Smrt Lernins

This week started with academics and ended with the flu, so we didn’t get much done this week.

The highlight of the week was Captain Science finishing Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents on Wednesday. We’re going to kill a little time w/ some other types of math, then get the next books on payday. If only we could buy them locally!

The lowlight was that we’re still butting heads over history writing. I need to find a way to get us back on track w/ that, but can’t really figure out how. We’ve pretty much wrapped up pre-Roman, Roman-era, and post-Roman Britain, so after we’re back from our field trip/vacation, we’re starting w/ the Vikings, I think. Need to plot my lesson plan out a little more carefully and try to find ways of making writing more enticing.

Captain Science got 100% on his next review quiz of Caesar’s English. No writing or poetry this week, because of the flu.

Co-op was canceled on account of snow. Seriously! Snow! That’s twice this year (for the snow, not the co-op cancelation).

There really isn’t all that much else to report. We’re off on our field trip this weekend, so I’m looking forward to reporting back on Captain Science’s exciting education about MMORPG design!

I love it when I can start my Secular Thursday off with a story about dinosaurs. Scientists have discovered multiple 243 million year old Asilisaurus skeletons*, enough to assemble a complete skeleton. If you want to get technical, this Labrador-sized creature (which lived during the middle Triassic period) is a silesaur, another member of the clade dinosauriform, so more like a cousin to the guys we call dinosaurs. Still, dinosaurs and silesaurs existed simultaneously, springing from a common ancestor, so if silesaurs existed earlier than originally thought (by about 10 million years, by scientist’s estimations), their dinosaur cousins likely did, as well.

Now, “clade” is a fun word. It refers to a branch on the tree of life and includes the ancestor and all of its descendants. Cladistics is one way of studying/classifying the diversification of life of Earth through looking at evolutionary relation. The diagram demonstrating cladistics is called a cladogram, and it’s pretty nifty-keen in that it can show the origins and derivations of pretty much everything, or at least everything related, neatly laid out so that you can see what came likely from where (or who) based on shared derived characteristics.

Cladograms don’t indicate how much time has passed, just the relation between species, which makes it a useful tool in demonstrating evolutionary concepts to children. Explaining evolution to (especially younger) children can be tricky, in my experience, because children’s understanding of time is fairly limited. Trying to conceptualize time relations between species and understand tiny changes over millions of years is confusing to a kid who still think of his years in halves. Cladograms just show the probable order of speciation, like a family tree, which kids don’t seem to have a problem understanding.

If you want to look at something really cool (though now out of date, because science…always updating and changing as we develop better tools and find more clues!), you should take a look at this dinosaur cladogram completed in 2001. The way this tool can be useful for your kids isn’t because it has an up-to-date degree of accuracy (too many discoveries sticking other creatures in between the ones list), but because it does provide an interesting visual way to track how creatures change over time. The simple dino silhouettes will probably much a lot more sense that a text-only “family tree” of evolution, plus, what kid doesn’t love dinosaurs (probably some kids, but mine aren’t among them)?

If you’d like to read more about the Asilisaurus, you might enjoy one of the articles from Discover magazine or Wired. I’m sure you want to read more about this herbivorous lap dog of the Triassic period!

Nice looking guy, isn’t he?

*Sterling J. Nesbitt, Christian A. Sidor, Randall B. Irmis, Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Roger M. H. Smith & Linda A. Tsuji. “Ecologically distinct dinosaurian sister group shows early diversification of Ornithodira” Nature 464, 95-98 (4 March 2010) | doi:10.1038/nature08718; Received 16 September 2009; Accepted 1 December 2009

Captain Science has been doing better at math than I expected. Due to swift passing of the last few bridges, we’ve arrived at the final bridge of Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents and I don’t have the next book(s) yet! Yikes! I’m not sure Patchfire and Eclectic Girl have finished w/ Beginning Algebra yet, either, so we don’t have any math to do once he passes this bridge.

On a positive note, I’m taking him up to my brother’s house from Saturday through Tuesday of next week for his tour of Icarus Studios, so I could more order books and have them arrive while I’m gone, in theory. The real issue here is that his completion of the book took me unawares, and the onus of that falls on me for not paying close enough attention. I thought he had one more regular bridge and a few more chapters before the final bridge. Oops.

I guess I could pick up some review stuff (like the Key To… series) to help fill the gap until EG has finished w/ Beginning Algebra, but that would require going to Scary JesusBook Store. Hmm….decisions, decisions.

Daisy asks, “How do you keep Babypie busy (and Tank when he is home) while you are teaching?”

Babypie is an uncommonly easy baby, so entertaining her has not been a problem thus far. She’s happy to wander around, nibble on a snack, play with her toys, and just generally observe our school lessons. The biggest problem with Babypie isn’t that she is herself distracting, but that Captain Science is often distracted by her. He loves her so much, and if he so much as looks at her, she always gives him the biggest, hammiest grins, which means he’ll keep smiling and talking to her instead of doing his work. This can be a problem.

The solution has been to set up multiple work areas for different needs. We have our school room, where my computer, the books, and homeschool materials all live. The desk has chairs on both sides so Captain Science and I can both sit at it. This is my base of operations, where I explain the lessons, go over the work (pointing out things that need correction or asking Captain Science to explain how he came to certain answers/conclusions), or do discussion/instruction portions of work. When Captain Science needs to read without Babypie milling about the same room, or if he needs room to spread out materials (science labs at home, for example), he goes into the gated kitchen to work at the table. When he needs a quiet place to work on math, grammar, writing, etc., he goes down to the roll-top desk we have set up in the craft room on the basement level. The desk is tucked around a corner so there’s not a direct line of sight to upstairs (he can’t see what the smalls are doing, they can’t see and bother him) and it muffles the sound a bit. That works really well and allows him to get work done with varying levels of family interaction as needed.

The Tank is…well, more of an issue. The main day he’s home during intense instruction is Friday, so I have to work hard to make sure he isn’t bothering Captain Science. I sometimes set him up with a movie or show on the opposite level of the house from where Cpt. Science is working. Sometimes I send him up to his room or down to the playroom for a while. When all else fails, he will happily sit at a table with markers and color on paper, himself, or the table. He’s easy to keep busy for short periods of time, but he likes something never every 15-30 minutes. Luckily, he really wants to start homeschooling with us, so I am going to begin phasing in some “table lernin” (his word for work done at a desk/table) for him to do on Fridays, which will give me another way to keep him occupied.

Our big challenge will be next year, when Tank isn’t re-enrolled in preschool and is preschooling at home. I’ll probably have to rotate their work (and play) stations around several times each day to keep Tank interested and out of Captain Science’s hair. I’ll try answering this question again next year and see what I’ve learned!

That’s how the [Smrt] Homeschooler entertains her smalls!

Do you have a question for the [Smrt] Homeschooler? Email them to
smrtmama@smrtlernins.com

You know how some weeks start out really strong and then peter out to nothing much? Yeah, that was this week.

Captain Science has done great with math this week, finishing chapter 29 of Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents completing the bridge to chapter 31 on the second try, and wrapping up the week with chapter 31 today. We’ll call this our high point.

History is our low point. Since I’m covering an area that gets the skimp in History: The Definitive Visual Guide, pre-Roman and Roman-era Britain, I’ve been relying on online resources, especially the wonderful articles on the BBC’s site. Supposedly, Captain Science was to read the article on Roman Britain and then write an essay addressing how life changed for the people of Britain under Roman rule. The actual essay was mostly a summary of how the Romans came to Britain, and a thin essay at that. Currently, Captain Science is trying to flesh it out a bit. We’ll see.

Language arts continues at a modest pace. Captain Science does two sentences from Practice Town daily. He completed the first half of his chapter from Caesar’s English I and will cover the second half today. Chapters alternate between short chapters covering word stems and large chapters covering vocabulary. We do the quiz over the previous chapter on one Monday, the stems the following Wednesday, then the first and second halves of the vocabulary chapter on the subsequent Mon/Wed. Captain Science really seems to be enjoying the Latin-based vocabulary and the format of the book, which is great! After finishing vocabulary, he’ll continue with his Paragraph Town reading and do the next section from Building Poems. If he writes anything interesting, I’ll be sure to share!

The co-op continues at a nice clip. The game class kids seem to be enjoying themselves, everyone loves the brain class, and my writing students are making headway into their stories. We covered “in medias res” this week and talked about making decisions as to where in the plot to start the story. We’ll be doing some experimenting with that in the following weeks.

Physics this week consisted of more Thames and Kosmos labs at Patchfire’s house. For once, Captain Science actually finished assembling something before Eclectic Girl, which is quite unusual. Usually he dawdles quite a bit and EG has to fuss at him to stay on track. Luckily, he seems to enjoy being bossed around by smart females, so he and EG make a good team in that respect. They built some sort of catapult this week and flung wooden balls all over the kitchen. I continue to be unimpressed by the complete lack of instructions in the kit, however. “Assemble as shown” doesn’t help very much when the pictures are small, there are no step-by-step instructions, and many of the small parts look so similar as to be impossible to distinguish between without closeup shots. Hmph.

Piano continues to go well, so we have that to focus on as a major positive. My aunt is having some surgery on March 10th, however, so we’ll have two weeks w/o piano lessons. This means I have to be diligent about making him work on the scales (which were just added) and doing some theory work, so he doesn’t lose his focus. Getting him to play songs is no work at all, though. He loves it!

That was our week. It’s not finished, but I sure feel pretty darn finished right about now.

Mention homeschooling in the wrong company and you’re bound to get an earfull about all the potential damage your irresponsible choice is doing to your children, particularly their “socialization” and their ability to ever, ever get into a college that isn’t named after a guy called Bob. Some will share cautionary tales of a homeschooler that their cousin once knew who wasn’t able to do 8th grade math upon graduation or who wept copiously when spoken to by strange children on the playground. Some will be rude enough to make negative statements about homeschooling in front of your homeschooled children.

I will ignore the stunning fact that no one even asked these people, who are clearly ignorant about what homeschooling actually entails, for their input, advice, or predictions for the (clearly hopeless) future of our children, and instead ponder what it is, exactly, about homeschooling that makes it so offensive. I’ve come up with a few possible reasons why someone might feel threatened by homeschooling:

1. Assumptions about religious motivation — Some homeschool detractors seem to think all homeschoolers are doing it for (extreme and/or fundamentalist) religious reasons and assume that our choice to homeschool means that we don’t want to teach our children about evolution, sex education, or extra-Biblical literature. With this assumption often comes comments on our family’s size and dynamics, since we’re probably also Quiverfullers who beat our kids with flexible PVC pipes. People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as religious nuts who are afraid that the government is trying to brainwash children into believing in global warming and pre-marital dating. They may or may not have opinions on secular homeschooling, or even know it exists, so (if you don’t have the time or energy to explain that many religiously-motivated homeschoolers also have a very rigorous, classical curriculum that may include those supposedly verboten subjects) you may be able to quickly quiet the naysayer by explaining that your homeschooling curricula is secular.

2. Assumptions about parenting (ie. “Special Snowflake Syndrome”) — Some homeschool detractors believe that non-religious parents who choose to homeschool do so because they believe their children are too “special” (imagine a snide tone on that word) to follow the rules/policies of the public school classroom. With this assumption comes comments about how we think our children can never do any wrong, how we blame every problem on an allergy or other condition, or that “every homeschooler thinks her kid is gifted.” People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as having babied, out of control children who think everything must always be tailored to suit their “special” whims and can’t handle even simple tasks without parental help or oversight. There isn’t any real way to clear up this misconception in a stranger, especially if your kids are flipping out in a particularly slow checkout line, but someone who spends any length of time around you and your children will probably start reassessing these assumptions’ validity.

3. Assumptions about socialization — Some homeschool detractors are concerned that homeschooled children are not offered enough (or the “right”) opportunities for socialization and will therefor be unable to adequately function in an environment outside of their own family. With this assumption comes a tendency to blame any shyness or social awkwardness on the homeschooling, rather than the personality of the child, and to make dire proclamations about the child’s potential for handling college or the “real world.” People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as insular and isolated. This concern is easily addresses by explaining the many social (and legal) support networks, co-ops, and resources available to homeschooling families to ensure myriad opportunities for socialization.

4. Assumptions about rigors of homeschool curricula — Some homeschool detractors believe that not being held to the identical grade standards of the public schools results in homeschooling parents providing an inadequate amount of instruction and setting low standards for their children. With this assumption comes commentary on that one homeschooling family their aunt knew whose kids could barely read in the 10th grade and were never, ever able to get into college due to their poor education. You know, that family. People with these assumptions often have a misconception that secular homeschooling is synonymous with unschooling, that homeschooling parents don’t make the choice to homeschool in order give their children a more rigorous education, and that homeschooling is somehow the “easy road” (the “wow, I wish I didn’t have to get the kids up for school every morning! It must be nice to be able to sleep in every day” comments). You’ve got two options here: the catty response (“Oh, your son is only just starting long division? We did that two years ago and have moved on to algebra.”) or the civil response (“I’m glad that being allowed to set our own standards means we can set them as high as we’d like.”) I’d recommend thinking the former, but speaking the latter.

5. Assumption that by choosing to homeschool your child(ren), you are actually making commentary on their educational choices for their child(ren) — Most controversies boil down to “if you do it differently than I do, you’re saying my way is bad, so I must defensively point out that your way is bad.” Some homeschool detractors seem quite certain that your choice to homeschool your own children means you think anyone who doesn’t homeschool their children is doing it “wrong.” With this assumption comes comments about all of the above assumptions, because they’ll blame their defensiveness on anything but what it actually is, the fear of someone doing something differently from how they’re doing it. People with this assumption don’t care what studies or data show about the efficacy of homeschooling, how delightfully well-behaved and well-adjusted your children are, or how well your children perform academically — they know homeschooling is wrong, because they aren’t doing it, and the choices they make are always “right.” Don’t even try to reason with people making this assumption; just tell them you’re glad that public/private/military school is working out so well for them and move on with your day.

Lisa M. (who asks some of the best questions), asks, “Do you follow the public school year? As in, break during the summer? Or do you school all year long?”

For this, our first year of homeschooling, we opted to more or less follow the standard public school schedule for two reasons: 1) The Tank is enrolled in a preschool that follows our county’s public school schedule and 2) as the change from public to homeschool was already such a big one for Captain Science, I wanted to keep the schedule as “normal” as possible. We do school Monday through Friday (with the occasionally Saturday catch-up in the event of a sick day). Our year started the same day as public school this year and will end at roughly the same time, officially-speaking.

Some notable exceptions for us have been the length and frequency of breaks. We don’t take off for teacher workdays or most of the one-day holidays (like MLK day). We only took W-F off for Thanksgiving. We did take two weeks off for Christmas, but that turned out to a less-than-ideal situation, as Captain Science didn’t adjust well to the lack of clear definition between home vacation and home school. Instead of a full week for Spring Break, we’re taking a few days for a combination family trip and field trip (Captain Science is touring Icarus Studios to learn how MMORPGs are made).

Also, when I say that our school year will end when the public school year does, I don’t mean that we’ll stop doing school. I just mean that our official ‘09-’10 school year will end after 180 days of schooling, as stipulated by state law, and that 180 days is up at around the same time that our county’s public schools let out in May. We won’t be done with school work by far, however. Our year is broken into three semesters and all three are “in session.” Fall and Spring have been more traditional, while Summer will be broken up by camps and trips, include a baseline of daily work for maintenance sake (math and grammar), and may involve a unit study or two.

Next year, I’d like to start balancing our school year a little better, spreading our out breaks, taking a shorter break for summer and over Christmas, but having more frequent 3 or 4-day weekends. Depending on what happens w/ Officer Daddyman’s work schedule, we might even rearrange our week to match with his for maximum family time! I love the complete customization of our schedule. We have to do school for 180 days, but we can take those days whenever (and however) we want!

That’s how the [Smrt] Homeschooler’s calendar looks!

Do you have a question for the [Smrt] Homeschooler? Email them to
smrtmama@smrtlernins.com

We had another fantastic week at the McLernins Academy of Advanced Lernins (no, I don’t actually put that on my DOI or attendance reports, but I’m considering it for next year)!

Monday was only a half-day, because Captain Science and I had a special day planned. I wasn’t going to have him do any work at all, but the little darling woke up early, knocked out his run, math, and grammar before I ever got up! We closed shop early to go see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which Captain Science declared one of the best movies ever, even if it wasn’t very much like the book. We rounded out our awesome afternoon with corned beef and roasted potatoes, which is his favorite meal (other than chicken fingers and french fries), for a full day of Captain Science/Smrt Mama fun. It was the best President’s Day ever.

Tuesday is co-op day at the McLernins house. We were down two students (Ari and Eclectic Girl, both on family vacations), but the board game class was still boisterous and productive. The children voted on their game idea, which, somewhat ironically, is a food fight game set in a public school cafeteria! We only had one student who didn’t like that idea, but hopefully he’s having enough fun that he won’t mind working on his less-than-first choice.

My writing students are making great progress, too. Since EG wasn’t there and I didn’t want her to get too far behind, my three students (Cpt. Science included) read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” We then discussed things like protagonists and antagonists, pacing, climax and resolution, and reliable vs unreliable narrators. Their assignment for next week was to rewrite their climactic scene from a different POV. Captain Science finished his rewrite last night.

Jumping into our subject by subject review:

It was what we’d call a FABULOUS week for math. Captain Science knocked out chapter 25 in Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents, then completed the bridge to chapter 26 in the first try! He also completed chapters 26-28 without making any mistakes. Woohoo!

Language arts was also good this week. We reviewed clauses and phrases one more time in Grammar Town, because I was still a little concerned about Captain Science being able to identify a gerund. He did several pages from Practice Town, a lesson from Caesar’s English I plus review of prior materials, and did a lesson on rhymes in Building Poems. He’s currently writing a neat final draft of his end rhymed, internal rhymed, and eye rhymed poems, which I’ll post later. Once he’s done, he’ll read the first section of Paragraph Town, wrapping up our LA work for the week.

With Patchfire on vacation (how dare she, right?), we were left to our own devices for science. She left me the materials for the brain class for co-op, so I took the students through that (messing up my own materials by coloring incorrectly, which made them laugh at me). Captain Science also did workshops I, II, and III and experiments I and II from his Thames and Kosmos physics lab, getting all caught up for the week we missed due to not having the kit yet.

Piano! I always forget to add piano. Captain Science is making huge strides. He’s an excellent sight reader, but also has a good ear for music. He’s advancing quickly into chords, playing duets with his teacher, and is slowly integrating scales. I’m so impressed by how naturally he’s taken to it, considering I was not that much of a natural on the piano. I’m so happy that he’s musically minded!

The Tank’s week was fairly uneventful: no class on Monday, happy and sunny days on Wednesday and Thursday. Have I mentioned that I can’t wait to start homeschooling him? I’m lining up my resources for next year!

Babypie has a cold. I have a cold. Officer Daddyman has a cold. That’s our big accomplishments for the week.

The second in our Secular Thursday series of secular homeschooling mom archetypes, The Organized Mom, has been guest authored by my own favorite Organized Mom, Patchfire of A Little Rebellion:

When Smrt Mama was preparing for this, her first year of homeschooling, I probably overshared my own preparations. Needing to balance the needs of two students and a toddler too, I was even more organized than ever before. I think it was the color-coded schedules that finally did her in. The result was being used loosely as a model for the Organized Mom archetype. Now Smrt Mama’s asked me to pontificate for a bit on the strengths and weakness of Organized Mom.

Here’s a quick refresher on the Organized Mom archetype, pulled from Smrt Mama’s original post on the topic:

* The Organized Mom – She is better at this than you will ever be. If you’re comparing yourself to other homeschoolers, just go ahead and quit before you get around to comparing yourself to her. You might even consider flinging yourself on your sword. She has her days scheduled to the color-coded minute and her children obey them perfectly. She researched her curricula extensively and is most likely following a Classical model. She’s already finished planning her curriculum for next year. Her children are enrolled in enrichment programs and are now very enriched and can Appreciate (with a capital A) art and music. Her motto: “It’s never too early to start looking at colleges.”

Her strengths are many. Organizing, knowledge, vision, and confidence stand out amongst them. There are weakness there, too – overscheduling, trying to do too many books and too many curricula, and above all, the possibility of arrogance. Organized Mom doesn’t know how not to be organized, though, so the key is mitigating the weaknesses.

Strengths: The obvious is first: organization. Organized Mom has a system for computer files, pieces of paper, and everything in between. Often blessed with a good memory (or a good back-up system!), Organized Mom has a place for many things, even if it’s not immediately obvious. She extends this organization onto her time, with an almost eerie ability to coordinate errands, enrichment activities, exercise, and other time demands in order to maximize efficiency. The color-coded schedule? Merely a written diagram of what’s inside her brain.
Weakness: Kids need time to play freely. They need downtime, and some spontaneity, too.
Solution: Be sure that the color-coded schedule allows that time for free play and downtime. The kids will come to look forward to it, and will also know no screen time is allowed during it. Also, don’t extend the color-coded schedules too far. Scheduling the schoolwork: good. Scheduling your Saturday down to fifteen-minute intervals? Bad. Sometimes a block of time would be better served by a checklist than a schedule, and other times, the schedule kept 95% of the time should enable Organized Mom to break the schedule entirely.

Weakness: Armed with her knowledge of curriculum, Organized Mom wants to use the best resources. All of them.
Weakness: In an attempt to play to her personal subject strengths as well as shore up her personal weaknesses, Organized Mom can easily unbalance her children’s curriculum. Afraid of shortchanging them, their enrichment activities may end up concentrated in just one or two areas.
Strength: Organized Mom knows about lots of good resources, and can change course for various children, or offer suggestions for other homeschoolers.
Strength:Organized Mom knows where her homeschool is going. She may have a formal vision statement written, or a list detailing what a high school graduate should know. She’s looking into the future, and planning with the end in mind.
Solution: Use that vision statement! Organized Mom sometimes needs to step back and look at the big picture when she’s caught up in the minutiae. Often, simply picture where a certain program or curriculum fits (or doesn’t!) in the overall plan will help her make a good decision. Organized Mom is also a perfect choice for running (or at least attending religiously) a homeschool moms’ night out or curriculum sharing night. With her knowledge of various curricula, she may know just the program for Suzy Neighbor’s advanced ten year old, or Kelly NextTownOver’s budding reader. She’s also unafraid to change programs for the needs of her different students. One child may thrive with one approach, and the next another. Luckily, she knows the ins and outs of many, and can meet her children’s needs accordingly.

Strength/Weakness: Organized Mom is confident. She has a plan and a vision, and knows what to use to achieve it. If she were inclined to make comparisons with other homeschoolers in the beginning, she’s stopped after just a year or two, or maybe less. Even when there are doubters, she just tunes them out. Think Rachel Berry on Glee singing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” There can be a fine line between confidence and arrogance, however, and one of her biggest strengths (confidence) can all too easily become a big weakness (arrogance).
Solution:The phrases “in my opinion” and “in my experience” can help mitigate the occasions when she steps close to the line. Organized Mom must still be careful to gauge people’s reactions, whether online or in person. If she’s not skilled in reading people, even more caution may be required. She shouldn’t let fear of alienation through arrogance keep her from sharing what she knows and has learned, however, which makes this strength/weakness duo by far the most difficult to navigate.

Organized Mom is the quintessential Girl Scout, living up to the motto of “Be prepared.” If her children don’t win college scholarships and go on to rule or change the world, she’ll have just one thing to say. In the immortal words of Han Solo, “It’s not my fault!”

[Note from Smrt Mama: Do you identify (even partially? somewhat humorously?) with any of the remaining homechooling archetypes? Would you like to guest author a future Secular Thursday blog post at Smrt Lernins? Email Smrt Mama with your ideas for the Secular Homeschool Archetypes series!]

Today’s “Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler” post is something of a cheater topic, as the person who asked the question was heavily involved in helping me sort out the answer. Still, I think my process could be helpful to other people, so I might as well answer this question somewhat formally.

Patchfire asks, “How did you choose your approach to homeschooling?”

First, I have to give a tremendous amount of credit to Patchfire. When I was first considering homeschooling Captain Science, she never one tried to talk me into it or convince me to use any specific approach. I know she was really hoping I’d make the decision to homeschool. I know she was hoping I’d choose a classical approach. Despite that, she constrained herself to only answering the questions I asked, only giving her opinion when I requested it, and also being honest about the challenges. For that, I am truly grateful, because I don’t have any doubts or regrets about the decisions we have made. I know they were our decisions.

Deciding on classical homeschooling was actually remarkably easy for me, though building up the courage to choose curricula and develop a schedule was hard. I have several homeschooling friends, both in person and online. I looked for the families whose children were most like Captain Science in temperament, ability, and learning style, and then assessed whether I liked how they were learning, how much they were learning, and whether or not I found them to be pleasant and well-rounded individuals.

The winner, hands down, of the “most like Captain Science” and the “most like how I’d want Captain Science to be in the future” was Patchfire’s Eclectic Girl. I loved the things she was learning, the methods by which she was learning, and wphat an enjoyable child she seemed to be overall. Plus, she and Captain Science are like two scrawny, brainy little peas in a pod, so it seemed like an easy choice to give credence to methods that worked well for her.

It was also fairly easy to choose an approach because I knew what approaches I didn’t want. I’ve never been a big fan of unschooling, at least as I’ve seen it modeled in the “real world” (or by online folks like Sandra Dodd of the “I’d rather have dentures than have memories of my parents forcing me to brush my teeth” school of thought). My personal experiences with Montessori weren’t great and I’m just not a centers kind of girl. Waldorf/Steiner? Yeah, not going with any approach that so strongly advocates a delay in reading. Unit studies sound great for some areas or topics, but I couldn’t see myself developing an entire curricula around them.

However fringe or hippie I might be in some areas of my life, when it comes to education, I’m fairly traditional. I value reading and writing, and yes, I think those are skills that should be developed earlier rather than later. I value thorough mathematical education, which includes things like knowing the multiplication tables. I think memorization and recitation are important skills for every person, skills that I have found useful on many occasions in my adult life. I value rigorous, evidence-based science education. I value history education that is both broad and deep. All of these values pointed me towards a classical approach to education.

I would recommend that every prospective homeschooler read The Well-Trained Mind first, even if classical education doesn’t sound like something that would float your boat. It’s the most thorough resource on what children should (or could, at least) learn and on what and how much to introduce when. You might read WTM and love it like I did, developing your own classical curricula for your child. You might say “Eff this noise!” and chuck it into the back yard for your chickens to eat. You might take parts from WTM and parts from other places. Whether or not you strictly define yourself by someone else’s approach isn’t the issue — I’m sure some of the most rigorous classical homeschoolers might consider me to be classical lite, as we haven’t yet started Latin (though we do a Latin-based vocabulary) and we don’t to that many fabulous extracurriculars. You just need to find a place to start if you’re trying to decide how to choose your approach to homeschooling. The rest will fall into place after that.

That’s how the [Smrt] Homeschooler chose her approach to homeschooling. Good luck choosing yours!

Do you have a question for the [Smrt] Homeschooler? Email them to
smrtmama@smrtlernins.com