The Evolution of Our Homeschool

I was pregnant with Evan when we decided to homeschool our children.  I knew even then that I wanted to keep my kids home with me.  At the time the decision was influenced by fear that my kids wouldn't be safe in school, and doubts that the schools could do a good job with educating my little geniuses! 

I spent hours and hours on the internet reading about homeschooling.  I read about unschooling, Charlotte Mason, traditional "school-at-home" schooling.  I really was intrigued by the unschooling, but my hubby was NOT on board with that.  I decided that Charlotte Mason best fit my ideas about what a school should look like. 

I tried for years to follow Charlotte's writings and methods.  I read books and websites.  I joined Charlotte Mason e-loops.  I tried really, REALLY hard to have the perfect Charlotte Mason school, but... I just couldn't do it.  I loved the idea of studying French, Nature, Latin, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Art, Folk songs, Hymns, Composers, Artists... sheesh, I'm exhausted just typing all that stuff, let alone doing it.  And I haven't even gotten to the "normal" school stuff like the Three R's, science, history, composition, spelling, etc. 

I felt like I was drowning. 

We did Sonlight for years, but it is expensive (about $1200/year).  It's also very time consuming as well.  There are a LOT of books to read with Sonlight. 

A couple of years ago I started looking into ways to homeschool my kids for free, or close to it.  I have always loved the Ambleside Online site.  (If you've never looked at it you should.  It has a great free curriculum for you, using mostly free books found on the internet.)  However, I've never been able to pull off trying to do all that.  We were spending 7-8 hours each day on school... which is waayyy too much by the way... unless you have a highschooler.  (If you're spending that much time on school each day... we need to talk!) 

When I became the president of the homeschool group, someone gave me Switched on Schoolhouse in the right grade level for Evan.  That was probably our worst year of homeschooling.  Not that SOS is a bad curriculum, but when you're used to reading living books, biographies and historical fiction then text book is exceedingly dry and dull. 

This summer I decided that something had to give.  I wanted my children to have a super education, using high quality books, written years ago by people who knew how to write AND had a belief in God and a moral center.  Two years ago I had fiddled with the Robinson Curriculum, but didn't trust the self-teaching method.  I didn't think my kids had it in them to educate themselves!  Well, this summer I decided to give it a go again. 

I read through the Robinson website and created my own book list from the books in the Robinson Curriculum, Ambleside Online and Old-Fashioned Education.  Each of my kids has to read through the booklist and complete Saxon Math up to at least Advanced Math (trigonometry) in order to graduate.  The book list goes from kindergarten to twelfth grade.  It includes all "subject" areas: science, literature, history, Bible, Poetry, etc.  The majority of the books are free on the internet (we don't do too well with the library... I think I've probably paid for a new wing at ours.)

Well, this has already turned out longer than I wanted.  Later I'll post about a day in the life of our homeschool so you can see how we make it all work.

~Linda