Trivium Pursuit
5:08 AM, Feb. 10, 2006
Thank you, Old Schoolhouse Magazine, for allowing us to tell your readers about how our family launched into the book writing and publishing business.
It was shortly after our first child was born in 1975 that we latched onto the idea of homeschooling. After some investigation, we began with a formal homeschool curriculum in 1980. Four children later, in 1989, the Iowa homeschool association asked us to speak at their convention and to give seminars on teaching the subjects of classical education: Latin, Greek, and logic. We decided to rent a booth in their exhibit hall, so we wrote up a small catalog and sold a few Latin and logic books. Shortly after, Harvey published his Greek Alphabetarion and continued to test and revise Homeschool Greek, which we published in the early 90's. About the same time we published Vocabulary Bridges from English to Latin and Greek and Handy English Encoder Decoder, which we have revised several times.
Each year during the spring and fall we would travel extensively, speaking at numerous support groups and homeschool conventions (in 44 states total), and during the winter months we would write books and curricula, including a periodical on classical education applied to homeschooling. In 2001 we published Teaching the Trivium, which was the compilation of twenty years worth of experience, seminar notes, articles, and correspondence. We followed this with Ancient History from Primary Sources in 2003 and A Greek Hupogrammon in 2005.
Sometime in the mid 90's I assigned Johannah (our oldest daughter) the task of making a little book about the Greek alphabet, using calligraphy and her own style of illustrations. She has now published several other children's picturebooks. In 2002 our two sons published their first book, The Fallacy Detective, followed in 2005 by The Thinking Toolbox. Lord willing, our daughter Helena is producing her first full color illustrated book this year -- Little Bitty Baby Learns the Alphabet.
Our business has been an extension of our homeschooling. What we learned we wrote about in order to help others to learn. We encouraged our children in the areas in which they excelled and helped them with the task of producing tangible items which they could later market. Our initial products were simple and rough, but as talents have matured and various skills have sharpened, so have our products (we hope).
One warning to young parents who would like to start a home business: Don't allow homeschooling to take a back seat. It is too easy for the mother to become so involved in the day-to-day details of the business that it saps the energies she needs to be a good wife and mother. The husband needs to carry the business, and the children can be involved in the business as they are capable. We have seen many home businesses so absorb the time and energies of the mother that the parents ended up putting the kids into a classroom school.
Laurie Bluedorn
Trivium Pursuit
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/LaurieBluedorn
Comments
