It's interesting though because the three of us range from straight school-at-home with a packaged curriculum to self designed classical curriculum to eclectic edging towards unschooling. Guess which one I am!
It's made me think about what I do and why. It's a curriculum tea, not an apologia for my home school, but, I would like to support those who feel the call to do something a little different, and especially, those who look at traditional home schooling and think, "I could never do that."I'm an eclectic home schooler (you noticed that in the header, right?). That means I use anything and everything to home school and I have a ton of fun doing it! It's a "chart and compass" approach instead of a "turn by turn GPS" approach. The chart is what my kids need to know to be fully functioning adults (which includes being able to pursue higher education). The compass is joy.
If I could say one thing to someone thinking about home schooling, it would be, "Why determines how." The mose essential thing to do, if you are considering home schooling, is to pray as a couple and ask God, "Why?"
For us the answer, the touchstone of our home schooling, our magnetic north, is, "To help our children become the people God created them to be."There are many, many, MANY other great reasons, and we do have secondary reasons, but that is the one God put in our hearts at the very beginning. Obviously that why gives you the "how" of an highly individualistic approach. We adapt how we teach, and, to some extent, what we teach to each child. And by teach, I mean both directly instructing and supporting their own learning adventures (I am not literally teaching Mxyl Japanese, just supporting him while he takes the class!).
For the rest of the series: part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here.
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