than the hours we label as “school.”

Some lessons happen at the kitchen table.

Some happen in the grocery store.

Some happen when Dad pulls up an example of an internet scam and says, “Come look at this.”

Some happen when a child is standing in a store deciding whether she really wants to spend the money she worked to save.

Some happen because a history lesson was interesting enough that she asks, “Can we find a video about this?”

And some start because your child looks suspiciously at a starfruit and decides she absolutely does not want to eat it.

Maybe that is one of the things I misunderstood most about homeschooling when I was growing up.

We aren’t just home all day.

We are living life together, and life gives us an awful lot to learn about.