Our Great Homeschool Expreriment

• Aug. 7, 2007 - Back to Homeschool--Question 2

Today's question from i have to say is "How do you homeschool?".

I started out using classical education. I would have loved to have been instructed that way as a child and would have thrived. (Classical method in a military school, ah, the stuff of my dreams.) Unfortunately, I gave birth to a child who received some sort of recessive gene that caused him to be an artist. Artists and classical education don't make for a good mix, at least not the way we were doing it, so I've had to learn to be flexible and creative.

This year we are allowing DB1 a lot more say in how and what he is taught. He does understand the need for the basics (Phonics, Grammar, Math, and Latin--yes, Latin) so it is not difficult. But the teaching does not need to be "by the book." Sometimes, the book is wrong for him. He doesn't "do" busy work so we cut a lot of things out.

Some examples of how we are allowing him to chose his course of study are: 1) We allowed him to choose whether or not he would like to take his Latin online. He chose not to. Guess that means I'm going to continue to learn Latin. ;-) 2) He chose the subject he will study for science. 3) He requested to not have to write down all the word definitions they want in Shurley Grammar (busy work that could be presented in a better format, imo).

At this point there are some things we do that we like to do the "unschooling" way, there are others for which we use a more classical approach.

Then there's DB2. Age 5. A born classical learner. Yeah, this is going to be fun. :-D