Who Are We?
I am a Catholic homeschooling mother of 5 children who range in age from 17 to 7. I am also a secular Carmelite, and I work as a medical transcriptionist. I enjoy learning new things all the time (which I have many opportunities to do with homeschooling, with my job, and with Carmel), singing, spinning, weaving, and I am beginning to really like gardening too. I am married to a wonderful, virtuous, kind man who is a fantastic father and can usually be found playing an early Saturday morning boardgame with one of the kids. He teaches theology and he too is a secular Carmelite. We’ve always dreamed of having a farm, but instead of waiting for “someday,” we’re starting now with our little acre.
Our children are:
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E – enjoys crafts of all kinds, music, ballet, backpacking, and reading Tolkien over and over again
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JP – loves math for its own sake, programming in Python, fractals, multiple dimensions, and telling all of us his latest inventions and ideas
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A – enjoys building things, making up new computer games with Gamemaker, and zips through his homeschooling so he can get back to more important things that involves hammersM – sweet little dolly who just seems a little less fallen than the rest of us. Enjoys reading and crafts and music and dancing and theater.J – loves Legos and boardgames and getting and giving hugs. His favorite subject this week is math.
How do we homeschool?
I would call our homeschooling method eclectic classical. We don’t use any boxed curriculum provider (at least we haven’t so far). Instead, we use a little of this and a little of that depending on the best things we can find for each subject, the needs of each child, and the needs of the parent teaching the subject. We make the period of history we are studying the basis for planning the rest of our humanities subjects.
Why do we homeschool?
When you plant a young tree, you stake it so that it can grow strong and tall. You don’t just hope for the best. As it grows, it needs the stakes less and less until it doesn’t need them at all but can continue to grow strong and tall on its own. Our children are like those trees.
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Above all, we are homeschooling because for us it seems like a good way to help our children learn to know, love, and serve God.
- We are homeschooling because this method of tutoring one on one is the education that many princes, inventors, scientists, and great writers received.
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We are homeschooling to help them do what Pope John Paul II said to the youth: “Become who you are!”
Hi
I found your site through Catholichomeschool.org, an enormous THANK YOU for sharing all your wisdom! Your site is amazing and has no doubt saved me months of research. I do hope you are able to continue to blog, your info is wonderful.
I’m blessed to be able to begin homeschooling my son (after 4 years of Catholic school) He’s 10 today 5/11/00, and you’ve taken me from thinking I may need to start homeschooling with our states virtual K12 to following my heart and knowing I can give him a strong classical education and continuing his faith formation. I’m a single mom retiring this month to pursue my dream…a dream that the Lord has slowly upfolded to me and brought to fruition!
All the Lord’s blessings to you and your family, thank you for sharing so much of your knowledge, it’s so appreciated!
I’m so glad I have been able to help you. I hope that your homeschooling goes wonderfully and you both find it to be a joyful experience.
For what it’s worth, I have found through my own experience and from what others have said that the 1st year is definitely the hardest (but it can also be the most exciting), so you might plan on giving it a 2-year commitment.
God bless,
Carla
Please consider submitting something about homeschooling to the Carnival of Homeschooling. If you are interested, here are the instructions.
If this week is bad for you, you are always welcome to submit to future carnivals.
If a “blog carnival” is a new term, this might help.
Here is the archive of previous carnivals
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Thank you for your consideration.