I think that my cobweb-y thoughts have all seen the light of day through this series that I have done on Classical Education. If I didn't have this blog to process all of my thoughts I am pretty sure that I would be one crazed woman right about now. In writing my thoughts and findings about CE, I have renewed an interest in how to apply this philosophy to our homeschool. I am more certain than ever that CE does not have to be dry and boring. It doesn't have to be 'drill'n'kill.' There can be a sense of beauty and creativity in a CE day. It is possible.
This is how it works for us. We do not use many workbooks. I have made it abundantly clear that I loathe workbooks. That is not to say that we do not use workbooks at all. Mia uses workbooks for vocabulary and she will use one for cursive until she gets the hang of it. Rocky is a workbook-loving guy so I can see more workbooks in his future. But I do not use workbooks as our sole curriculum. I use more living education methods to teach the basics to my kids. We use living books for spelling, dication and grammar. (we use this in combination with FLL.)
I have heard so many times that CE needs to be a rigorous education. I agree, but does rigorous need to be completed with workbooks and textbooks? Can't a child have a rigorous education with the use of living books and other such methods? Even though we do not use structured curriculum, Mia is learning how to diagram sentences. She knows how to use a dictionary, She knows what synonyms, homonyms and antonyms are. I don't consider our homeschool rigorous (yet, I think there is time for that in jr. high and older.) yet my child knows the same things that other children of her age knows. Isn't that what is important?
Our days are full of discussion over literature and other books that we have been reading. We talk about the virtues that are seen or lacking in the characters that we read about. We watercolour. We have nature study. Our days are full of creative expression through puppet plays, sculpting, painting, etc. Beauty from God's creation is quite evident in the things that are part of our days.
Right now, grammar is the only formal part of the Trivium that we are concentrating on. From where I am standing now, I am hoping to introduce logic and rhetoric to my children, but not until they are in jr. and sr. high. Latin will also be a part of our curriculum but, again, I will be starting that later--probably when Mia is 10 or 11.
Our homeschool will have all of the same ingredients as other classical homeschools. The way that we mix it all together may be a bit different than others but, hopefully, the finished result will be the same.