Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Back To School!

It's not the first day of school for any of us in this household but it's the first day where everyone is back in the swing of things.  Although the real "first" day of school for everyone was last Wednesday, I did continue to assign to and require homework - primarily in the way of reading fine Literature - of all my children throughout the Summer so the new school year, at least for my homeschooling boys, didn't really come with any grand "Back to School" pomp.  My Public School daughter did have to do some school clothes shopping but we are learning to sew together in order that she can begin to sew and create her own outfits and this place is always lousy with school supplies...we have entire drawers full!  She did want a color scheme for all her binders, folders and notebooks this year - sparkly pink and sparkly silver- and she is my only girl and her requests are small, so, of course, I had to honor that.  Needless to say, she is hooked up.

Anyway, back to homeschooling.  I have been homeschooling both my boys for the last two years.  I am somewhat dismayed and yet glad to admit that it has taken nearly the entire two years to really pinpoint our goals and thus, our curriculum.  Hm, let me rephrase that, as I'm not saying what I want to quite right.  We have always known full well our goals for our kids. To raise intelligent, Godly kids with a hunger to learn.  Easy enough.  The problem was, I was having a hard time getting there. I was not finding curriculum that would feed either those needs or those desires.  As I began my search, I kept them busy with textbooks given to me by homeschooling friends (thank the Lord for them).  And I would scour Goodwill and other bookstores seeking out primarily Christian textbooks or at the very least Christian friendly.  And, of course, we ordered them in from various websites.  The boys would do the work happily enough but it seemed to just bore them and when completed they just wanted to watch "TV" (We don't actually have cable. Truth is, we only have Netflix and movies on DVD.  We've not had cable for the last sevenish years and I would highly suggest any parent, especially a Christian homeschooling parent, should go this route!)   I wanted more for them.  I wanted them to love what they were learning so that they needed to know more, ya' know?  I wanted them to want to want to pick up a book and read it over scrolling their Ipod or playing Video games.  I am not opposed to such things per se' but it seems to me that too much valuable time is spent in these arenas and I want their brains charged not numbed.  Though, I was (and still am) very involved in lesson planning, it felt like they were still getting taught like they did in school. And it didn't matter if the books were Christian - though I am very grateful that there is that choice out there- but they just seemed as dry and uninteresting as the secular textbooks with the same facts and expectations of my kids but again with the appropriate references to God.  My thought?  If this methodology isn't working for the schools, in general, in educating then it's not the method for my kids or me.  I wanted for them an education that would strengthen their Knowledge and abilities to seek out those things they desired to learn.

I am a problem solver and daily I met with the Lord asking for him to help me find "it". There was no real A-ha! moment but in guide and internet searching, I came across addresses for a Charlotte Mason Education.  As I started to read into her methodology, I was like, YES!  We are definitely headed in the right direction.  She uses Classic Literature and Poetry.  Duh! Not just references to Classic Literature or Poetry as the textbooks do.  The kids read entire books not just passages fit in intermittently into a textbook where the child develops no relationship with the story or the book or the author. She encourages kids to read the same Literature that adults do and throw out anything "Twaddly" (explanation - another day!) They learn to write using the methods of the masters as a basis for teaching.  They learn their lessons through the actual words of them who made History!  This is almost perfect. We began to redesign our "curriculum" by getting rid of textbooks (except to keep the occasional one as a spine) and start reading the classics. So, again, we're on the way to what I was envisioning for them but I still wasn't resolved to use the CM method entirely.  I still envisioned something more.  More internet searches.  Library searches, etc.  Then I came across the The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Susan Wise Bauer and Jesse Wise; combine that with Teaching the Trivium by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn, Dorothy Sayers "The Lost Tools of Learning" and we have nailed our curriculum.  We use the Trivium to teach in the "correct" timeframes and order and apply our expectations as appropriate to each age.  These methods all use "Great Books" and the teaching of Latin and Greek to help us go back to our ancestors and understand right from their mouths what they were trying to say instead of watered down, possibly fallacious interpretations by folks who are writing sub par textbooks trying to cram "everything" that can be learned into them.  And with the schools dismissing History at only two years' worth of classes, well, the general youth population is indeed missing out on those important lessons from the past which can help prevent the same mistakes today.

A bit extreme?  A bit challenging? They love it.  Love. It.  They are interested and excited about what they learn. They are not spending all their time filling in questionaires or worksheets.  Circling one of three choices.  They are simply reading, digesting, discussing, questioning. The 16 year old is engaged in thorough conversation about things he's learning and the 10 year old is a goldmine of information.  We use Ambleside Online for the general selections of reading lists and ideas. For the bulk of the boys' learning, we rely on Heritage History and The Baldwin Project as well as Gutenberg.  All of these websites offer classic literature - free- with additional inexpensive lesson plans or there are actual published books on Baldwin and HH that you can purchase.  No more expensive textbooks or curriculums.  We read what we are studying from the original authors and then we talk about it.  We question it.  There is so much more to the varieties of learning methods here but I've already written a tome so in the end, I think what I love about this method of learning is this: it is so simple.  It is how our ancestors learned.  It is how the Founding Fathers learned.  It's how we as a nation learned until the big change in the 19th Century...but that is a subject for another day.
 

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