I’ve now decided I’m best described as an eclectic homeschooling mom. I should have guessed I’d end up here. My house is quite eclectic and I like to dress pretty eclectic too. I’ve also never been much of a conformist.
So, we started Kindergarten with the Montessori/Waldorf influenced Enki (I’ll try to post our experience with it in the future) and that just didn’t work out for us. Then, last year our curriculum was based around the Classical model. While my son enjoyed all the reading, he didn’t end up liking all the workbook work. He also really needs lots of movement. After reading “The Mind of Boys,” (review to follow in a future post) I’ve accepted his need for movement will never end and I need to teach him in a way that respects his high energy.
This year, we are sticking to our history group with some modifications, 4-H with a change in format, Buddhist Studies, and violin with hopefully less pressure. We will follow a stricter schedule with built in play times (to avoid whinnying, arguing and procrastination). We are reintroducing daily exercise in the morning to include yoga and learning new sports. We will do light copywork in English and Spanish. We’ve abandoned our Hidden Pond class but are now joining a Forest School group one time a week. We’ve added “Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding” (look for a future review) as our science base to be done with a group. We’ve replaced Singapore with a more living math approach, “Math on the Level” (look for a review in the future). He will read to me daily. I will read to him daily with books related to our weekly history topic, weekly science topic, topics of his interest and classical books. We are also adding crafts/art back in as a subject.
We start our official schooling again Monday, 9/13. I’ll try to post our planned schedule by then.