connectionschooling

Our style of homeschooling is based on the premise that everything is related to everything else, so no matter what someone is interested in, there are connections to so many other topics that you're bound to run into a bunch of math and science and history and who knows what other good stuff along the way. Besides enjoying the opportunity to explore interests to whatever extent we want, much of the fun lies in the discovery of those connections, how the web of connections grows over time as interests and experiences evolve, and how some of the most unexpected connections often pop up to surprise us. It's like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (BTW, I'm two degrees away from Kevin Bacon, as I pierced the ear of a guy who hung out with Kevin Bacon on a train ride) or pinballing around time and space with James Burke's Connections.

So when I was browsing some knitting books from the library yesterday evening...

and Jesse was browsing some blacksmithing books,...

we were having great fun sharing with the other some of the things we were learning along the way. After all the years of living the way we do and seeing the connections jump up in front of us, still we're surprised and delighted every time it happens. You'd think we would have seen it coming...

(You might need to click for the biggie view, but the books on top are explaining a blacksmithing technique called faggot welding and the book on the bottom is introducing a section of lace knitting techniques called faggoting.)