Homeschool

2 of 20 (in the Top 20 of 2020)
The states of Texas and New York have remarkably varying perspectives on homeschooling. In New York, our school district required regular quarterly reporting, grading and curriculum planning. In Texas, homeschool means providing a “bonafide” education – and I assure you that it is exactly how it sounds. Folks here are wild, they can choose to Unschool, use a Classical Method, Montessori, Charlotte Mason, Unit Studies, Child-Lead, Eclectic Methods or the like. There is zero reporting. In fact, our school district doesn’t even know that we have 7 children living in our home. And so developing a homeschool approach that works for our community means a trial and error approach for starters.

Each of the four adults is a product of public school education and suffer from the long term effects of pervasive coastal elitism. We like using big words, reading highbrow literature, and having our children practice penmanship. It would be foolish for us to claim that our perspectives on homeschooling are unbiased or objective, and so it’s important that we share the highlights of our homeschool journey with the following caveat: we have by no means arrived or solved the world’s challenges with education. We are still in the process of discovering what it means to educate, we are still unlearning and discerning what systems and information ultimately have value or should be discarded.

We have grouped our 7 children into four grades or developmental stages. We have 2 infants, “the babies”, who primarily require floor time and comfortable napping conditions. We have 2 preschoolers who participate in our morning movement, our daily Bible lesson and will complete a worksheet or two. Both children can write their name. After snack, “the littles” spend a significant portion of the day outside covered in snot and dirt, playing imaginative games and and making weird sound effects. Our two 1st graders and our 4th grader have grade specific language arts and math curriculums we use for one-on-one learning, but they study history collaboratively and science independently according to their interests. “The bigs” also spend a good portion of the day in free play or outside. They also make weird sound effects and seem to enjoy dirt and/or snot.

It is a joy to have the flexibility to accommodate our little learners and make adjustments according to the seasonal needs of our family. We spend a significant amount of our energy on intentional learning and we plan to share our successes and failures here on this platform. So stay tuned…