Yes-I've been singing that song all day, and my MOST favorite thing

When I thought about how I would approach this blog, the song popped into my head and it stuck.  So there you go.  I think it fits. 

I am going to start this blog off right and talk about my most favorite homeschool thing ever.  The book that completely changed my world.  The book that took me from I don't know if I can do this God, to I can not wait to do this God!! 

A little background, we moved a ton when my oldest was little.  I hauled him to England, Nashville, and back to Birmingham through his preschool and kindergarten years.  The one constant in those years was Montessori.  I love Montessori.  It is a hands-on, logical approach to education, and it worked for him.  He could go as fast or as slow (in his case fast, fast, fast), as you were ready for.  It kept him challenged and motivated, and out of trouble...mostly.  Anway, in his kindergarten year, child #2 was born, and we started contemplating private school tuition for 2 kids.  And then 10 months after she rocked our world, we found out that baby #3 would be coming.  3 kids in private school was just not going to happen.  My Montessori education, hyper-active, constantly needing a challenge son was just not going to make it sitting in a desk in public school.  But how to do you send 1 to private and not the others.  This is how God put homeschooling in our world.  I thought homeschoolers were insane before I was slapped in the face with it and started doing what I always do, researching.  I spent the next 2 years researching.  Yes, 2.  Years.  That's how I do things.  I planned out his entire 1st grade year, and then sent him to Montessori school.  I then re-planned when I found new things.  I have a bad habit of finding new things, and just adding them onto the old, instead of replacing.  Anyway, I continued this process for 2 years while he was in 1st and 2nd grade.

It was about January of his 2nd grade year when God took over my insanity, and finally got through my thick, planning-obsessed skull.  I was looking at needing 3k for child #2 for the next year, and I had no idea how to swing it.  At this point, I finally listened to one of the many, many recommendations to read the Well-Trained Mind (if you haven't read it, this is your recommendation--pay attention).  I picked it up at the library, and that book rocked my world.  If you are a planner, read the whole thing.  If you are easily overwhelmed, only read the part relevant to your child at this time.  This book encouraged me that not only could I teach them at home, but that I could do it well. 

Basically, the WTM is a book that lays out an approach to schooling, a scope and sequence that is typically referred to as classical.  You teach in a 4 year cycle, and that cycle repeats 3 full times throughout 1st-12th grade.  As a historian, it was so appealing to me that history was taught chronologically, and that literature, science, and real books were all tied in to the approach.  This was not only an education, but an excellent education, and that is what I desired for my kids. 

With this approach, in year 1, you teach the ancient world and biology.  If you think about the Greeks and the Romans--biology was what they knew.  They were dissecting and studying the human body and nature.  Your literature selections feed into that.  You read fiction and non-fiction based in that time period.  Year 2 is the middle ages and earth/space science.  In the beginning of the middle ages, people only knew what was in front of them--earth science, and then the great space discoveries, such as Galileo, occurred during this time.  Year 3 is the early modern world and chemistry, since the early modern world is the age of chemistry.  And year 4 is the modern world and physics, since the modern world is the age of physics.  It just makes so much beautiful, logical sense.  American history is studied in context, and not isolated from the rest of world history, and students learn what happens and how those event relate to others before them in the timeline.

That same cycle will repeat again in 5th-8th, and again in 9th-12th.  In the 2nd round, you add in logic, so that your student isn't only learning the subjects, but they can go deeper and start to ask why questions that developmentally are happening anyway.  In high school, the student will take the facts and the logic they have learned, and will add in study of argument, called rhetoric.  They will learn how to present their own unique ideas in writing and in speech.

Your first assignment then, if you are new to homeschooling.  Read the Well-Trained Mind.  It completely changed my focus and structure of our homeschooling and gave me the courage and plan I needed to take that first step.