This is a reprint from an article I wrote for the local home school association.
I hate doing school!
It was not one of my children that uttered this complaint. It was me.
I want to homeschool my children. I know this is the greatest thing I’ll ever accomplish. I love being with them. I love learning. But I hate “doing school”.
“So don’t do it,” my wise husband answered. “Figure out what you should be doing instead.”
And so I did. And things have never been the same.
While I want my children to be well educated, I don’t really want to be spending time in textbooks. I want to be living life. In the beginning of my educating journey, I spent lots of time trying to find a curriculum that would work for my children and me. Nothing seemed to help. I hated “doing school”.
Then, I stumbled across the idea of informal education in the early years. Aha! This seemed more like me. The idea is to create an environment rich in learning experiences on which our children will build as they mature. This is not unschooling. The definition of unschooling, as I understand it, is child-led education. My children do not lead the education in our home. I do. I just don’t do it like a classroom.
We have not used textbooks in any formal way. There are no tests, quizzes, or workbooks in my home, but there is lots of learning going on. It’s learning that helps me love school.
My goal in the early years is to immerse my children in knowledge. This time, referred to in classical education as the grammar stage, is the time of discovery. That’s what we are doing together – we are discovering the world.
So, you might ask, what do we do?…
I’ll post part 2 tomorrow.
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