Planning, planning, PLANNING

"Choose and act for yourself. Be motivated from within. Make a plan for your life, including education or vocational training. Explore interests and skills. Work and become self-reliant. Set goals, overcome mistakes, gain experience, and finish what you begin." ~Robert D. Hales

Please note: This blog post contains links to books, but none of the links are affiliate in nature. 


I LOVE to plan!

It is a strange part of my usually-spontaneous personality, but I think I get it from my Grandmother's side. She, her sisters and her mother were Super-Organizers, and I love to organize, too.

Yet, as with organizing, it is the PROCESS of planning that I love. Following the plans are not as attractive of an exercise for me.

But I really-- really-- need this to change, now that I am homeschooling with more purpose and planning.

Perpetual Change

We moved again in April, and even though we just moved to a larger house around the corner, it was almost as difficult as moving far away, except we got rid of less stuff. (Which is fine, since we moved into a much bigger house. Yay!)

The biggest issue with perpetual change is the chaos that it leaves in its wake. Our chore system has been turned inside out, which is helping me try to do more with a "Family Work" mindset. So far, it has worked well, but I do still need to list out the deeper cleaning tasks, and organize them into some kind of a rotation for us to do.

I feel like my brain is overflowing with jumbled, bright, and shiny ideas for every aspect of my life, but I have no clue where to begin!

Today I sat down and mind-mapped all the roles I am trying to fill personally, and it was a pretty full page, let me tell you! And this is after our Shakespeare play is long over and done with! 

(We started moving the week of our production. What kind of crazy-doodle-head does that? Me.)

I feel completely out of balance right now. With all of the changes going on, my priorities have all jumbled together into one big clump of confusion. Thinking through my roles helped quite a bit, but I think I need to take it down to the details, next.

Homeschool Planning

This summer is my time to PLAN and work out what I hope to do for homeschool this year. Here are all the people I will be teaching in the upcoming school year:

• Miss B: 17 years old, High School Senior
• Mr. G: 16, High School Junior
• Miss D: 14, High School Freshman/Sophomore*
• Mr. R: 12, 7th Grade
• Miss M: 10, 5th Grade
• Miss G: 9, 4th Grade
• Miss A: 7, 2nd Grade
• Miss E: 5, 1st Grade

I have made many plans for my homeschooled kids over the years, but none of them really worked-- mostly because they were created, but never followed, and with no accountability built in.

This past week, I had a chance to talk to a friend who has been homeschooling as long as I have, with lots of academic success. I was fortunate enough to see her academic plans in spreadsheet format on Google Drive for her third child. It was beautifully organized; easy to see what subjects and assignments her boy had finished, and what still needed to be done. 

Happily, she copied it and sent me a link that I could edit. I am so excited!!! I spent a couple days reworking it for my own kids, and it's been waaay more fun than you might think. (I love planning, remember?)

I really, REALLY want to make it work! Right now, I just have the subjects organized, and some of the resources I will be using, but I don't have any assignments plugged in yet. That will come as I gather my resources this summer.

Each subject has a column with its own color. Some subjects are weekly, and some are daily. A really cool thing my friend did, is to highlight the current row/week (a week on each row) with bright yellow (easy for the student to see what they have to do that week), and then fill in each subject's assignment with the subject's corresponding color once it's done. That leaves all weeks in the future plain white, and then anything that was not finished remains highlighted until it's completed.

You can take a look at a copy of my high school schedules "in-the-works" at this Google Drive link here.  

Curricula

Our homeschool has always been literature-based, and that is one of the things we will not change. I am convinced that the best learning comes from the best books, and when I give my children an assigned list each term, I can better make sure that the very best books get read.

I am looking at many lists of books, especially going through our many bookshelves for the books we love and have learned the most from. One of the best websites for long lists of "living books" for each age group is at Ambleside Online. They have a free "curriculum" there, with lists for each grade level.

I especially love Ambleside for children, and for their enrichment subjects, like Art and Music Study, but I have not been impressed with their High School curriculum, so far. I have decided to customize the book lists and assignments for my children age 12 and older. 

Another booklist I am using, though not in the exact same order, is from the book "Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens" by Oliver DeMille and Shanon Brooks. 

I am just beginning to make my lists, but so far, it is lots of fun! It's exciting to teach my kids using the books that have enriched my life the most.

I will try to continue sharing my journey planning for our homeschool, sharing what works, and even what doesn't. Happy planning until next time!

Love,

Rachel

*My daughter, Miss D, is officially a high school freshman in the Fall, but she was able to start LDS seminary this year, as an eighth grader. This worked well for my daughter who is graduating from seminary tomorrow night, though she won't really be a senior until this Fall. It's nice to be ahead in something!

Walk Beside Me

For my final post in this series about the changes we've made in our homeschool, I thought I'd just share the resources we have found that are helping us on our journey, as well as share some of the things we have been doing that are working well in our homeschool. 

Two Philosophies

I have been homeschooling since 1999, y'all. I am not new to all the buzz words and learning styles that have been out there for the past sixteen years! I have definitely heard about Charlotte Mason over all that time, and even have the complete set of her original book series on education. However, in the past I had only thumbed through the books a few times and discussed her methodologies with homeschooling moms now and then.

I was going strictly child-led with our homeschooling, and so as wonderful as I felt Charlotte Mason's ideas were, I dismissed her based on her parent and/or teacher-led philosophies. My kids were doing whatever they wanted with their learning, and I was just there to get them the resources they needed, and to help now and then when they might get stuck doing their learning of choice.

During the first 14 years of our homeschooling, we had a flurry of baking, reading, insect-hunting, game-making, DIRT, play, and SHAKESPEARE going on with the students in our home. I was a very busy mom who was running around trying to organize and lead a homeschool community, blogging, speaking at homeschool events, directing plays, and sewing intricate Shakespeare costumes.

It was a lot of fun (and I love fun!), but it was also very, VERY chaotic. I am not a big schedule person, and so my kids never knew what to expect from day to day, and neither did I-- or my husband. But because we were all child-led, all the time, I felt that the flexibility lent itself to the style of learning we were attempting to follow, and I didn't think we needed to change anything. Our kids would learn ALL they needed to know, and I was not worried!

Reality Sets In

I had always loved my teens; they were model youth! We had lots of fun in our homeschool group, in our Shakespeare plays, in our family circle, and I was sure that they were going to grow up to be amazing people who would make a real difference in the world.

Until the time my children began to discover that they had never done any real, sustained learning. And when studies got difficult for them, they would just drop the subject at hand and move on to something easy. I started to see these warning signs, but was completely unequipped to know how to deal with these disturbing trends. My personal philosophies kept me from requiring anything of my children, at least academically. (We had lots of requirements when it came to household duties and family rules.)

And then, we had a couple of very, VERY difficult years in our family. And it wasn't just with one child. One of our older children has autism, and so I knew she had to do things in her own way-- I did not push her for most things, or we would have even bigger problems. But our very ambitious child began to realize that his education had been severely neglected, and so he lost almost all respect for me, treating me accordingly. Then another child started dealing with depression and some very, VERY serious issues that greatly affected self-esteem and lead to alarming actions.

I began to realize that I had been neglecting the education of my children, right when they needed my guidance the most. And as a result, they no longer felt they could look to me or trust me as their homeschool teacher.

Searching and Stumbling

We took some steps back, at this point. I was leading a homeschool group at the time, and started simplifying everything I could with the group, in our commitments, and in my personal interests, so that I could focus on my family-- doing whatever it took to get us "back on track." 

We poured all of our efforts into our family's spirituality, desperately trying to heal the broken family culture that we had unwittingly created. In the midst of doing everything possible to save my children from spiritual death, I gave birth our last two children, directing a musical while pregnant with one, and costuming a Shakespeare play weeks before giving birth to the other child! (And also turned 40 years old. Yay?)

I remember pleading with the Lord to help me know what to do. We were also beginning to require a few minimum things from our children academically, now: MATH, and penmanship. The kids seemed to grab hold of having requirements, and I began to study more and more about the one-room schools from early American history. I was seeing the value in daily requirements for myself, and the principles of the Law of the Harvest kept coming to mind, resonating in my heart. 

As daily order was coming into our homeschool, some of the fun DID leave. But I had to choose between keeping learning exciting, or keeping my children's hearts. And so I chose the latter.

Probably the final nail in the coffin of child-led homeschooling philosophies for our family came when my newly-called missionary son looked at me, about a month before leaving our home, and said: 

"I can't believe you're finally really homeschooling, now that I'm about to leave. I'm happy for the other kids, but I wish you had done this with me."

Humanities-Based Education

Once much of the smoke from the spiritual battles in our home cleared*, I began studying again, looking for just the right fit for our newly formed homeschool ideals. I still adored rich, full, classic books, music, art, and history. I no longer worried about keeping things fun and exciting, so that the kids would want to study. Rather, I again saw how valuable studying the truly good works throughout history was for our family culture. 

My children did not know all the wonderful, beautiful, inspiring things that were out there, but I did!!!

I kept going back to the lovely works that spoke to my heart-- the things that the kids had groaned about when they were running the show, so I would drop them. (Child-led!) With me taking my children by the hand, we could now explore the beautiful things I had always wanted them to experience-- TOGETHER!

I found myself looking for a homeschool experience that was similar to majoring in Humanities in college. I was praying with all my heart for such a thing, wondering if in the end I would have to create something on my own.

But then, I rediscovered Charlotte Mason.

Befriending Charlotte

One of the ladies in my homeschool community started talking about Charlotte Mason. In fact, she taught a class on Charlotte Mason at our very local LDS homeschool conference. I was interested, but also thought maybe I'd give this lady my set of Charlotte Mason books-- I wasn't using them. Luckily for me, she had her own set, and so I kept them. 

This same woman started sharing more about Miss Mason's philosophies in the community, and I was learning more on the side, as well. I was cracking open the books, reading here and there, and was beginning to feel very, VERY drawn to the method, but felt very overwhelmed at the same time. (If anyone has read Charlotte Mason's original books, you know how rich and deep every word is!)

And then, the same lady and some other friends hosted a small gathering where they simulated a Charlotte Mason homeschool day. It was intended to show what a CM co-op type experience was like, but it resonated so deeply with me that I was overcome with emotion. 

I COULD DO THIS!!! I wanted to do this in my home, to give my children this type of beautiful homeschool experience. With free resources like Ambleside Online and inexpensive options like Simply Charlotte Mason, I finally felt the support and help I needed to move forward.

I began to walk beside my children, sharing a beautiful, inspiring feast of beauty and richness with them, guiding them, leading them to the things that I, as their mother, feel are important for them to learn.

Our New Homeschooling Day

And so we are walking, hand in hand, among the beautiful and good in our homeschool every day, with a PLAN for each and every day. 

The younger children and I have a set time where we do what I call "Table Time," with devotional (scripture memory, scripture story, hymn study & singing), and copywork (Copying the scripture we are memorizing, of course!). 

Then the kids each take a turn at one of our three computers to do math. (HOORAY for CTC Math!!!)

Next, I do some reading aloud from Living books (Plutarch for children, Shakespeare, Poetry, or English History) and then we practice Swedish Drills, which the kids are really enjoying. (I am loving the lessons in attentiveness and obedience that happen naturally as a result of these exercises!) 

We also throw in Art study and Music/Composer study once a week, which the children also enjoy. I love hearing little voices pronounce the names of our French artist of the term (Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot), or talk about how Brahms' Lullaby makes them feel deliciously sleepy!

One thing I had always heard, but was never able to really latch onto during all my homeschooling years, was the idea that homeschool is life.

I came to realize that we can stop and read ANYTIME. If I don't get to one of my planning reading during the morning, I can stop in the afternoon, or just after dinner, to read Plutarch, or poetry. We can listen to our current Composer's music while cleaning or cooking, or playing and creating.

I should mention that a couple of my teen daughters have decided to take some classes part time at our local charter school, and that is working out really well. Our older children also still meet for some homeschool classes (This year it's Civil War, Chemistry, Writing and our old favorite, Shakespeare.) once a week, where I have even gone back to teaching Shakespeare again. (And I'm LOVING it!!!) We do use Khan Academy for a few high school subjects, where the older kids work on filling the gaps in their high school transcripts. (Plans really are wonderful things!)

After everything we have been through, I have been pleasantly surprised at how peaceful and wonderful mother-led education can be! Of course, I had to spend the last few weeks of August planning, studying, researching, writing, and planning some more, but the work I did then is paying off big dividends NOW.

And so, I Lead, Guide, and Walk Beside my children on this wonderful, ordered, JOYFUL homeschool journey, little by little, every day. 

Thank you for joining me!

Love, 

Rachel

*(The spiritual war still goes on, especially for one child, but those battles are no longer fought right in our home.)

To learn how to start using Charlotte Mason's ideas in your home, check out the "How to Get Started" page on the Simply Charlotte Mason website. It helped me immensely in knowing how to plan and start this first year!

Lead Me

"You have not taught your children light and truth, according to the commandments; and that wicked one hath power, as yet, over you, and this is the cause of your affliction.
And now a commandment I give unto you—if you will be delivered you shall set in order your own house, for there are many things that are not right in your house." ~Doctrine and Covenants 93:42-43

      Anyone who knows me knows that I am what the world calls a "strict" mom. My kids do chores, have rules to follow, and are not spoiled nor given everything they want. We have a very large family, and we have many children to care for, so we do our best to supply them with their needs and many of their wants, but we literally cannot meet all of their requests.

      We also don't feel that it is good for children to have everything they want when they want it. We want them to learn patience, self-denial, and discipline. We assign our younger ones to the care of our older ones, because we want them to learn to serve unselfishly, and to sacrifice.

      The way I have tried to manage our home and family has been orderly and intentional. I have done all I can to make our home environment rich in art, music, spirituality, and culture. I have always wanted my children to learn how to be truly good, live with integrity, and love God.

      But there is one area that I have neglected, and made the mistake of expecting things to grow organically, without effort from me.

      I have neglected my children academically.

Parental Stewardship

      I have been homeschooling a long time-- a long time! Since 1999, I have had my children home with me for the purpose of being educated under my care. I have often explained one of my reasons for homeschooling as feeling that the education of my children is my God-given responsibility and stewardship.

      So how could I have neglected the education of my children in this way???

      To make a very long story short, I came to believe that my children did not need my instruction-- that they would learn all they needed to learn on their own. I felt that if I set the example of working on my own projects, that they would follow suit and work on their own.

      In many ways, things did work well. If I practiced the piano, my children would clamor to play the piano. If I spent hours a day reading, my children would spend hours reading.

     But there was one element that did not work out in a positive way. My projects tended to be on the computer. I was doing big things! I was connecting homeschoolers, building a community and network of homeschooling families, planning and running events. It was fun and exciting! I was busy and happy. My kids were smart, they were reading, having fun, learning various subjects, and discussing. But they were not receiving instruction and guidance-- academically-- from me.

      The one thing I was not doing, was homeschooling.

Unschooling

      For those who do not homeschool, who might read my blog, you need to understand that there is a movement in the homeschool world that has gained a lot of traction. It's called "Unschooling." 

      I want to make it crystal clear that I am NOT here to discredit unschooling, or say that no parent should use unschooling ideals in their homes. I could never, ever in good conscience tell a parent that what they are doing in their own God-given stewardship over their children's education is lacking. I believe in 100% homeschooling freedom, and I find compulsory schooling laws to be unjust and draconian.

      I can, however, with conviction, say that unschooling did not serve my own family well. 

      I wish to cover my reasons over the course of time here on my blog, so I will elucidate on my personal experiences unschooling in the future. More on that to come...

Steering the Boat

"I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father;" ~1 Nephi 1:1

      My oldest children were by now in their teens. They were good kids, they were thinking about great things, and reading difficult books. However, they were so independent and strong-willed that they would not submit academically to anyone-- not to me, as their mother, nor to the mentors that taught them in their weekly classes with our homeschool group. They were the masters of their educations, only they were now prideful and unteachable.

      Frankly, they did not know all that they did not know! They had no course, and did not know how to navigate, even if they did have a plan. They simply floated along the waves of their present interests, and were going nowhere. Adulthood was waiting on the horizon, and they were clueless on how to meet it.

      At about this same time, I read a phrase written by a fellow homeschooler who had children slightly older than myself. What she wrote rang in my ears, and caused me to begin to change my own course.

      She wrote,

"We cannot leave our children to float adrift in their educational boats."

      Like a clash of thunder, I knew that I needed to step up and help my children steer their boats, before they drifted further and further off the course I knew that God and I wanted for them.

      So after more than a decade of "homeschooling," I found that I needed to start over. I needed to stop focusing on other homeschooling mothers and their children, and "behold my own little ones."

      The beam in my own eye had to be addressed, at last. It was a path of humiliation and regret, but at last I was going to face the fact that I had neglected the education of those precious ones I had been given stewardship over.

      Which is the course upon which I am still finding my way today.

      Thank you for joining me on the voyage.

With love, Rachel