Homeschool Agendas

Maybe I should start with a statement of my overarching goals for my children:

I want my children to grow up with personal faith in God and the skills, abilities and attitudes necessary to provide for and direct their own families and to be contributing members of society.

Wow. Do I know how to accomplish this? Of course not. I do have some pretty good examples to follow, both within and without my own family. I take great comfort from the fact that in spite of inperfections in my parents and in the circumstances in which I grew up, my siblings and I have seem to have turned out pretty well. I have a lot of dreams for my children--what parent doesn't? I want them to learn to be hardworking. I want them to do well in their schooling and be able to go to college at a good school; I would be really happy if they could qualify for scholarships! I want them to choose good marriage partners and have happy families of their own...OK, most of that's in the way far future. How does that translate to homeschooling this year?

Well, Lily is just in Kindergarten. That means, to me, that any schoolwork we do should be very low-key and not stressful. My plans, consequently, are not very structured; I just don't feel that a child this age needs to be made to fit some adult's mold, even my own. She needs lots of time outdoors, lots of time for experiencing the world around her and for outdoor exploration. This is why Outdoor Time is one of the three things on my To Do list for school every day. I think it is much more critical at this stage in her life than math, reading, or most other things.

What are the other two Every Day items? Well scripture study--preferably reading together and working on a memory verse. Why? Because we come to know God by studying His words as given to us by prophets and apostles. And we need to know God if we are to live our lives with meaning. And have you ever noticed that the things you learned when you were young are never forgotten? Your first phone number (no matter how many you may have had and forgotten since)? All those TV commercials? Nursery rhymes? I remember very distinctly when I was about Lily's age my parent's teaching me William Blake's poem beginning "Little lamb, who made thee?" I remember every line of that poem to this day. So this is the time to be teaching our children the things we want them to remember. Scripture verses, songs and hymns, poems, those things that they can call on when they need to be uplifted anytime throughout their lives.

And my third every-day activity? Music practice. Why? Ummm...because that's what my mother did? In all honesty, I consider my mother to be one of the wisest women, and certainly one of the most intuitive mothers, in the world. She tells me now that music was her way of raising children--her way of giving us something really challenging, requiring consistent work and focus. She didn't produce a crop of great performers; she never wanted to. She did produce a family who know and love music, who learned about persistence, cooperation, and how to record yourself practicing then turn on the tape to make mom think you were doing it when you weren't. Oh wait, that was only me :-) In any case, doing music just feels right, kind of like doing homeschool just feels right to me. By the way, Lily has chosen to study cello this year. I finally have a use for that absolutely adorable little cello I just had to buy two years ago...

So that is my agenda in a nutshell. Oh, I have lots of other things planned. I've written about some in an earlier post. We are (somewhat loosely) following Ambleside Online's year 1 reading schedule, working on the concept of narration...and I have a ton of math materials. I really want my children to understand and enjoy math. I'm always on the lookout for materials that help develop conceptual mathematic abilities. Over the last year or so I have picked up (all used) materials from Miquon, Singapore, Math-U-See, Right Start, and probably a couple of others. But I do math only as Lily wants to do it. She likes doing math, she especially likes workbooks. At this point I encourage her to do any problems she wants to tackle, and I do not point out mistakes. If I notice a particular mistake recurring (say, writing 7's backwards, or always coming up 1 number short when doing an addition problem by "counting on") I will take note of it as something to practice correctly with her on. Often though if she seems to understand the basic concept I just let "mistakes" be. Yesterday she was doing a worksheet where you color in shapes, i.e. "find the squares and color them". One page asked her to find rectangles. The first one she found was a cross, because, she said, it was two rectangles crossing each other. (It wasn't drawn that way, no lines across the arms). But her reasoning made perfect sense. That is exactly the kind of reasoning I don't want to kill by making her find "right" answers all the time! I'm also planning to do science--we just ordered caterpillars to raise into butterflies, and I'm always salivating over all the cool science kits out there. I've looked into NOEO science, which uses more of a "living book" approach. I also like what I have seen of the Apologia elementary books. But really I should save that for another year...

I'm editing this post to add a scripture verse:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew 6:19-21
I actually borrowed this verse from Amber over at http://liferondo.eletelephant.com/ who used it in her memoires post (I hope you don't mind Amber). I liked her reference to simplifying and focusing more on family. Sometimes it is so hard to not get caught up in, well, everything...and so we waste our time and energy and forget where real treasure is to be found!