We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
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2006-01-04 - 17:10
Homeschooling Redux
(Yes. Again.)
The original plan had been to hold off on formally homeschooling Jack until he turns three.
That was the original plan. Then a couple of weeks ago, Jack became fascinated by letters and their names and the sounds they make. Rod and I discussed it, and then when the interest continued, we discussed it again, and we decided that it made a certain amount oh sense to "catch the wave", so to speak. So, we started to design a very simple curriculum based on some of our favorite methods.
Since children at two and a half, no matter how bright, still shouldn't have the hand eye coordination and motor control it takes to learn to write, and since they are not yet wired for "sitting down and learning" (something I don't think is natural until age 8 or 9), we decided to use a pre-school prep outline as our basis. While we have given a lot of though to what we want to present to Jack in an organized manner, we are presenting it to him in the form of stories, games, and activities.
So far we have the first month's worth of lessons (mostly) written. If you're interested, let me know and I'll give the URL. (There are still a few gaps -- like I am coming up dry for poems and songs for week two, when we learn about jungles, green, B and 2. Anyone have any [non-Disney] ideas?)
We have decided to revisit what we've learned at week three and then go ahead with the next month's lessons. After all, this is as much or more for our training as for Jack's education. (Numbers, letters, shapes, and colours are mostly a review for Jack, though approaching them in an organized fashion will mean he's familiar with all of them, where chance and interest could leave some out.)
We were ready in time to start this week, but when Jack woke up looking like he was coming down with something and sleeping a lot more than usual on Monday and Tuesday, we decided that it made sense to wait a week. Just as well -- obsessive that I am, I revisited the lessons and found ways to make them better. So the current plan is to start with Lesson 1 next Monday. I'm sure I'll have more to say once we've been at it a while.
Homeschooling Models we have grown fond of ...
In our explorations, Rod and I keep coming back to a few writers on child education over and over again. Our favorite, hands down, would have to be Charlotte Mason. Miss Mason was an educator at the end of the 19th century, who took in any student who applied -- whether they could pay or not, and even if they were girls!
She had a very gentle, organic method of educating that worked with the way small children learn. She believed that most of the day should be spent out of doors, exploring nature, observing the rhythms of the natural world, and experimenting. Not just for children - -she sent the parent educator out of doors, too! Her leg of the trivium was nature -- all lessons on all subjects should reflect back to the natural world. That suits us perfectly!
But, of course, her methods don't specify a specific curriculum. So, we had to go looking for what to teach as well.
The first curriculum to catch our eye was The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. This is a mother daughter team who homeschooled. The daughter (Susan) then went on to homeschool her own children. They then started writing about their experience and their theories of classical education.
WTM is an excellent and very thorough curriculum! It's also a very demanding curriculum, intellectually, based on the historical leg of the trivium. We plan to adapt it when Jack reaches the age for which it was intended to begin. (Around six years.)
But because it's so demanding, on both student and educators, it became all the more important that Rod and I get in some practice as educators. It's not that it's so hard to teach children -- it's that we need to develop some excellent habits, lest we forget in the day to day hurly-burly to educate him at all. (Yes, I've read about the unschooling and deschooling programs, but while we will adapt some of their ideas, they aren't for us.) This is especially true because we will be working around my full time work schedule.
In our search, we eventually ran across Katrina Lybbert's Letter of the Week program. Aha! Pay dirt!
While Letter of the Week was a bit too demanding for our little guy, Mrs. Lybbert does have a preschool prep program specifically intended for 2 year olds! Perfect!
Well...almost perfect. We wouldn't be us if we didn't have to fiddle. We liked the framework that Mrs. Lybbert has designed, and she had done a lot of the really hard work for us...but we decided that in keeping with the nature trivium and the classical educations models, we could stir it around a bit, add a few things, take out a few things and...well, there you go. We have a curriculum specifically for Jack!
Oops. I had intended to tell you all about the Mad House Hunt but I'm out of time! I need to get home to start on this evening's leg! I'll try to update you on that tomorrow or later this week.
