My journey
When we first started homeschooling, we signed our kindergarten daughter up for a weekly class that called itself a classical program. During that time, I was pretty entrenched in that one kind of “classical” learning, which involved lots of memory work (including Latin endings), a little bit of art and music, and, later on, a focus on grammar and writing. It was all centered around what “learning stage” a child was in, according to the “trivium” - grammar, logic, or rhetoric stage. We did that for six years before stepping out on our own, at which point I had begun to realize that even the classical world was divided on what “classical” actually means. I came to see there was a lot more to classical learning than I had realized.
I pieced together a curriculum for my children for the next year, for second and sixth grades, using an eclectic mix of materials from companies who advertised themselves as classical. At the same time, I immersed myself in my own course of classical learning, determined to understand it better. I read The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. I read articles in old catalogs I had kept from Memoria Press. I participated in social media groups where homeschool parents challenged one another to consider different classical approaches to home education. I read up on Charlotte Mason. I took a close look at Ambleside Online and implemented some of their “riches” curriculum into my children’s coursework. The following summer, I took two classes on classical pedagogy from Memoria College, a graduate program begun by Memoria Press, and I discovered a book, The Liberal Arts Tradition, that would change my approach to homeschooling.
What I learned through that journey was that the roots of classical education are deep and strong, and go much further back than I had realized. I began to read about and see the differences between neoclassical approaches and traditional classical approaches, and also the overlaps. I realized, through that year of experimentation and learning, that the traditional approach to classical education resonated far more with me and my husband, and also with our children. It matched well with our reasons for homeschooling, with our love of literature, with our biblical values, and with what we understood about how children learn. The last several years have been a further journey into understanding how to best make use of classical tools and content to teach my children, and seeing where it is leading all of us has been a delight.
Many parents, like me, are drawn to a classical homeschool approach, but they are overwhelmed at the terminology and overarching ideas of an educational approach stretching back to the Middle Ages. This can cause them to shy away from what could be a great blessing in their family, or make them vulnerable to expensive, commercialized approaches that promise to equip parents to teach their children classically while only skimming the surface of the deep water that is the classical tradition. But when you understand the basic elements of a classical education, you see that it is not as complicated as some publishers make it seem.
Click here to learn the basic elements of classical education.
I pieced together a curriculum for my children for the next year, for second and sixth grades, using an eclectic mix of materials from companies who advertised themselves as classical. At the same time, I immersed myself in my own course of classical learning, determined to understand it better. I read The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. I read articles in old catalogs I had kept from Memoria Press. I participated in social media groups where homeschool parents challenged one another to consider different classical approaches to home education. I read up on Charlotte Mason. I took a close look at Ambleside Online and implemented some of their “riches” curriculum into my children’s coursework. The following summer, I took two classes on classical pedagogy from Memoria College, a graduate program begun by Memoria Press, and I discovered a book, The Liberal Arts Tradition, that would change my approach to homeschooling.
What I learned through that journey was that the roots of classical education are deep and strong, and go much further back than I had realized. I began to read about and see the differences between neoclassical approaches and traditional classical approaches, and also the overlaps. I realized, through that year of experimentation and learning, that the traditional approach to classical education resonated far more with me and my husband, and also with our children. It matched well with our reasons for homeschooling, with our love of literature, with our biblical values, and with what we understood about how children learn. The last several years have been a further journey into understanding how to best make use of classical tools and content to teach my children, and seeing where it is leading all of us has been a delight.
Many parents, like me, are drawn to a classical homeschool approach, but they are overwhelmed at the terminology and overarching ideas of an educational approach stretching back to the Middle Ages. This can cause them to shy away from what could be a great blessing in their family, or make them vulnerable to expensive, commercialized approaches that promise to equip parents to teach their children classically while only skimming the surface of the deep water that is the classical tradition. But when you understand the basic elements of a classical education, you see that it is not as complicated as some publishers make it seem.
Click here to learn the basic elements of classical education.