Aug. 21, 2005

Katherine Dang seminar

I apologize to anyone who might have checked here Friday or Saturday looking for my promised summary of Ms. Dang's seminar.  I was visiting my parents and time got a little short.  And I'm not sure how to summarize what I heard.  It was a wonderful seminar, full of very good information and it provided a firm background for teaching the principle approach.  I don't really have time right now to post very much on it, but am planning to go through my notes later and may see if I can provide a general outline of sorts." For the moment, I am going to provide one idea which to me is key to this whole thing. "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.  And God saw the light and that it was good:  and God divided the light from the darkness." (Gen 1:3-4). The light may also be viewd as the truth of God's word.  In fact, John 1:5 draws this analogy nicely.  If we are successful at teaching our children the scripture and how to reason from scripture, we will have given them all the tools necessary.  It is the light which shines in the darkness, not the darkness covering the light.  Once a child knows truth, a lie will have no power.  They will be able to discern truth from lie independently if they carry the light in their heart. The ability to read AND reason is very important.  As to how to do this...well, my daughter is still a bit young.  She reads well but not that fluently yet.  I'm hoping to begin those kinds of lessons by the start of next school year.  This seminar also helped me to feel more confident in my vision for what I want to accomplish and a little less worried about the lesson plans in my lesson plan book.  I was already starting to wonder if we would ever get time to get to them, because with every idea we explore, so many relevant things come up.  I don't want to overwhelm her with things she is not ready for or with too much.  I firmly believe that my purpose is to teach my daughter HOW to think.  All the rest of the facts of each subject can come on their own as we explore.  But it is not nearly as important for her to know the factual events of history as it is for to be able to see God's hand in what we observe and to be able to draw reasonable conclusions from the information we discover. My original plan was to come back and begin working on history as our first formal PA subject, and now I'm thinking there is no hurry.  We already are establishing the principles behind the subjects in what we are teaching.  I think adding a formal study of history at this point would be too much.  For now, we will stick with our geography plan because that is providing good history as well, but focus more on the history presented in the bible.  But primarily, we will work on increasing fluency in reading, continue math and get used to thinking about God as the force and the reason behind everything.  So basically what we were already doing.

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