US Botanic Garden

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,

and two loaves alone to thee are left,

Sell one and buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

-Sheikh Muslih-uddin Saadi Shirazi

Persian Poet (13th century)

A Typical Homeschool Day--Part 3

It's 7am and you've been dressed and reading in your bedroom for about half an hour. Your prayers are said, your bed is made and the room is neat when you go across the hall to see if your mom is awake. You and all your siblings push to cuddle her on the bed--even if she's out of the shower and dressed already--before heading downstairs en masse.

Since it's your day, the breakfast you asked for, bagels and yogurt fruit smoothies, is served to everyone. Sometime before 8, you've picked up your place and have started on your 2 morning chores, cleaning the downstairs bathroom and unloading the dishwasher. You practice your recorder and piano before heading across the street to where the school kids are playing at the park/bus stop. You chase your friends around, discuss your latest Lego creations, and speculate about the outcome of the Super Bowl before waving goodbye to the bus and heading in for "school" at 9.

You pick a picture book, Crinkleroot's 25 Fish Every Child Should Know, ask to be 2nd, and take a seat next to Mom on the couch. Trying to see around James on her lap and to keep Maria from shoving--quit it!--you listen to some stories. Today you have things to do, so after Cecilia's Caps for Sale, you grab your assignment book and head into the blue room to look at the wall maps.

Starting with your memory work, you review the capitals of the US states, Canadian provinces, and a few Central American countries. Quickly you recite the 5 important dates in US history you know, learn a new one, and turn to your flashcards of Latin and Greek roots. You love these so you do them all, even though you only have to do 15, and then hand the box to your brother. You are almost done memorizing "Children's Hour" by Longfellow, and you ask for a piece of fruit while you sit at the table and try to get the last few stanzas down. Maybe next week it'll finally be in your poetry book ready to be illustrated because Mom said she picked a new poem about snakes for you. It's 10:30.

Fifteen minutes of play and chasing the baby out of the legos will probably stretch into 30 until Mom says, "Anthony! Thomas is ready to watch the math movie." You wanted to do grammar with her, but the little guys need her. You manage to understand what the man on the movie is teaching over the noise (you are good at math, luckily) and take all your table work with you when you sit down. Two pages of math, 2 pages of cursive practice, and spelling copywork later, you sit on the couch to read your Bible story and a history chapter (but knowing you, you'll read 3). You'll want Mom to help you finish your work now, but it's lunchtime and she's cooking. Then she has to put the littles to bed, so you know you have some time to play.

At 1 the house is quiet, and you read a book for 1/2 hour. Then you and Thomas decide to create your own version of chess involving 3 chess boards. Around 2 o'clock Cecilia has finally fallen asleep so you go into the office and narrate the Bible story you read while Mom types it into the computer. When Thomas finishes his narration, the three of you cuddle on the couch and review a grammar lesson orally, answer the history questions, discuss the newest chapter in your catechism and review all the old chapters to see if you have them memorized. It's not quite 3, and your work is done.

4:30--Finally! The school bus is here, and you put away your book, grab a snack and play with your friends for a few hours. After dinner, you shower and ask mom to read you a book or to play some cards. At 8, after you've said your prayers and figured out where Cecilia put your new library book, you read for 1/2 hour. Just as you and Thomas are all tucked in and starting to get into a deep conversation about Bionicles, you hear a door squeak. DADDY!

A thunder of feet running down the stairs and screeching voices and jumping children all attack Daddy at once. You ask for a Lifesaver, his special treat to children who remember to ask how his day was, and wait at the toy box at the bottom of the stairs. Daddy pretends to be a red line metro train and carries you from Shady Grove to Glenmont (bed). Bionicles behind you, you and Thomas whisper about tomorrow's plans until you fall asleep.

A Typical Homeschool Day--Part 2

Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.-- W. B. Yeats

Once Bill agreed to let me educate the kids at home, the next step was to choose a curriculum to use. I would love to say that our choice was the product of thorough research and prayer, but it wasn't. It was mostly due to self-awareness and grace. I knew what I had liked about my own education. I loved reading, but the reading had to be a quality story about something real, not churned out pap with an obvious moral. (I would now call this the difference between a "living book" like Freedom Summer and a "junk food" book like Dora the Explorer Makes a Friend.) Grace came in the form of a homeschooling acquaintance who invited me into her home to pick up some catalogs. She told me about her curriculum and gave me some information to start me on my journey.

What ended up being more important, however, was her hospitality. She had originally only intended to hand me the catalogs, but instead she invited me and the 4 kids in to lunch. Her home was not clean, but it was orderly and hospitable and full of 6 loving, well-behaved kids, and I recognized that it was the sort of home I wanted for our family. This home truly sold me on homeschooling, and in my bleak moments, it still does. Jodie's description "lots of really good books and poetry...flexible...not required to enroll their school but you can if you want to...solid Catholic foundation" sold me on the curriculum.

The curriculum which she uses, and we use too, is called Mother of Divine Grace and is a Catholic classical curriculum created by Laura Berquist. Reading Mrs. Berquist's Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum, I recognized that the foundations of the classical style appealed to me--especially the living books part, and her recommendations of how to teach a classically designed curriculum are intelligent and do not neglect that Heaven is the final end for Man. I have to also admit that knowing that my brother John uses this curriculum and knows Mrs. Berquist personally and respects her makes me even more confident about it.

We are currently in the grammatical stage or pre-grammatical stage with all the kids. At this stage the curriculum emphasizes that the tools for education are knowledge of faith and fluency in mathematics, language, and memory. The day to day subjects we cover--based on the syllabi from Mother of Divine Grace--emphasize those skills specifically.

While Mother of Divine Grace tells me what to teach, I have found that the Catholic Charlotte Mason approach described in Elizabeth Foss' book Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home and the ongoing discussions at the 4Real boards have given me the example of how. They have given me a view inside the houses of many other faith-filled, often times large, homeschool families so I can see what homeschooling can look like on a day to day, season to season, Holy Day to Holy Day basis. Last summer when I went to hear her speak, I was very happy to hear Laura Berquist say that she didn't think there is any difference between her approach to education and the Charlotte Mason method Mrs. Foss uses and which is based on Charolotte Mason's 20 principles.

And so it is while keeping all of these principles and examples in mind that I construct our day to day learning environment and schedule. Before I move on to what a typical homeschool day looks like at our house, I want to make a few notes. First, if it sounds like this was all my idea, it was. Until fairly recently, Bill's engagement in homeschooling has been skeptical, supportive and minimal. I totally appreciate that since it has given me room to grow to where I am now when he is starting to take a more active interest. My ideas are better developed now. Second, while I have many lofty, faith-based and intellectual reasons to homeschool, in the end it boils down to the fact that I love it and it's working. That's why we're doing what we do.

A Typical Homeschool Day--Part I

Back when I started this blog, I thought it would be nice to describe a typical school day, but there were other, more interesting, picture-related things to share, so I left that thought for another time--like now. From January to Easter our family life is generally very quiet with very few events to record so these thoughts won't be competing with cute pictures.

Why homeschool?

"Right now our family is in a state of crisis. We are defined at least in part by what we do not have. We do not have our house, we do not have our baby, we do not have the books and materials we have accumulated over several years. Nothing is status quo right now. …The ideal Charlotte Mason education and the ideal Charlotte Mason educator seem as far away as the moon. So once again, what is our goal in homeschooling? …if we are homeschooling our children because we want to raise saints, we can take comfort in the fact that God blesses us in our deprivations as well as in our abundances…. A family is uniquely suited to sanctify its members- That’s why I am homeschooling. Because I want our family to meet in heaven someday, and I think we have a better shot at it if we journey together as much as possible."

--Willa Ryan on living with her family 3 hours from home to be near her infant son who was awaiting a liver transplant

When I started to think about describing a typical homeschool day, I realized that it wouldn't be as meaningful without understanding our curriculum. And to know why we chose the curriculum we use, you would need to understand why we homeschool to begin with.

I think most people think that homeschoolers are opting out of the school system as a reaction against something they perceive being wrong with it. I think in the beginning that was true for me, but it hasn't been a primary reason--or really even a consideration beyond hearing something bad and thinking, "I'm glad we don't have to deal with that."--for a long time. Instead, I have come to wonder if there is some reason that I should put the kids in a traditional setting, i.e., is there something essential that they are missing by being at home? What is the goal of education?

You might think that the goal of education is to assure someone of getting a good job so they can have a secure future. But is having a good job the point of our life? What is a secure future?

Willa, a woman I know online, and Laura Berquist who is the designer of our curriculum reminded me that a secure future is only found in the next world. The Baltimore Catechism says that "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next." I agree, and therefore think that everything I or Bill or the children do should be ordered toward achieving those ends. (Not everything is, but that is our goal.) I believe it is easier to make our journey's goal of Heaven clear by having the children learning at home. Just from rereading what I've shared since I started this blog has shown me how integrated our faith is into our day to day lives. Our faith is essential, more important than anything else, and the kids are guaranteed to live it at home. And I believe they get it in a better way than they could in public or even Catholic schools.

I also believe they can still get an education which will enable them to get good jobs in this world and be socially functional human beings too. And those beliefs then lead me to wonder what style of education is best....

Flossie the parrot says,

"No more cavities for Anthony!"

Bill's Day

Yesterday, a lady who works with Bill passed by and asked how I was doing. To this fairly standard question, he answered, "Fine."

Then she said, "I hear you have 6 or 7 kids. Are they all from the same mother?" He told her that yes, his wife is the mother of all of his children.

So she looked at him and said, "But she's not from America is she?"

28 weeks

Here I am at 28 weeks in my new bathingsuit. I'm lap swimming 1/2 mile 2x/week for exercise.