The Day The Power Outage Didn't Stop Us From Homeschooling

One morning in January 2006 we were on a roll with doing our homeschooling lessons at the kitchen table, as usual, with me sitting in the middle of my two sons. At the time my children were aged 5 and 8, in Kindergarten and Third Grade. The sky was grey and rain was predicted. We were surprised when black clouds suddenly rolled in and a big thunderstorm hit, and we lost power. We never know if the power will be out for minutes or several hours.

Although it was the morning, the house was quite dark. Since we were already busy doing our lessons and there wasn’t anything else pressing to do that would make us stop our lessons, we decided to continue with our homeschooling as if the power were still on. But it was too dark to use the natural light from the windows, so I had to light candles.

I snapped this photo as my sons were doing their Calc-U-Ladder timed math drill which they call ‘the math race’ (which they love doing).



A few minutes later while holding a paper; it accidentally caught fire as it touched the flame of the tall candlestick. I extinguished it quickly and decided it was safer to to use only candles with glass protection around the flame area.

This was the first and so far the only time we have homeschooled through a power outage!

This is my entry to win a camera in the "Capture the Educational Moment" Contest sponsored by Spunky and Academic Superstore.

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