Recently I received a call from an exasperated mother who was desperately trying to find a way to teach her son. After homeschooling for 14 years and graduating her oldest who was also a struggling learner due to a brain injury, she felt she had exhausted her teaching arsenal and was still coming up short in being able to teach her younger autistic son. Our conversation started with this mother asking if I knew of any different curriculum options she could try. But, instead of offering my best advice on curriculum, I led her through a series of questions to find out what teaching techniques had worked with her son…
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When we started homeschooling over 2 decades ago, we had good reasons for doing so. We didn’t want to send our kids away for 8 hours a day. WE wanted to spend that time with them. We wanted them to enjoy their childhood. Most of all we felt a responsibility to be the biggest influence in our kids’ childhood and hoped to disciple them to a place where they would take responsibility for their lives and above all, own their relationship with God. We simply wanted to fully engage in our role as parents and homeschooling seemed like a natural fit for that. We have graduated 5 so far and…
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A few months ago I received an email from a woman wondering if Schoolhouse Rocked was appropriate for secular homeschool families. I appreciated the question and felt like it warranted a sincere and thoughtful response, so I sat down and gathered my thoughts and emailed her back. The question continued to gnaw at me, so I kept my response, knowing that at some time I should address the issue in a more public way. As I am sure you have noticed, many of the posts on the Schoolhouse Rocked website and Facebook page emphasize a Christian worldview. This will continue to be the case, as my wife and I are Christians.…
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In the wide world of homeschool articles, books, blogs, and videos you will see so many wonderful bits of information on how to do XYZ. Of course, no two are ever the same. There are planners, methods, curriculum, and mission statements. Everything points to things you can do, checkboxes you can mark, and the goal is “productivity”. Though the result is often just more comparison. But homeschooling isn’t a to-do list. It isn’t books, or Latin, or co-ops. It isn’t poetry tea time or map tracing. While these things are good, full of beauty and truth, they aren’t the core of homeschool. Homeschooling is an opportunity. A chance to make…
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For a few thousand years, the apprentice/journeyman system was responsible for many of the most impressive minds and creative works in human history. Under this system, young men and women would sit at the feet of, and work alongside their parents, teachers, rabbis, and mentors. This system was sufficient to breed the great philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, poets, authors, playwrights, architects, composers, musicians, painters, sculptors, clockmakers, and mechanical engineers of antiquity. Under this system we got the Sistine Chapel, Romeo and Juliet, The Roman Aqueducts, the Antikathyra mechanism, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Solomon’s Temple, and Beethoven’s “9th Symphony.” Some of these great works have endured for millennia, but my…
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