Pre-Homeschool Jitters

This year, for homeschooling, I decided to enroll my girls in a charter school that works remotely with homeschooling families. While I still do need to abide by the common core standards, the educational specialist (AKA "teacher") they pair me with helps me keep track of the paperwork: the attendance, report cards, testing, etc. However, I still get to choose my own curriculum and schedule, and I could still customize my daughters' educational experiences. While I'm personally not a huge fan of common core (having been in the early educational setting for so many years, I've heard plenty of discussion from both sides of the spectrum), I could see how this charter could allow me to incorporate these standards in a flexible way that still allows for a good "flow" to our studies, and allow for things like unit studies.

Getting to this point has been a looooong process. I began when Orlando and I first discussed moving to Los Angeles from the Central Valley back in February of this year. He's a filmmaker, and this was an opportunity for him to grow in that (and quite a risky one), and we took that leap of faith. What I wasn't willing to risk, though, was our daughters' education and upbringing. Not knowing what lied ahead, nor where we would live, or what the public schools would be like, homeschooling came in the picture. What followed were countless visits to the library around the block, and stacks of books of teaching philosophies, homeschooling styles, web searches, youtube product reviews, and lots and lots of late nights reading. What we finally selected was "Classical Education."

What is Classical Education?

As the people at classicaleducationpress.com put it,

"Classical education is like a very large museum with many beautiful, wonder-filled rooms that could be studied over a lifetime. It is a long tradition of education that has emphasized the seeking after of truth, goodness, and beauty and the study of the liberal arts and the great books."

I was very interested in the Charlotte Mason approach and using "living books," but I loved the rigor and truth-seeking and "whole-picture" approach of classical education. My husband has more recently become fascinated in learning Christian apologetics, and learning to defend his faith. There are many aspects of this taught in classical education, including the teaching of logic (something that I believe is almost absent in too many folks in society today!). Our goal with classical education is not to give our daughters crazy amounts of work and tons of Latin to memorize. It's to focus on learning history in a whole-picture context, and help them build a strong foundation for their own beliefs, and for them to have the ability to confidently express themselves logically, in a debate, as well as through art and writing and any other means of expression they choose to pursue.

So, this year I hope we read a ton of books, ask a lot of questions, do lots of art, and discover this whole "homeschooling thing" together. I'm not sure how it'll play out, and some nights I stay up worried, or excited, or both. But I think I'm ready now!