When you are picking out and deciding what how to educate your children, you need to start with the end in mind. And seriously guys, this woks with sending your public-school kids as well. 

1. What worldview do you want your children to have?

2. What career/path will your children be going down?

3. What role do electronics play in your home?

The answers to the questions are what illuminate the path you are walking. They don't just get you out the door. When you KNOW the end, it's just a little easier to pick a curriculum, and style of learning, to get you guys started.

• Now, starting with the end in mind won't tell you if it works for your child's personality.

• Or if it will fit into your family's rhythm TWO seasons from now.

• Or if you will even LIKE the curriculum once you've added 3 more children.

Life changes and there IS an ebb and flow. BUT, by picking your end point now, you give yourself a point to look towards. This will help you and your family walk a little bit of a straighter line. 

Come to the How to Start Homeschooling 101 Workshop to get more help on starting to homeschool. We will:

• take an in-depth look in how to find your states homeschool laws,
• where to find local support for YOU, 
• we will walk through answering those questions from above
• we will get into the different styles of learning
• lastly there will be discussion time.

The workshop is only $20, but the confidence and encouragement you will receive can't really be measured in price. So seriously sign up today! Click here to register!

Lori
To Know God and to Make Him Known

This is homeschool that looks the most like going to “regular” public school. You can use this curriculum the easiest to manage and set your days up in a certain way. Curriculum is characterized by textbooks, standardized tests, and grade levels. *Also, a super important note, we consider traditional to be hands-on curriculum, not on-line. There are great on-line options that follow the traditional method, but that's not what we are talking about here today.*

Why homeschool this way?

Honestly, this is the way of schooling that most of us are familiar with. You know, being at school with your textbooks and worksheets and tests at the end of every chapter. And for a lot of families there isn’t a need to break away from this tradition. People are going to go with what's familiar and that's cool. I know for me, my sticking point with public school is necessarily the structure of the educational material, it's the content that's being taught.

One word of advice if this is the education path for your family. No curriculum is permanent. Meaning, that if you get into that really awesome curriculum you bought and EVERYONE is jiving with it, except for ONE thing. Get rid of that one thing and find something else to fill its spot.

For example: 

You don't have to do that boring science unit. Or you don't HAVE to take all those tests. Or you don't have to follow that days schedule exactly the way they wrote. Make this curriculum fit for your family's rhythm. 

Ultimately homeschooling is you controlling how you educate your child, not someone else. You get to choose the content your child learns, that's ultimately more important than the style its being delivered in.

 Check out this webpage here that talks about the traditional curriculums that are out there.

Lori 

To know God and to make Him known

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Are you looking for a history program for your homeschool curriculum?? Notgrass History is definitely one you need to look at!

This is a full-service curriculum. Meaning you don't need to add in any other history supplements. Some other key notes to add about Notgrass:
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• They are a clear Christian based curriculum.
• There are lessons designed for every grade level. 
• Notgrass offers additional resources to help with homeschooling as a whole. ( Which is super fantastic by the way. If you are struggling with homeschooling in the first place, there isn't going to be enough time for history.)
• The website is easy to explore. The resources they provide are clear and concise and there really isn't a lot for you to have to wade through.
  
• There is a super easy quiz to take on their website to trial their curriculum. The questions were super insightful, and I can't wait to see what their curriculum looks like! Take the quiz!!

​Click the link below to explore the website now. Also, don't forget to let me know what you think about Notgrass! What do you think about what they offer?

Lori

To know God and to make Him known

Happy Tuesday Friends!

Co-op is over for the year but we will continue on with some learning. Because of the laid back approach I take with Samuel we sort of never stop with the school stuff. 

This week are continuing to work on the sight words at, it, and, has, what, and why. I have to rotate the words out longer for Samuel to help keep his attention. And we have to circle back a lot to help make sure he really has learned something versus just memorized it. The word has has been an exceptionally hard for him to remember.

Speech therapy continues on this week. The are continuing to work on eye contact and taking turns and all the speech that goes into that.

For reading, we will read the next chapters of our Bible and our read aloud book, Winne the Pooh. For Winnie the Pooh, I'd like to read one chapter a week but that is definitely not what we have been doing.

Lastly, we will continue to spend a lot of time just playing. Samuel got over a fear of worms yesterday. He was super proud to show me wormy!

Lori

To know God and to make Him known

*This post contains affiliate links.

Memoria Press offers MANY options for your families homeschool. Seriously, because of the way that the curriculums are set up, you can follow them as strictly, or as loosely, as your family needs.

I started my son young with their pre-school curriculum. Like he was 2.5 year old. This was because of some speech needs we were facing. The way the curriculum was set up, I was able to follow the curriculum plan, and apply it in a way that mad sense for him. By May of the following year, he had even memorized one of the memory verses. I was emboldened and not overwhelmed by the material submitted and was able to help get my son to where he needed to be.

Memoria Press has a core curriculum option that families are able to pick from. From there they also offer an online school option. Which I think is especially great for those families who think they need that structure in a classically based education. 

And really Memoria Press does it all, they have several different locations for the Highlands Latin school and cottage schools throughout the country. They even have a college! (Cottage Schools are where you attend in person instruction one or two days a week and then school the rest of the week at home. It's a hybrid option)

Check out Memoria Press sometime! They have their own conference in summertime and even make it to homeschool conferences throughout the country. I learned of them through the Great Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati. 

Really this is a great option for homeschool families who are looking to educate their children in a different, PROVEN, way. The material is solid and if you are looking for something that is Christian based, they do not shy away from their faith. Click below to view more information on their website.

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One of the biggest things repeated over and over again is that each family can homeschool the way they want. One big consideration to make in homeschooling is whether or not to join a co-op. Classical Conversations is the one we chose and so far, I really do love this path we are on.

Reason #1: All of the scripture used is in the King James Version. This is a personal family conviction that the resources we consume as a family be in this version of the bible. It is less work for us to switch things over or review, when this version is used in the first place.

Reason #2: CC encourages whole family learning. Whether it comes to doing family a read-aloud or parsing scripture, it is very easy to include my older two children who attend public school. The methods of learning that are taught in CC are not just for use during the homeschool learning time but within the whole family dynamic. 

Reason #3: I love how much community is encouraged in the CC life. Whether in the whole group or just in our little classroom of learners, we are encouraged to get to know each other, learn together, and encourage each other. Even the children do this. In our Foundations class, our children give presentations weekly and are encouraged to ask questions and dialogue together. It is so beautiful watching them become peers.

To be honest, I’m still struggling with the weekly commitment to an organization. It feels like I have to run along with someone else’s schedule. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a feeling I get left with.

If you have more questions about CC or our experience with it just reach out. My son is so young we aren't following everything verbatim. CC offers a flexibility where it can fit into many different family rhythms.

​Classical education is the homeschool style that is probably the least like anything you are going to find from the public school system. There are more and more private schools that are classically based though and they are opening all over the country.

The end goal of this style is to teach students how to become lifelong learners. There is an emphasis placed on seeking after truth, beauty, and goodness. This holistic approach to learning is meant to teach students to be critical thinkers and to develop a deep sense of moral character. 

You teach kids to become this way by teaching them through the tenets of the trivium. The trivium consists of 3 stages: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. These are often called the 3 tools of learning. ​

Here a few places to start to learn more about Classical Education. 
Classical Academic Press
Circe Institute
Classical Corner over at Substack

When I had my first son, I decided I had two main goals in raising him. They were to teach him to know who God is and to raise him to be a productive member of society. The first goal is a conversation for another day. The second goal is seemingly abstract, but in reality, it is not.

How do I raise my sons, and other children, to be productive members of society? What exactly does that look like? How exactly can we raise our children to be strong, moral, individuals who think for themselves and who helps others?

We live in a society that demands conformity. It demands that we accept people, what they say, and do, without question. Society says to wait for the experts to tell you what is right or wrong and what to do.  The government will be right there to take care of you when the time comes.

How did we become this way? 

Well one answer is the public school system. We all go through it. The vast majority of us are educated under the same standards, tests, and learning goals. This is not an attack to the education system; it is just the way it is designed. It is designed to educate a mass number of children in the most consistent and efficient way possible. The public school system is designed to create a strong society of people who work together for IT’S greater good. Individuals who think less for themselves and more for society.

So, what is the distinction here? Why does individualism matter?

Individualism is the belief that people should think and act independently instead of depending on others to think and act for them.

Teaching our children to be strong, moral individuals allows them to be better members of society. And what curriculum you use does not matter here. Because that is the point. Small steps of making individual decisions for your family encourages individualism in your children. They see you modeling the individualism you are trying to teach them. Homeschooling your children makes this easier but its not the only path.

Remember, individualism is not the end goal. A productive member of society is. 

Our government education system is designed to build and maintain a “better” society that we are all a part of. However when we leave the government to the task of solely educating our children, the future members of our society, it will educate them in its self interest. So one way or another there will be productive members of society. Ones either educated by the government or ones educated by you, the parent.

This is why I said homeschooling just makes it easier to educate your child. Because it gives you the easiest control. But ultimately taking control of your child's education is what is of the utmost importance. And you CAN do that even with your children in the government school system. It just takes more creativity. 

When our children grow up, we wish the world for them. Great careers, beautiful families, a desire to create a vibrant life for themselves and their world. 

In the end, when we have stronger individuals comprising a society, we WILL have a stronger society. That's how we got here. Our country started because of the work of strong, moral individuals who knew that a strong country needed strong, moral, and independent citizens. The first step to us getting there is taking our children's education into our own hands.

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