The Evolving Homemaker

For the last two weeks I have said I wasn’t really sure about The Well-Trained Mind.  I promised that I would finish it, but was sure we were not going to use it in our family.

Well I changed my mind.

Once I got passed the prologue/introduction stage, and read the actual schedules and sections on Reading, Math, History, etc., I actually fell in love with it.  For someone who is completely unorganized and wants to be more organized, this book laid out the way to teach each day, books to use/check out from the library, and how to organize the kids work once it is completed. And I loved how much emphasis it has on reading, checking out lots, and lots, and lots of books from the library, and incorporating interesting reading into almost every subject.

So up my alley. My brain doesn’t work so well organically.  It needs some structure.  This is why I think I get so overwhelmed so easily with things, my brain works best A, B, C.  This book lays my homeschooling out A, B, C.  And that makes me happy. And a whole bunch less stressed out.

I decided to start at the first grade level with all of the classical education books except with math.  My daughter who is in kindergarten and my son who is second grade can do things like history together.  The kindergarten curriculum is pretty easy, read a lot, write some, ask questions, and teach as you go through your day.  For my son, it is a little more complicated.  He is way fine in math, so we are just continuing the Singapore Math we use already and he is at the second grade level.  For reading, it has been an uphill battle.  I am going back and starting 100 Easy Lessons for both kids just to begin again for him and new for her, while also keeping up our work with sight words for him.  For everything else we are starting at the first level of grammar, spelling, working from there.

I am excited.  It feels organized, and it feels like a much higher quality of instruction than the books we get from the enrichment program the kids are in.  From them, we get mostly the books used by public schools and wow, the social studies stuff vs. The Story of the World books in the classical education method is like night and day.

So yes, I am sold.  Where once I was annoyed with what seemed like a method to raise brilliant children who would all be doctors or something, I am now totally excited to be homeschooling this year.

What a difference a week makes!

If you liked the post you read, feel free to share by clicking below: