I think we're just going to go ahead and read the story.

We've always been those crazy parents who read to their children straight from big books, really big books like classic novels and histories. And when we read to them from the Bible, we read straight from the Bible, like from the big leather-bound, grown-up looking book straight off the nightstand.
And you know what, we're gonna keep on being those crazy parents, because what started out as an inkling and a cool idea in our home, has turned into a way to educate our kids, based on hundreds of years of experience of people throughout western civilization. That sounds exciting, right?

I'll back up here a bit and try to say what I'm saying. Over the last  few years, I've been thinking a lot about why young kids nowadays aren't always taught the same level of things kids were taught decades and centuries ago. Why were kids once trusted to learn two and three languages before the age of ten, not to mention straight, not watered down, history and literature, along with scientific theory and math facts and equations before? And why are kids generally not trusted with these concepts, subjects, and experiences now until they are much older? I am really asking here. I don't have the answers. I know there are a lot of answers to this, and some of them have things to do with advancement in education and the creation, production, and marketing of super fun and useful workbooks, manipulatives, and instruction manuals. And some of the answers may be good answers like trying to teach kids things they are interested in, so they will grow up and love to learn. The answers go on and on and on, I'm sure. But thankfully, these answers really aren't what I have to deal with finding right now. All I am trying to focus on here is what style to use when educating my kids this next school year. It's getting close to curriculum ordering time! I need lessons plans and material, not answers to all of the random, nerdy life questions I have.

So what I've been doing is a whole bunch of late night reading on classical education and modern education. I have a desire to take advantage of this "sponge" period my children are in, before they grow out of it. Young children have an amazing ability to memorize and to grasp onto new languages and facts in a way that people rarely hang on to as they grow and start moving into different developmental stages. So, we are moving more towards the classical end of the spectrum in our home. We are using books, riddles, rhymes, and songs to teach what has started to be known as only higher level education. We are bringing in more language study, more poetry and classic literature, more histories, and we are going to work more theories and facts into our study of science, math, art, and music, so that when our kiddos get older, and move away from the "sponge" or grammar stage and into the logic or "now what do I think about or do with all that stuff I learned as a tot" stage, they will be filled up with stuff, and not have to bother with square one of learning everything, at the same time when they would rather be thinking "why, how, what, and Oh!....Now I get it!"

So, I know this is a little ambitious and probably a little vague. I guess I could sum up this whole post by saying: we are excited about next year and all of the knowledge we hope our kids will be exposed to and hold on to. There are so many educational theories and styles out there, and I really don't think there is only one right or good way to go. In addition to classical education, I am a big fan of Charlotte Mason's teaching style, and I find a lot of cool ideas in Waldorf curriculum. Classical isn't the only good choice. But when you make the decision to homeschool, you also need to decide how you're gonna do it, so you get the daunting and exciting task of choosing the path your children will take as they learn. There are so many paths to take, and I think it is important to choose a great fit for your children, for your family, and for the teacher. There's my disclaimer to all of these strong points I'm making about our choice to go in one specific direction.

We are going to set the bar high and not work with too much "twaddle", as Charlotte Mason would call some of the reading material and kids workbooks of today. Kids don't always need to be spoon-fed little teeny bits of things we want them to learn later, sometimes we can just teach them the things now, while their minds are young, and their memories are at their best. Kids have done it before, so why not my kids now? Again, I'm seriously asking. And don't get me wrong, I love a good children's book as much as the next Mama, but they don't all have to have pictures and simple sentences, do they? How about a good princess picture book as a simple treat at bedtime, and then the next morning is full of quiet listening to history time. We have been running a little test around here to see how this will work out as we shape our curriculum around classical education next year, and so far, we are blown away by the bits of knowledge kids keep with them. They can understand big words. We don't have to stop reading a book to a child to say, "This big word mean this....". I mean, this isn't how we taught them the small words, no we just spoke the words and then they understood them in context, which is much simpler and much more effective. So, we can go ahead and just use those big words! They'll catch on, and they'll understand much more of the stories we read to them if we aren't always stopping to explain this and that to them. Just read the story.

20 minutes to make our day

I found myself becoming guilty of one of the things I said I would never do as a parent, and I'm not referring to driving a minivan, though I am guilty of that, too. What I'm referring to here is that I became a barking, angry, stressed out parent in a world of chaotic breakfasts and bag forgetting and orders to get your shoes on NOW again and again. No matter how early I got up in the morning, it seemed that those last five minutes until we had to get out of the house in the morning on our way to preschool, to a homeschool  trip, or even on our way to the homeschool room in our own house by our early scheduled start time turned into a rush. And a rush was not a good way to begin our day. It left my kids confused, disappointed, stressed, tired, and it left them with their needs not met well from their mama at the very beginning of a busy day, and chaotic mornings left me feeling defeated and tense, before any schooling or cleaning even got underway. That was not for us, so we stopped doing that and tried something different.

And now what we have is 20 minutes of bliss. We don't have perfect days. We don't always go according to plan. And we certainly don't do everything all sweet and proper and correct, but we do our best around here to get a calm, quiet start to the day now. At first, this was a bit of a challenge, as a new routine often is with small children, but after a couple days, we began to begin our days in a much better way. After teeth are brushed, beds are made, breakfast is cleared away, and we are all dressed for the day, I set a timer for 20 minutes, and the four of us all go to different parts of the house to do something quietly and calmly on our own. Everyone gets to choose what they do, but I give them suggestions and tell them that electronics (other than tag reader pens) are off limits; television and video games make my kids way to jittery and/or spacey in the morning to be a good idea before school.



Morning quiet time choices include reading quietly to yourself (a good book that teaches you something), writing or copying a letter to a friend or relative, working a puzzle, playing a board or card game (yes, kids can do this by themselves....quite creatively, actually...), playing with blocks or manipulatives, sitting doing nothing, or working on an art project. And I have to say that a little organization goes a long way with kids' games.



We put our broken game boxes in the recycle bin, put game pieces in labeled zippered bags, and then used address label stickers to label the boards of games. Now it is more reasonable to keep the kids accountable for only getting out one thing at a time and then putting it away neatly. Sigh.

I use our 20 minute morning alone time to lesson plan for the day, catch up on letters or emails, and really, just to breathe in my favorite room in the house with a cup of something warm. This doesn't mean the kids don't have access to me. Of course they come to me with questions about a word in a book or for help with a puzzle piece or even for a hug, but in theory we are all doing something on our own. I think it is good for them to have time to be alone, but not entirely alone. I'm right there if they need me, and they know that, and I think they even like that a little.

So when the timer goes off, we start our school day relaxed and ready to join back up together. The kids actually all look forward to doing something together again. Imagine! A little quiet can go a long way. I don't think it is necessary to homeschool children in order to make morning a time for meeting kids' needs and preparing them for their days by filling them up with calm and love and security, but the decision to homeschool the kids has certainly made it easier to slow down our mornings. I'm sure there are many great mothers out their who keep their cool in the morning when heading out the door on a tight schedule, but for me, it was difficult on many mornings to be sweet and chill when the clock was ticking and there was a kid who was panicked about not being comfortable in her shoes, while another was in need of a new diaper at the last minute, and yet another was needing to talk about something super important to her in that moment. So for us, we made our mornings work better with a clear early morning schedule and 20 small, sweet minutes. And I hope this time is a step towards our kids learning how to spend time with family in a home, while not always doing the same thing. Quality time doesn't have to be all or nothing, as in we are either talking to the person next to us or we are ignoring the person next to us and talking to a friend on the Internet. How about just sitting and enjoying someone's company without always feeling a need to fill up the silence with something? I know I am pretty old-fashioned and probably have a silly, dreamy view of after-dinner time with my family, all the girls sitting in different parts of the room, one embroidering a pillow, while one plays cards with her daddy, and another reads a book of poetry.....BUT even if we can't go back in time to a slower paced world and my girls may never learn to embroider seat cushions like Jane Austen characters, we can still learn to share a house and enjoy each other's company, whether we are doing something together...or not. Clearly I have big hopes for what our 20 minutes in the morning will teach us as family. Not sure if they will all pan out, but for now the 20 minutes are working out pretty well for our mornings, and good mornings tend to make good days. Right?