Two Kid Schoolhouse
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Sep. 15, 2006
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Changing Perspective
A few years ago I started to read Teaching the Trivium by Laurie and Harvey Bluedorn. It was very different from the other books on classical education I had read, particularly The Well-Trained Mind. I didn't really think too much of it at the time and set the book aside.
Fast forward a bit. I've been working with my kids, watching them, seeing how they learn, for a while now. A lot of things I learned about classical education don't seem to work well for us. One struggled with learning to read; the other taught herself. Neither was reading at age 6; now at 7 1/2 and 9, they are doing quite well, and loving it. Both have trouble memorizing math facts but one (the struggling reader) understands concepts that I don't. (Thank God for Daddy.) My kids are so curious but sometimes they don't want to learn what I believe I should be teaching them. The classical progression in science as outlined in The Well-Trained Mind hasn't really worked for us (though I understand and, in theory at least, agree with the progression). If everyone is really interested in learning about bugs, do we have to do physics because, well, it's just time to do that? In our first go-round of chemistry, does my struggling writer really need to keep a notebook full of definitions, or can we learn to love chemistry by reading about the different elements and doing some experiments?
As I thought more and more about my kids and how they work, the Bluedorn's list of "ten things to do with your child before age ten" started coming into my mind. Hmm... what was on that list anyway?
So a few weeks ago I pulled the book back out. Good thing it's hard for me to part with books! I almost sold it last year, but "something" told me to hang on to it.
Suddenly it started making sense. Many of the things they suggest, and which I dismissed before, have proven true in my own home. A boy's "allergy" to pencils, for one. The dubious value of "workbook" math at a young age. The real value of working on character and obedience first.
Does this mean that Teaching the Trivium is the perfect book and The Well-Trained Mind should get tossed aside? Well, no. I hope someday someone writes the perfect homeschooling method book. But then I guess it would look like school, where everyone gets put into a certain grade level because they are the same age, and learns the same things at the same time. So we have to sort through the methods and recommendations and fit them to our children. I'm not going to follow the guideline (in Teaching the Trivium) of 30 minutes a day of copywork for my 9 year old pencil-hating boy. But we will persevere and increase his total writing incrementally. (I suspect the authors would agree.) I can't go back in time and not do workbook math till age 10 - we've been using workbooks for some time. Our state requires testing at 3rd grade level and those tests include math. So we have to have some exposure to it anyway. I might calm down a bit about getting those math facts down, though. (Or I might not.) I will use some of the science resources suggested in TWTM; I just might not use them when the authors say I should.
A couple of homeschooling friends have expressed surprise at my change in perspective. We shouldn't be surprised when we change our minds, though. I think we should be surprised and concerned if we don't. We expect our chidren to change and mature in their understanding of the world as we homeschool them. Why wouldn't we change too, as we homeschool ourselves?
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Musings of a slacker homeschool Mom
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• Sep. 15, 2006 - Good Read
Nadine