Geography and the NCAA tournament

So I have posted before that I LOVE basketball. And considering FSU got into the Big Dance, I decided to use the NCAA bracket for geography lessons in our little homeschool. I just love homeschooling! Where else can you watch tons of basketball and use it to learn :) Anyway, so this is how it works: I cut out the NCAA tournament bracket from the newspaper, I noted when the first game was (which happen to be last night) and the two schools playing which were Alabama St. and Morehead. We then looked up both schools on the computer and found out what city and state they were located in. Obviously Alabama State was an easy one to find. We went ahead and found what city it was in. It happens to be Montgomery if you are curious. Then we looked up Morehead. That one was a little trickier. It is actually located in Morehead, Kentucky. We plotted both schools on a map I printed off. One of the first questions Nature Girl asked me this morning was "Who one the game last night?" Daddy looked it up and said Morehead did. So, today we will go back to our map and see again where the two schools are. I don't think the next game is until Thursday. Depending on how many schools play on Thursday we might go ahead and start finding them on the map today. My guess is we will have geography lessons throughout the weekend. Everyone participates because it is exciting. And, they won't even care that it is school!! One of the major philosophies that I subscribe to in our little homeschool is learning things as they happen in life, by reading good books and participating in what is going on around us. Every place we go and everything we do has schooling potential. That if you are forced to learn things, you do for the moment but then it is gone. If a child learns something because he or she WANTS to or it is just a natural part of living, he or she will be more inclined to remember it. I love to learn. I so want to encourage my children to do the same . . .