Science... I'm a little kid again.

When my oldest daughter reached school age (kindergarten), my wife and I made the choice to homeschool our children rather than send them to public schools for their education. It was a personal decision for us that we felt a conviction towards. No, we aren't one of those extremist couples who removes their children from all contact with the outside world. We make sure they have plenty of interaction with other kids and do activities outside our home setting. We just felt that our children could receive a better education at home away from all the garbage that permeates our public school systems these days until they were old enough and grounded enough spiritually to make a decision with us on whether or not they would graduate as homeschoolers.

That being said, my oldest daughter (Breanna) is now starting in third grade studies as of a couple weeks ago. My wife teaches most of the lessons while I'm at work because she is a stay-at-home mom. However, I get the privilege of helping teach at times in certain areas of study that fascinate me because I am considered by my wife to be the "better teacher" for those subjects. One of those subjects is science.

Breanna's current topic of study in science is the planets in our solar system. She has already learned and memorized the nine planets that orbit around our sun. One recent project she had for this section was to make a "model" solar system that will help keep things in perspective as the chapters go through various aspects of the world of outer space. The book suggested a small setup that would hang in a corner of her bedroom, but being the "we gotta do better" type of dad, I decided that we would make some nice circular cutouts from construction paper (cut to a better size so she could get an idea of scale) and tape them to the wall in our stairway with the bottom doorway being the sun and Pluto taped way up the stairwell. She was so excited and pleased with the outcome that we decided to do more. We made a moon for earth and plan to add moons for Jupiter and others as we go through her lessons. She made stars and scattered them across the wall to give it more of an "outer space" look, and we have plans to add comets, meteors, asteroids, etc. as we cover each topic in her book along the way. Can you tell dad is getting into this?

So, that being said, I'm feeling a bit like a kid again this week. Is that acceptable for a 36 year old male who just recently gave in to owning a minivan? (OK, so I really needed it with three kids and a fourth on the way. What's your point? At least I got a sport model with a wing and a kickin' CD player!)