Our Homeschool Journey

Our Homeschool Journey

At our very last Becoming History presentation, when my youngest graduated from homeschool, my kids asked me to write out everything we did so they could duplicate that for their kids.

Thus, here is our story of why I wrote our classical history curriculum, with the goal to streamline while adapting to special needs and learning styles…and life!

Meanwhile, all of my blog links about our homeschool journey are further down.

ADAPTING OUR BEGINNING YEARS

Our homeschool journey began simply enough, with Abeka curriculum which I supplemented with history, literature, and science units that I created.

As a former public school teacher, I was thrilled to teach my own children what I knew they needed to learn, instead of crazy stuff mandated by the school district, state agencies, and federal government.

However, I was exhausted, as explained in this post about my daughter’s dyspraxia and my son’s preemie nature that kept us busy with hospital visits.

Although both my kids learned well, they learned differently…which kept me very busy with adaptations.

Persevering, I enjoyed watching them learn and grow, especially with fun experiences.

However, as the primary years (K-3) passed by, we had outgrown A Beka, but other curricula looked overwhelming.

Nothing seemed to fit our needs.

Meanwhile, my highly inquisitive son needed a challenge, while my daughter needed a boost to help her jump the hurdles of learning challenges.

INSPIRED BY PATRICK HENRY WHO WAS HOMESCHOOLED

As I prayed about our homeschool, I excitedly packed for a family trip to Colonial Williamsburg, that I had first visited before I had kids.

Thrilled that now my kids could experience a place I loved, I gave them a self-curated tour of this living history museum, the largest in the world.

As we toured the historic area, I was reminded that America’s story, as told in Colonial Williamsburg, taught me more than pithy textbooks ever did.

Then we met Patrick Henry, the Firebrand of the American Revolution, who thundered away with his story…of how he was taught the classics from his father, who had studied under the masters in Scotland.

Suddenly, I realized the classics were the answer!

Thus began my research to study exactly what that entailed, and how to adapt the classics to our homeschool.

FORCED TO HEAVILY ADAPT EVEN OUR CLASSICAL CURRICULUM

Upon returning home to Texas, I studied several resources to learn about classical education and research corresponding curricula.

Finally committing to a classical history curriculum that best fit us, we ran into major problems the first week and every single succeeding week: too many books assigned, assigned questions that didn’t match the assigned books, books of poor quality mixed with stunning books, teacher notes that were not always the path of virtue I wanted to take my kids…

Exasperated, I had no where else to turn, but do what I always did before…rewrite everything!!!

Weekly, I adapted this expensive history curriculum by reading all the assigned books, culling the list, tailoring the weekly discussion questions to the books, finding better resources, etc.

Even though we learned a lot, the history curriculum, itself, took valuable time from other subjects and free time to just breathe.

As a result of all this rewriting of classical history curriculum, my kids and I eventually moved to Virginia, becoming rather famous as an 18th century family in Colonial Williamsburg…where we learned even more!

During my daughter’s college years, she inspired her classmates to love the classics…and boy did they moan they only had boring stuff to read in public school.

THAT is what my kids meant by my writing out everything we did so they could replicate our homeschool for their own kids.

And that is why I purged much of the old books to streamline for a better quality education…all carefully curated.

LESS IS MORE IN CLASSICAL EDUCATION

Then during my ongoing classics research, after my kids graduated homeschool, I was validated for all my concerns as I came to a more clear understanding of what exactly a classical eduction entailed:

The hallmark of classical education is that students learn to teach themselves for a lifetime.

In fact, the classical training is so on-point, that the lifelong student can be self-taught in nearly anything.

Another hallmark of classical education is the quality and quantity of books read…less is more.

Classical education focuses on a smaller reading list than one might expect…and populated by some curricula.

Time is spent on a few high quality works that have powerfully affected humankind for hundreds of years, primarily from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

Of these works high quantity of time is devoted to deep study and saturation.

It is that deep quality of training that allows one to enlarge the quantity of classical works read in adulthood, enabling self-education.

THE THREE TIERS OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION

For our homeschool, I tried to focus our lessons around the basic concept of each of the three tiers.

*Grammar-gleaning of facts (for our homeschool, learning the 3Rs and basic facts like states and capitals, names of countries, identification of flowers, trees, constellations, birds, etc)
*Logic-connecting ideas
*Rhetoric-articulating ideas

OUR CURRICULA

Discovering the following curricula midway through homeschooling, I used them as written.

Only adaptations needed were for my daughter who struggled more than my son, which meant more one on one mentoring.

Wish I had her simply study with him, as I noted some of my homeschool friends doing with their kids, with great success.

  • Institute for Excellence in Writing – Amazingly, this course helped my daughter who couldn’t write cohesively and my overly verbose son! Further, it rescued us from our classical history-literature-writing curriculum! Wish I had started with this in 1st grade!
  • Teaching Textbooks – I loved these math lessons for grades 7-12! No need to adapt this one because it’s basically a teacher on a CD for every lesson and every math problem, even the tests! Wish we had started in 4th grade!
  • Dr. Jay Wile’s science books– I loved these science lessons, that also taught apologetics, which we used for grades 7-12. My son enjoyed these so much, he’d do extra credit work, like a weekly challenge question on the author’s website. The experiments use mostly household stuff, and were super interesting.
  • Latin Road to English Grammar – I found this curricula to be the most doable on our crazy schedule. Although we never mastered Latin, we were definitely immersed and stretched by it, which is one of the basic goals. Used in grades 7-12.

GRAMMAR LEVEL

Learning the three stages and the basic tenets of classical education, I felt free to call our early years as grammar level, since we studied that which most grammar level students do today.

Abeka – loved the colorful worksheets, focus on the Lord, and how every day was scripted. I needed only draw a line through to edit, annotate, etc, but at least I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel! Check how I amended it for our special needs and interests. I prefer Abeka for K-3 for the basics. Here’s how my daughter and I amended it for my granddaughter’s kinder year.

For a photo journal of our grammar years, check this Flickr set.

DIALECTIC LEVEL

Our classical journey deeply began in our dialectic years, where we focused on making logical connections.

Also, we resumed our love of costuming by dressing up as historical personas to showcase what we had learned for extended family. This finally helped our family members *get* homeschool!

Also, our history presentations gave my kids and fun way to practice speaking skills.

For a photo journal of our dialectic years, check this Flickr set.

RHETORIC LEVEL

Midway through our Dialectic journey, we moved from Texas to Virginia…which meant many more visits to Colonial Williamsburg!

As a result, my kids begged me to sew historically accurate clothing for them to wear in the historic area…which changed our lives!

For more photos of our rhetoric years, check this Flickr set.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS PAGE

Since this page is already lengthy, I plan to link all our activities and adventures on a new page according to historical era that I will link here…stay tuned.

Secondly, moving my blog to this new location is still a work in progress.

To expedite, I reposted the core of our journey, but still have some old blog posts to republish.

Also I plan to update this page with fresh research on classical education and the progress of my children’s children.