our dozen beautiful feet

Just a few weeks ago, I posted about how I really do believe in the mentor model of education and that's convicted me to keep going through high school with home educating my kids. But we are in the midst of one of the most intense social and medical global crises of the past century.   Our whole lives are shut down and everything is turned on its head, including education. I've seen lots of posts and articles on how families are reacting to this downtime, and it's mostly been positive. Kids are behaving better. Parents are less stressed. People are eating together. There is no rushing from one activity to the next. Kids are actually less bored and more happy. I really hope all of this makes all of us take stock of how our lives had run away from us, like an out-of-control horse with us just hanging on for dear life, not sure how to stop it. I hope this experience gives us permission and confidence to say "no" in days to come so as to preserve a little bit of...

I don't know about *most* kids, but I know for my kids for most things, they need a guide that's an actual person, not just a book. They need accountability. They need someone that's going to inspire them, model for them not only a good grasp and love of the subject at hand, but also what kind of a person they ought to be becoming. They need to engage in conversation around the ideas they're encountering and be sharpened and challenged, shown how to engage ideas without accepting them.  I want them to be interacting with and inspired by adults in their teenage years in real life (or virtually).  I want them to have great tutors that love their subject for all their classes.  That can be me and their dad for most things, but not for all things. I realize that about myself. High school credits/subjects/courses seem to fall into three categories for me as a homeschool mom: 1. Things I know well enough to help my kids learn 2. Things I *want* learn with them or ahead ...

It's a good problem to have. All the options. The last ten years have seen an explosion in curricular options for homeschooling. The homeschool conferences are like going to the cereal aisle at the grocery store: SO MANY CHOICES. It's so tempting to think that there must be something better out there than what you currently have, that your kids are missing out on some magical experience in spelling, that *that* program would be so much easier for you to use, more colorful, more fun, more....  I want you to hear: most of the time, switching programs will not fix a problem if you haven't been consistently and diligently working the program you have. When you're beginning to homeschool for the first time, especially if you're jumping in with multiple kids in different grades, I've got three pieces of advice to get started. 1.  Do some basic reading on the different philosophies of education.   There are four or five major prevailing theories or philosophies...

A couple of years ago, I started digging into how to teach my kids to really understand literature.  Luke was finishing sixth grade and had read a lot of great books on his own.  But we hadn't done much with literary analysis, or real literature.  He'd mostly read classics for kids or historical fiction to bring his history studies to life.  As we moved into middle school, I was trying to figure out the best way to tackle the Great Books.  I started out looking for the perfect curriculum to guide us through the Great Books, to provide us with a reading list and the right questions to think about. I downloaded samples and made book lists, compared book lists, re-arranged book lists. I thoroughly examined Veritas Press Omnibus, Tapestry of Grace, Ambleside Online, Classical Conversations, Old Western Culture, Beautiful Feet, Sonlight, Memoria Press, Excellence in Literature, Schole Academy, www.classical-homeschooling.org.   With a few exceptions, I felt l...

A little over a year ago, I posted an essay I had written for The Atrium class I was taking through the Circe Institute on the seven liberal arts.  Our fall semester was spent taking a close look at the history of education and the first three arts, known as the Trivium.  That essay is here . I've been meaning to follow that up with some thoughts on the Quadrivium.  It's been more of a challenge than I anticipated. After reading Beauty for Truth's Sake (twice), The Liberal Arts Tradition (three times) and listening to Andrew Kern wax eloquent on the quadrivium for about 16 weeks, I feel like I know just enough to know that I know nothing. Over the past 40 years, the renewal of classical education has done a lot of really great work and made some wonderful discoveries about true education.  There's been a lot of great discovery and reconstruction of ideas in a modern context specifically related to the Trivium arts.  A quick search of "classical curri...

I'm sure we've all found ourselves in situations beyond our control that are surprising, frustrating, discouraging and more.  I've been processing this for myself as I walk through an unexpected situation, and I'm trying to figure out how to navigate it. (I know you're all thinking right now this is going to be about coronavirus. It's not at all...) After spending seven significantly lonely years in India, finding tight, close-knit community was really important to us when we returned. I worked hard the first couple of years here in the US to identify other people, specifically homeschoolers, looking for that. And then I worked really hard to build a homeschool community.  We started with about six families, and a core group of six fourth graders starting out with ancient history projects, Latin for Children A and Writing & Rhetoric together.   That was five years ago.  We've been meeting for five years!  Those little fourth graders are fini...

Every spring since 2017, I've made the trek to Fort Worth to attend the Great Homeschool Convention, pretty much solely to sit in on the classical education track and investigate curricula at the vendor booths.  It has grown me so much and being able to speak personally to people like Dr. Christopher Perrin, Carol Reynolds, Andrea Lipinski, Adam Andrews and Andrew Kern has been challenging, formative, and inspiring in many ways. These conferences keep me going! For various reasons, I had decided not to go this spring.  But, thanks to coronavirus, the entire conference moved online! The past three days, I've sat in the comfort of my own bed and had the privilege of listening to these wise people, and being challenge and inspired for the coming school year. I have a composition book that has become my "GHC Notebook." I've used it exclusively for taking notes at GHC conferences the past four years. Yesterday after the conference, I flipped back through it to see...