Home Education
I'm still in the process of making it up as I go along. A related page is my Teaching resources page which I started pre-motherhood. I hope to reorganise the two pages soon. Here's what I have so far:
Phonics
It seems like this is what you start with. I've heard over and over again how Phonics are so important, but where to start? Do I really have to buy text books for something that seems so elementary?
I've seen great books available from Quantum Literacy or Nutshell Products. I have Sound Start by Barbara Dykes, Word Building by Gavin Swallow and Why We Speak English by Sarah Ward. I don't use the books nearly as much as I thought I would, but its early days yet. There's a warm fuzzy feeling supporting small Australian publishers.
I found the National Right to Read Foundation to be very helpful on this count. In particular they provide a Phonics Primer in pdf form ready to print.
Light educational ministries has been recommended to me. I really don't like their web page though. That being said they have a very thorough approach to learning all the phonograms and some christian content (protestant, may need to edit).
Montessori schools have a different take on teaching phonics. Since Maria Montessori was Italian, and Italian is a phonetic language, the children just learnt the letters and their sounds and could read everything. No weird spellings like we have in english. The english versions teach a one to one mapping of sounds to letters and let the children put the sounds together to make up their own words without worrying about correct spelling. That appeals to me. Though I did consider switching to an all italian speaking home.
Penmanship
From the previous paragraph you might guess that I like the Montessori font too which is available for free from macrhino.com. I have some more musings on handwriting on my Teaching Resources page.
Literature
After the huge kerfuffle over Lord of the Rings I started reading Tolkien. I was intrigued by his thoughts on Fairy Stories and the importance they have in forming our minds. Pardon me if I get this wrong but I remember a quote from Einstein that if you want your kids to be smart, read them fairy tales; if you want them to be really smart, read them lots of fairy tales.
Again, how do I go about putting this into practice? It seems that popular culture has a tendency to hijack fairy tales to serve its own adgenda. Michael O'Brien in his book A Landscape with Dragons warns against Walt Disney's adaptations. It seems the consensus is that Andrew Lang's collections of Fairy Stories are a good start. The Blue Fairy Book is the first of about a dozen volumes.
Delving into homeschooling one is sure to come across the concept of Great Books. Perhaps you'll come across them in connexion with Charlotte Mason. For a book worm like myself, recommended reading lists are very attractive. The Angelicum Academy provides The Good Books List (in print) taken from John Senior's list. Some of these books are available through Project Gutenberg as free to copy, print, etc text files.
Reading to the children at bed time has become a regular thing now. We had been using recorded stories, but you can have much more variety with good old fashioned Books. Reading out aloud takes a bit of getting used to, but it does become enjoyable. I was a speed reader, so I took a while to adjust. Now the boys can respond to the stories it is that much more rewarding. My favourite books at the moment are, the Little Bookroom, by Eleanor Farjeon (a collection of some beautiful fairy stories that she pieced together from memories of a childhood of many stories); The Back of the North Wind, by George MacDonald and all the Beatrix Potter stories.
Latin
I'm looking forward to learning Latin one day. No, I've never formally studied latin. Latin in the Christian Trivium has impressed me most so far, but I still haven't bought their texts. They do have a free newsletter with interesting bits and pieces on teaching Latin.
One thing I have noticed is the order of the declensions of the nouns is different in the Seton and Christian Trivium books compared to the standard Latin text from here in Australia, THe Approach to Latin, Paterson and Macnaughton. The lists in Paterson and Macnaughton run:
- Nominative
- Vocative
- Accusative
- Genitive
- Dative
- Ablative
- Nominative
- Genitive
- Dative
- Accusative
- Ablative
I'm more used to the first system, it rolls off my tongue more easily. Try saying: mensa, mensa, mensam; mensae, mensae, mensa; mensae, mensae, mensas; mensarum, mensis, mensis. Then try: mensa, mensae, mensae, mensam, mensa; mensae, mensarum, mensis, mensas, mensis. I bounce along the former, with its repetitions, but the second I don't catch the rhythm.
Homeschooling
There are lots of web sites about homeschooling out there. Love2learn crops up in many of my searches. Here in Australia we have the Home Education Association Inc., Australia. There's also Homeschool Australia Newsletter by Beverley Paine. On the Catholic Homeschooling front we have a yahoo group called Marium Regnum Familiae. Cardinal Newman Faith Resources is not specifically for Homeschoolers, but many find it an invaluable resource. There, under downloads, you'll find archives of Keeping in Touch - a quarterly newsletter edited by different homeschooling families around Australia (though mostly NSW)
On using the internet as a homeschooling resource.
The internet is very mixed. Sure, there are some great resources out there, but there is also a lot of junk, rubbish, lies, opportunists, get rich quick schemes, and malevolent material. Children need to be supervised if they are to browse the internet themselves.
Less time on the internet means more time for more important things like thinking, reading and talking.
Keeping a dial-up connexion can help limit time spent on the net. Broadband can be dangerous as well as pricey.
| Broadband | Dial up |
|---|---|
| Download large files quickly and easily. | May need to get someone else to download large files for you. |
| Spend as long as you like online, without tying up a phone line. | Need to regulate time spent online. Be frugal. |
| Your computer is at a greater risk of viruses, adware, malware, hacking, et cetera. | Risk to your computer is less as you use the internet less. |
| More distractions from internet attractions. | Internet games are slow or impracticable so not as attractive. |
A caching proxy can allow offline browsing -- a great advantage with a dial up system. This means that recent webpages are kept on your hard drive and can be searched and viewed without having to reconnect to the internet. Wwwoffle is what I use for this with Debian Linux. There seem to be no shortage of people on broadband plans who can download any large files that a dial up account won't allow. Some public libraries also have this facility. Even paying for these instances seems much cheaper and much safer than having a broadband account yourself.