Homeschooling was, initially, something my parents were trying as a low-cost alternative to private school. So we began in a very schoolish manner. We signed up for Christian Liberty Academy and got a big box full of workbooks. At some point in my early years my parents had added a room on the south of the house, and it was fitted up with blackboards, alphabet cards, a flag, and desks or tables (the furniture arrangement varied over the years).
We followed the same schedule as other schools. We opened each day with a pledge to the flag and the Bible, with a prayer and a hymn. Mom tried to see to it that we worked through the workbooks as instructed. We even had a school name for official correspondence, though I always felt rather silly about it and now can't even remember what it was.
I have heard workbooks work well for some people. But none of us were well adapted to them. My older brother, not too impressed with the social circle provided by his younger siblings, spent most of the year working with our grandfather, building my great-aunt's house. (Rather a good plan for a 13 year old boy anyway, I would think.)
The workbooks didn't terrorize me, but they certainly bored me. I can still remember a few of them, but none from the early years come back with any fondness. The history books were too thin and barren of real stories; the math books were tedious; the phonics and language books tended to be superfluous.
As I recall, my younger brother got along with them the least well. He was only four, after all, and definitely not academically inclined. He never liked school work, and he still doesn't. (He did, however, become a good reader and though he never writes for entertainment, I have never changed the oil in my own car, while he rebuilt his first engine at 13. Talents differ.)
Fortunately my mother was no good at teaching from workbooks or following a set schedule for more than a couple of weeks. We would start out with grand intentions and then everything would fall apart after a few days. What she was good with was coming up with huge and intriguing projects, especially in art and science. I still remember the fantastic murals we would make for Christmas and Easter, and the models of molecules made of spray-painted styrofoam balls.
Several years she supported us in designing entries for the state Science Fair, and we always made a good showing. In second grade my next younger brother carried away all the honors with a project on how different-colored lenses affected the sight of normal and color-blind people. I never got quite that successful, but I learned a great deal of use to me in later life from my first grade project on weather and my fourth-grade project on statistical manipulation. Especially the latter one. I also learned a lot about layout from these projects, which was itself a very useful skill to have.
There were always the books. While other mothers apparently were devising ways to bribe their children to read, my mother was striving, with tears and prayers, to get us to stop reading long enough to finish our chores. She never quite succeeded. Not that she was entirely free from guilt in this matter, either. The best part of school was if she had decided to read out loud to us. Once she got going, we did everything in our power to keep her going. We would put the baby down for its nap, bring glass after glass of water, even voluntarily fold laundry, if only she would "Read on!"
In fact, it was only through real books that she finally found a way to get us to finish our workbooks. Near the end of the school year, she bought a shelf full of brand new children's fiction and set it on the top shelf. For every workbook we brought to her completed, we were allowed to choose a book from the shelf. With that incentive, I could finish half a year's history in two days. And I did.
For the full series, click on The Things I Remember. | 