Sanskrit, hacking and Kung Fu

My son has a very eclectic education.  Spot teaches him how to design magic decks.  Hawina teaches him history and science.  Sky works with Willow on math stuff.  I teach him critical thinking via an elaborate fantasy role playing game.  His formalized homeschooling at CHEC in Cville is currently anthropology and strategy and tactics.  When i sat down with him the other day and asked him where he wanted things to be going with his education i was surprised by his answers.

non-conventional thinking

He said he was interested in learning Hindu and Sanskrit.  Now he did spend a little time studying Latin with Hawina and learned a handful of words, but then lost interest in it after getting some of the background for Harry Potter spells.  And my guess is Hindu is hard and Sanskrit (being a quite dead language) is even harder.  And if he wants to move this way, we will at least take steps to see if we can accommodate him.

Willow said he wanted to learn computer hacking.  He currently plays games where he creates creatures and civilization, but hacking feels several steps up from this.  If anyone has a good intro to hacking curriculum, please feel encouraged to pass it on.

He also wanted to learn a martial art that does not require a weapon.  His early experience was in short stick, which he liked at the time, but now feels he wants something he can do with just his body.  This is perhaps the most accessible of his recent requests.

He also said he was interested in architecture, which of course thrilled his grandmother on my side, because my dad was an architect, so we will get him a little drafting table with a built in right angle to facilitate drawing straight lines.

i dont remember much about my life when i was 9.  But i am certain i was not interested in dead languages.  And it is a different time, and he is a very different person.