A Better Look

We have been busy, busy, busy with spring cleaning, STILL getting the kids classroom together and planning the twins 6th birthday party. Homeschool will officially start after the kids birthday but that’s not to say that we still don’t participate in teaching activities, after all real life provides the best learning experiences!

When I first decided to homeschool, and friends, family, and acquaintances found out, it was amazing how often and quickly the question"You can't seriously be thinking of homeschooling" is posed. In many cases, before I could even try to formulate an answer, I was usually smacked with a barrage of warnings and cautions, or had my questioner simply shake their head and smile condescendingly. It was maddening!

300 years ago, there were two choices: a) walk 17 miles through the snow to the one-room schoolhouse or, b) have your mother and father teach you at home.

Yes, believe it or not, children all throughout history were homeschooled. Alas, the poor, misfortunate, odd little child of the 1700's. How ever did they keep from falling behind? How possibly could they have learned social skills if not from being tossed into a group of fellow nine-year-olds to teach them? How could they learn independence without being smothered by a peer group? Where did they learn the necessary skills and receive the self-esteem lessons that are found on the playground? Could sibling rivalry at home ever measure up to the greater scale of cruelty, and sometimes deadly, violence we now have in abundance in some public schools?

For the child of the 1700's, homeschooling was the norm. It was not some nutty, new-age experiment that was just introduced to society. Homeschooling was how things had always been done - and quite successfully, too! Strong, brilliant men and women who were trained as children by their mothers grew up to build the great nation that we live in today. Their mothers were moms just like us; they were willing to teach. And, they knew back then that social skills were learned and practiced in the home. Kindness, patience, tolerance for siblings, perseverance, and the hard work of daily chores were learned alongside Mom and Dad, and within the family structure.

While many parents are content to hand over the responsibilities of education, influence and inadvertent character and values training to the government for 7 hours a day, I am not. The choice to homeschool my family was not necessarily easy, but crucial for us. The fact that there is a whole history that consistently demonstrates and proves the successful methods of homeschooling is a comfort to me. And frankly, the 200-year government run, public learning experiment has not impressed me at all. Ironically, despite the low statistics and depressing national test scores, as well as the rampant playground torments, school shootings, and prejudiced curricula filled with values and philosophies in direct conflict with my own, it is I who gets the bewildered looks from other parents when they learn I am a homschooling mommy.

On an ending note, I must emphatically add that I do not "condemn" all public schools or view them as an enemy. Nor would I ever dream of judging - in any way at all - parents, who, after consideration, prayer and/or much thought, choose public, private, charter, or any other educational way or system. We all want what is best for our families, and being vastly different, it would be tremendously egotistical to believe that our way is the best for all families. Rather, "Who are you to judge another man? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand - Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind." Read Romans 14.

Continue to research; and my respect to all parents who refuse to be blindly led or forced into any system, based upon peer pressure, social trends, or simply because it is the direction the stampeding masses are charging into.

Our little ones are too precious for us to let go without first being confident of the hands, hearts, and minds of those they will come under.

There are so many type of homeschooling curriculums out there but we have chose a Montessori, child-led, unschooling approach to our teaching methods.

The Montessori method has been around for over 100 years and some of the most famous people have taught, founded and graduated from Montessori schools.

What do Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Prince William and Harry of the British Royal family, Sergey Brin the co-founder of Google.com, Peter Drucker, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and Julia Child have in common?  They are all Montessori graduates! 

Famous people that adopted Montessori teachings for their children includes;

• Stephen J. Cannell, TV Writer-Producer-Director
• Patty Duke Austin, Actress
• Cher Bono, Singer and Actress
• John Bradshaw, Psychologist and Author
• Yul Brynner, Actor
• Marcy Carcy, TV Producer
• Bill and Harry Clinton, Former President and NY Senator
• Michael Douglas, Actor
• Yo Yo Ma, Cellist
• Jennifer and Daniel Mulhern, Governor of Michigan

The pioneers of Montessori curriculum teachings include list of names such as;

• Alexander Graham Bell (inventor) and his wife Mabel founded the Montessori Education Association in 1913.  They also helped establish the first Montessori curriculum class in Canada and one of the first in the United States.
• Thomas Edison, scientist and inventor, helped found a Montessori school.
• President Wilson's daughter trained as a Montessori curriculum teacher.  There was a Montessori classroom in the basement of the White House during Wilson's presidency.
• Jean Piaget, noted Swiss psychologist, made his first observations of children in a Montessori school.  He was also head of the Swiss Montessori Society for many years.

I love how this method pays such attention to details regarding learning that most people don’t think about, the use child size furniture so the children can have full mobility of the class room, after all the class room is their and the teacher is only there to observe not dominate.

 Montessori materials are designed to be self correcting allowing the children to teach themselves. if givien the opportunity, training and experience children can learn to be self reliant, correcting themselves rather than looking to an adult for correction and approval. Instead of control being applied by the teacher through instructions or reward and punishment, control of error is built into the Montessori classroom and into the approach the teacher takes.

The classroom is set up to teach the students control of error using glass that can break, paint that can stain, hard floors that can be noisy if furniture isn’t moved on it properly.

Walking into a Montessori class you will see every student working on something different and students are allowed to do their “work” wherever they see fit, on the floor with a mat, a table, outside the room if they fell it helps them concentrate better or outside.

As I blog more it will be easier to understand the method.

Child-led learning is allowing the children to learn what they show interest in. just like the Montessori method it doesn’t force the children to learn according to what grade they are in or according to what the other students are learning it allows the students to carry out their own work according to the child’s interest. I have always done child-led play meaning I follow the child’s lead and don’t make them follow mine. If Jayvin is in the room playing Legos and he invites me to play I will follow his lead I won’t assume that he is building people, or cities or whatever it LOOKS like he is building, I feel that hinders his imagination. Instead I will ask. How simple of a concept but believe me most parents forget! So I figure using this concept in education is a great fit for us.

Unschooling is not easily defined. The range of homeschoolers claiming the unschool label vary from "radical unschoolers" who disdain any form of curricula or textbooks to those who prefer child-led learning but might also be called eclectic. All homeschooling was originally called unschooling by John Holt, one of the pioneers of the movement. Gradually the term has come to mean those who use no formal curricula but make liberal use of the learning opportunities that present themselves in daily life. Without outside intervention in the form of forced teaching, learning naturally happens. Unschoolers attempt to provide the best environment to allow that natural learning to take place. It is often called child-led learning.

The children have 12 subjects that they will be participating in.

-History

-Science Experiments

-Matter and Astronomy

-Introduction to Health Science, Art and Music

-Math

-Botany

-Zoology

-Practical Life

-Cultural Geography

-Physical Geography

-Language Arts

-Five Great Lessons/Cosmic Education and Peace

The next several blogs will be explaining more about each individual subject and by then the class should be set up for me to take some pictures and start blogging about our school days.