How will they ever learn math???

I have to admit that the most frequently asked question regarding the way that my children are being raised is, "How will they EVER learn math?". I guess that people can't imagine that math could possibly take place without workbooks and lessons. So here is just one of many accounts on how my girls are "teaching" themselves math.

Ice Princess loves those police shows, animal cop shows and really anything that has to do with the law and it's enforcement. So, one afternoon she was watching the program called Speeders. It is a show that lets you see people's reactions when they are caught speeding. When someone is pulled over, the frame is frozen and information about the driver is revealed. Such as his or her name, the state that he/she is in, his/her occupation and how many years they have been driving. So Ice Princess is sitting on the couch still in her pajamas clutching tightly to her tivo remote control. I was in the kitchen working on my budget (uggghhhh). I notice that she keeps pausing the show as this information about the driver comes up. Finally, I take a break and see that she is deep in thought and the tv is paused once again. So I asked her what she was doing. She then rewound the show to the beginning and forwarded to all the parts of the show that told about the speeder. Each time she told me how old the drivers were at the time they received their tickets for speeding. Now this was one piece of information that was not given about these offenders. So I asked her how she knew their ages. She came back quickly with, "That's easy mom, people get their driver's licence when they are 16 and then the show tells me how long they have been driving for." She had decided to make up a story problem, something that her peers were made to sit and do at a desk in school. But she was happily doing the same thing in her home, in her pjs, and with one of her favorite mediums (the tv). And she was doing it because it was important to her and not to someone else. She was applying it directly to her life and in that way she will remember how to use this same tool over and over again with no trouble or difficulty.