Homeschooling

We have been homeschooling for many years and you would think we have it all worked out by now, but it seems the process begins anew every year. Each year we reevaluate what we need to do, how we should do it, and the best materials to accomplish our goals. The only thing we have learned is what does not work and where not to waste our time. You never really get the perfect curriculum becauses those rascally children keep growing and changing.

Originally, we were all texts. One for math; one for science; one for hisotry, one for english, one for ..... and on and on. We had time slots: one for math; one for scie.... Well, you get the idea. That lasted for about three months when we tossed the handwriting. I could not read their print, nevermind the cursive. I figured writing is for communicating and they were not accomplishing that. I made the two oldest who were in sixth and forth grade go back to ball and stick printing. Did you ever see a sixth grader write twenty "a"s with his six year old brother. He was not happy with me. And I was frustrated that the six year old wrote better.

I learned the key to it all that year ....motivation. Its is easy to figure out what to teach. The trick is how to get them to learn. By the end of the year, we had learned that education fails because schooling does not work. It was the process itself that was lacking. Why does a kid who cannot remember the times tables have all his favorite sports figure's stats memorized or all the cheat codes for a certain game down pat. It is not his memory that is the problem.

After we bailed on the texts, we tried unit studies. I knew this would be more interesting to my "rough and rugged" herd. We used some Konos which is very hands-on. The problem became competing for the books that were called for in the unit. The library did not have that many of them and there were many Konos people needing them at the same time. I began putting together my own units. This worked well but was a lot of work.

It is at this time I began to consider what the purpose of education was. I began to realize my most important duty was to give my children a godly worldview as well as skills. I began to find my niche in this education thing. This begat the plan that worked for me. We unit studied the bible. We found the schedule that worked the best. We did not know at this time there would be anything different.

The Plan

8:00

Having accomplished the morning routines of brushed teeth, dressing, and breakfast. I called a "fire drill" This meant we all ran around as fast as we could straightening up the house. This was great fun....at first. But it remained the shortest way of getting the work out of the way to get to the fun stuff so nobody really complained much.

8:20

Rest and breath hard.

8:30

Read and discuss one chapter of the bible. This always led to another subject that could easily be labeled "school" For example creation led to science (creation vs. evolution); Noah's flood led to math (multiplying by two, and counting the days he was in the ark by adding up the times of rain, water receding, etc.).

10:00

Read aloud time. They read to me. This was for any previously prepared reports or a favorite book or bible passage.

11:00

Time to prepare lunch. This was good practice for home skills as well as measuring, and fractions. My boys could cook by the time they were 8.

12:00

Special projects time. This could be anything. To Jason, it was doing a science experiment; to Andy, taking apart the sweeper; to David, it was making up "Banana Davis" stories; to Jennifer, reading. Often they would get together to work like measuring the room for carpeting, or making cable cars across the backyard.

2:00

We would all come back together for Math races and journal writing.

3:00

Time to start chores and supper. Then free time till bath time. Someone usually ended up asking for story time. This book was usually my choice. Check out my favorite book list to see what we read.

Friday was Play Day. All day long, we played any qualifying game requested. See my list of educational games.

This plan worked well until each started high school and pursued his own course of study. They now needed to learn self discipline as well as skills. Hopefully by this time, their world view was becoming fairly concrete. I gave them opportunity to debate and talked with them as adults.