There is a sense of anxiety, and fear with the newness of studying a new subject. But, that’s only because we fear tackling a new subject we don’t understand. Once you understand it, you are filled with joy.

The physical care and feeding of our children is naturally part of what we do as homeschool parents. We also care and feed their mind with a nutritional diet. When we add the trivium to the equation, creative ideas result. But, like all things, this requires careful planning and feeding. Trivium ideas don’t just happen in a vaccum. You need to feed the trivium to your family. Naturally, since all families are different, the way we express the trivium will look differently. What remains the same is the model. First the Grammar, then logic, and lastly rhetoric. This learning model of the trivium is not new, what is new, are the ways we choose to express it.

As a trivium user I ask you, the reader, isn’t it time to change status quo— by tipping the balance. This tipping implies the care and feeding of trivium ideas.

For most parents, careing and feeding of trivium ideas may come as a new thought. And, I think it’s because we we are victims of our limited thinking of the trivium— we were stymied by dumb down public education we received as children. Most parents, have never even heard of the trivium, so it’s not surprising we can’t arrive at a first-rate solution when tackling a new subject.

As a homeschool parent, you may be limiting your Trivium knowledge only to writing, reading and arthimetic. But, you should also take advantage of all the trivium has to offer you.   

Make a decision TODAY—  learn the trivium.

Would you like to learn how to create fine wedding gifts crafted from 24 carat gold and other precious metals? You can. Are you an internet based mom who needs to sort out technology for buisness, or do you just want to learn copywriting because you know, you live in the age of noise marketing?

In this short post, I could never hope to cover all three stages of 24 carat gold, technology and copywriting. However, I would like to point you to a book that clearly explains what the trivium is, and how to use it. www.Triviumpusuit.com

Before you can care and feed trivium ideas you need to prepare the seed bed. Here are some seed starters.

q     Get Ideas- Keep a swipe file. Copywriters always keep these. A swipe file is a collection of promotions you reference when you need inspiration creating a piece of promotion marketing. The whole idea of the swipe file can be tweeked a bit to fit your need for studying a new subject. To see an example of a swipe file check out The Copywriter’s Handbook” by Robert W. Bly page 25.

q     Prepare the Seed Bed of Ideas- You need proper tools, which include understanding the grammar stage, logic stage and rhetoric stage.

q     Water Your Ideas-  Read books, journals, magazines, that are particular to your subject of interest.

q     Let the Ideas take Root- Sometimes ideas need time to incubate. For that, I keep a “Box of Ideas” next to my computer. I filled it with tabed alphabet index and lined cards.

q     Use Your Ideas for [fill in the blank]- You can locate these from exceptional writers that already write jounals, books in your subject of interest. Google “Association of” + your subject.

Use the Library, not just the internet.

As you care and feed your family trivium ideas, don’t just rely on the internet, use the library too. Use specialized libraries. Buy memberships if you need to, but don’t undervalue them.  Unfortunately libraries are making more room for technology and are trashing many industry specific books. On our blog we write about medical botany, and some of the best medical botany books I have ever found were in a library, or from a book dealer.

Maribel Hernandez

www.APMFormulators.com

Hear On-line http://www.homeschoolingradio.com/Archived%20Programs%202007%20January.htm 5 Advantages for homeschoolers when Learning Family Medicine

Words tagged: trivium, ideas,  Classical Education, Copywriting