School Daze

Some mornings I feel like I am in a daze. The night has been long; a full night's sleep is a thing of the past, and I don't really think one is coming in the foreseeable future. Now, "school" has started. I really don't like the term "school" because that is not what we are about. We are about education, and there is a HUGE difference. School is learning to follow rules and orders, memorizing what is in your book just long enough to regurgitate it for a test, and turning your mind from one subject to the next at the ringing of a bell (kind of like a trained lab rat can do). I went to school and I have no desire for my children to repeat that 13 year process.

Education, however, is learning to love learning. Lighting a spark of interest in a child's heart and seeing their faces light up as they realize they can do something on their own. Guiding them toward the bent that God put inside their hearts and then letting them take it from there. Facilitator, rather than teacher. My kids teach me way more than I will ever teach them anyway.

This year we are trying something new in our educational process. It is a cooperative teaching program called Classical Conversations. These groups are popping up all over the country and this is the first year that we have had one in our town. My two older kids are juniors in high school this year, and though CC does go all the way through 12th grade, they are pretty set with the online classes they take and what we do together, so they are continuing on that path. The younger two however, are "bent" like their daddy - towards math. I admire, but frankly have NO understanding for people bent towards math. Numbers are absolute "greek" to me. I am a terrible math teacher, I am a terrible math doer. My younger two excel at this subject, but it is pulling teeth to get them to read a book! This is beyond my imaginings.

Anyway, all that to say that while they are well ahead of schedule in the math department, we were falling quickly and woefully behind in "classical" education. The model of classical education simply states that the way children learn is broken into three main categories, based on age. In the "elementary" years children learn mostly by memorizing. They can memorize anything, especially if it is put to song. This is called the grammar stage. The "middle" years are the logic stage and this when they begin to see things more black and white. They can remember what they memorized earlier and now they can apply it. Finally, the high school years are the rhetoric stage. Now, they should be forming their own opinions on what they know and be able to articulate it. We have used this basic model for our educational journey from the beginning, even before I realized it had a name. It just seemed the logical thing to me. The curriculum that I use with my older ones and that I love more than anything I have ever found is called Sonlight, and it follows this basic model.

However, it seems that somehow, my little math professors have not caught the vision for literature and history that their older siblings have. They needed a little push. Classical Conversations is just the push we have been looking for. We just started last week and it was all smiles for them both!! If you knew my younger two, you would understand just what the miracle this is. All week they have been heard singing "The eight parts of speech, the eight parts of speech...." (To the tune of a congo line dance, if you can imagine - dance and all!)

Just since Monday, Graham, my little reluctant learner, can draw the 5 bodies of water that surround Europe on a blank map, he can name the 8 main parts of speech and tell me what they mean, he can sing you a sentence that tells who Charlamange was and when he was crowned Emperor, he can list the present tense Latin conjugation for the verb amo (and tell you what it means), he can name the 7 main types of biomes and what animals live in each. Plus, he has done his math, his reading work, and his Bible memorization with no complaints and we are almost finished with two books in the Narnia series that we are reading out loud.

Did you hear me say since Monday???

Similarly, Lyndsey can do all of the above, plus she has an intense grammar and writing curriculum from CC which she is working on with NO complaints thus far, and she has been reading 45 minutes per day without complaining! You probably can not get a real picture for how amazing this is, but suffice it to say that apparently CC is an answer to my prayers.

I am seriously impressed with this entire program and I just want to say that if you were ever considering home schooling and you thought you couldn't do it.....there is NO time like the present. This is a no brainer for you as a parent and it is absolutely an amazing model of education for your child.

Check it out at classicalconversatons.com --

Happy Learning!!