Well, baby is now nearly 2 weeks overdue.  Well on Tuesday he/she will be.  At least I had planned to do lessons up until the due date. 

I have been reading a few history books lately.  Famous Men of the Middle Ages is a good one.  It's also available free online at The Baldwin Project, along with a lot of other good books.

I've also been reading a book from the library, the only book from the library on homeschooling (!) about unschooling.  Whilst I don't think I'll ever become a complete hardcore unschooler, the ideas in it certainly have merit.  However I don't think it is biblical to just "trust the child" to educate themselves on what they want to learn when they want to learn it.  Children need discipline, and they also need to be instructed in the Scriptures, which is one of the main reasons we're homeschooling!  However, I am encouraged to give the children more choice in what they learn, and more time to follow their own interests, as well as committing to helping them, not just learning what I have scheduled for them.  We have periods of unschooling where a lot of this goes on, and usually the children are happy to return to lessons when we do. 

I sometimes have a tendency to overschedule lessons, just because there's so much great curriculum to do!  Added to that I don't want to waste what we've bought!  I love it when our scheduled lessons provide a spark of an idea which kindles into an interest.  This has happened with bird-watching after beginning lessons in Jeannie Fulbright's "Flying Creatures of the fifth day" book.  Three of our children are now noticing the great variety of bird life around us and thinking of ways to attract them to bird feeders.  They are becoming proficient at using our field guide too.  The same kind of thing happened when we studied the Astronomy book from the same series.  However this was not so evident when we did Botany, I think because instead of doing it as a group, with me reading aloud, I assigned the reading and projects for them to do on their own.

I've almost decided to resume where we left off studying Diana Waring's "Romans, Reformers, Revolutionaries" guide.  I really want my children to have an overview of the sweep of world history before they leave me, and I think this will help us get just that.  It does involve a lot more planning and gathering of resources than The Mystery of History, but it also offers more choice and is "meatier" for the older ones.  We will use the relevant lessons in Mystery of History as read alouds.  I'm thinking of leaving the younger ones (6 and 7) out of history for now unless they want to do it, because they really don't have the maturity to understand even what history is!  I'll read them interesting stories from history, and leave the formal study until later. 

You'd think after about 10 years home schooling I'd know what I was doing!

Hope to have some baby news soon...