After four years at the local Montessori School (secular), my wife and I were looking to send our very bright daughter to a local prep school started by Presbyterians. (The nearest Catholic parochial school is 45 minutes away or more, depending on the traffic.)The new school, however, wanted us to front-load the tuition, and we simply don't have the money yet. That got us thinking about her education and what our ideals are. Then my wife suggested we homeschool our girl.
We had planned to do so when we first married and read a wonderful book about a California couple who homeschooled their sons and sent them to Harvard back in the days when homeschoolers weren't just odd but freaks. When my daughter turned five, however, we were a bit nervous about teaching her the most basic fundamentals on our own. The local Montessori program did her much good. She reads very well and is well-rounded, mature, and sociable. Like many one-and-onlys, she talks well to adults. Now we are thinking about giving her an education not only at home, but through field trips to museums, zoos, botanical gardens, aquariums, battlefields, theaters, churches, regular Mass, etc. The world is our classroom. We are not planning to wing it every day, but we want learning to be an adventure, just as life should be.
There is a place for a regular curriculum, but I have to ask myself: How would I have wanted to be educated? Elementary school was a prison for me. I never enjoyed the classroom until I was in college. My icon is Saint Thomas More, who gave his daughter the best education any woman in the 16th century likely received.
I know that some of the readers of this blog are Catholic parents, so please feel free to comment on your ambitions, experiments, successes, failures, and methods of educating your own. Thanks in advance.
(Portrait above of Margaret More Roper (1505-1544))
2 comments:
I arrived here via a short post somewhere or other on the true identity of Spengler...which I'd just read in the back pages of "First Things" where he's gone for yet another reincarnation.
_______________
I am a former Catholic. My husband and I are Episcopalians. However, my Catholicism is bone-deep, thus I admire your plan to home-school.
We did this with our only son, back in the day. Our local schools are awful and I loathe all public schools anyway, having had much contact with them recently through extended family problems with governmental "education".
You'll love your new adventure. Not only is home-schooling widely done now, but parents can get together with other like-minded families and share the expertise. I wish that had been around when our son was coming up.
She's so young you can wing it. Check your district's rules about home-schooling and adhere to them. If it all feels amorphous -- where to start?? -- look at the "What Every [insert grade here] Needs to Know" series by E.D. Hirsch. Our son used to read those for fun.
I think Hirsch's "First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy" is great fun. I saw the second edition of this volume recently and was disappointed. I don't think it is as good (in terms of lay-out and formatting) as the first edition, but I'm relying on memory.
As for the spiritual side of things, do a little research on age-appropriate catechesis. It's not something to blunder about in. It's been too many years now for me, but I remember liking Christianne Brusselmans, if she's still available in English.
There is a wonderful website, rich with links, developed partly by the folks at the blog "The Common Room". I think they have a link to it to this schooling site. Includes math, literature, music, etc.
BTW, be sure to develop her musical literacy, making sure she can read music and play at least one instrument. Our son took piano lessons, became by default our church organist, and later turned to the 12 string guitar.
We did some French tapes, too. Now you could get some really professional CDs no doubt. The sooner the better. In high school he signed up for intensive summer courses in French and did very well.
Don't forget memorization and singing. They really aid the development of the brain -- at any age, but especially hers. Learning the multiplication tables by singing them makes that chore go much faster and more smoothly.
For fun one time, our son memorized all the names of the books of the Old and New Testament by singing them. To this day, he can still recall them if he sings them in his head before reciting them.
When she's a bit older and it's not quite so scary, have her memorize the Introduction to "Something Under the Bed is Drooling"...come to think of it, our son memorized it very young before he knew the real meaning, so it didn't faze him. He just loved the sound of the words...
Don't forget AA Milne for memorization, either.
Oh, what adventures you will have!
I found the Mother of Divine Grace School (motherofdivinegrace.org) and curriculum via a story about St. Joseph House a non profit run by a family that has adopted over 20 homeless children. They use the curriculum in schooling their children. The Mother of Divine Grace web site describes the curriculum as “A Catholic Distance Education Program Dedicated to Helping Homeschoolers Design Their Own Classical Curriculum”.
It sounds very cool and very Catholic. We don’t have a Catholic school close to our home either and we have our son at the local non-denominational Christian school where he watches movies like Left Behind and one of his classmates advised him that Catholics worship false Gods. It provides lots of opportunity to teach our Catholic faith. Another family in our Parish just pulled their high school aged kids due to an assignment wherein the students were instructed to prepare a paper about Christians martyred by Catholics. She chose to write about an apostate Priest who repented and was martyred by Queen Elisabeth. I don’t recall the Saints name, but the brouhaha was enormous and they now have their kids in public school.
I’m still working, but I would love to home school, and if the banks don’t start lending again soon I may have all the time in the world to do so.
Good luck with your quest and post an update when you decide the best direction for your family.
Post a Comment