Making a Connection: Brandy Sharrock-Miller

“As a parent, you want to make sure that you’re doing right by your children, and making sure that they have the right education.”
Brandy Sharrock-Miller

Brandy Sharrock-Miller cares a lot about her family. As a homeschool parent, she works hard to provide her three school-aged children with the best education she can. When Brandy came across a post about the BMI’s Homeschool Days, she saw it as an opportunity for her children to get hands-on experience with the subjects they were learning at home, and to learn alongside other children.
 

It just breaks up the ‘at home, on a computer, behind a book.’ It gives them hands-on experience and it also gives them an opportunity to be around other homeschooling families. It just really piqued my interest and I thought it was worth a trip.

 
Brandy especially loves the real-world lessons that her children learn at Homeschool Days. In charge of her family’s budget, she enjoyed watching her children learn about the past through work. During the BMI’s Kids’ Cannery class, Brandy’s children simulated work in the museum’s historic oyster cannery and made “salaries,” only to realize how much of their earnings went to food, board, and healthcare. “It’s all fun until you have to spend that money. It’s never enough. They had to learn what would be left over.”

This year, Brandy coached her children through the BMI’s Maryland Engineering Challenges. The trio split up into teams to build miniature hovercrafts that could race across the “Chesapeake Bay.” Her children worked as a team through different personalities and, ultimately, completed the report and hovercraft project. Although neither team won the competition, Brandy saw the experience as a lesson in seeing commitments through.