My Classical Homeschooling journey

Monday Musings are posts that engage with issues in the world of homeschooling. This week: learning to think. Learning to think. This is something that I assumed all educational pursuits would fulfil. Surely this is what we go to school, college and university for: to learn to think? But, I have come to realise that this is not the case. We can be given facts, and very interesting ones at that. But, we are often not given the skills and foundations to think well. We are not required to think well. As I progressed further up the education ladder, an ability to think well became more and more important. When studying for my PhD, it was a requirement to express original thought and ideas. To do this well, I realised that I needed a logical, watertight argument. It was at this point in my life that I realised that I hadn't been schooled to think . I'd been given lots of content and did know a lot about my subject. But, when it came to thinking and formulating ideas well, I wa...

Our journey into homeschooling has been so enlightening. We had no idea where to begin when we first started researching it. We're only at the very beginning of our journey, but we have done some research and managed to refine down our preferences. The best books we have read so far in helping us are  The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home . The Read-Aloud Family   Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler's Guide to Unshakable Peace . We're still reading and learning and I'll post about this in our journey. But, so far, here's our wisdom... So, I thought it may be helpful to others in our position to write down some helpful questions we asked that enabled us to come to a conclusion of what curriculum was right for us. So here goes: 1.   What are your reasons for homeschooling? This is a massive question, I know, but answering it will help to direct you to the right homeschooling approach . In my experience there are broadly three camps of peo...

I said in my last post that we'd been hugely impressed with the Classical Conversation (CC) co-op that we'd visited while in America and my first steps into the homeschool journey were through Classical Conversations literature. So, you may be asking, why didn't we choose it? We did actually find it very helpful. My first books on homeschooling were published by CC and they were helpful. (For example, The Core ). Well, good question. I'm not here to berate CC, but rather to take you through our thinking and realisations about Classical education. So, here goes. This is why we didn't choose CC: It's more neo-Classical than Classical Classical Conversations. Surely it's the blueprint for a Classical education? Well, I thought so too. But as I began reading, I realised that it's actually a neo-classical curriculum.  You see, some wise people, far wiser than me, have written about true, authentic Classical Education. They helpfully state: ...

So, if you were with me in part 1 ( if not, catch up here ), you'll know that our homeschooling journey was a surprise. We were planning on doing everything but homeschooling: we favoured private school and saw the local primary school as a less-than-ideal, but possible, option. But, about a year since we started seriously considering our daughter's education, we are firmly decided that homeschooling is for us. Let me take you on the next part of our journey... My husband and I were disillusioned with the options before us. We didn't think that the state sector could offer the rounded, mastery that we craved, and we were put off by the costs and travel of the closest and ideal private school. So, our minds went back a few years to 2013. We were on holiday in the US. My husband was attending a Christian conference in Washington DC and we'd contacted some friends to ask if they knew any families that would be able to offer accommodation for a couple of nights befor...

So, here goes. I thought it might be useful for others (and for myself) to take stock of where we've got to as a family on our homeschooling journey so far. My husband and I got married 7 years ago and had our first child around 2 years ago. In the years up to having her, we were passionate about education. It was a common topic of conversation in our hime. I was a PhD student and my husband loved talking about education. We were both sure of one thing: our education had failed us. We felt that our UK state education had failed to prepare us for life. It had failed to give us the foundational skills that we needed to thrive. We lacked confidence, eloquence and knowledge - we were both convinced that our writing was poor. So how could we ensure things were different for our daughter? Well, homeschooling wasn't on our radar! We had two options: 1. Send our daughter to private school 2. Look for the best state school for primary and then send her to private school. ...