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:

  • E – enjoys crafts of all kinds, music, ballet, backpacking, and reading Tolkien over and over again
  • JP – loves math for its own sake, programming in Python, fractals, multiple dimensions, and telling all of us his latest inventions and ideas
  • 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 hammers
    M – 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.

  • 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.
  • We are homeschooling to help them do what Pope John Paul II said to the youth:  “Become who you are!”