Dominion Family

We are down to 1 1/2 weeks to go until we start school. This time of year I always start to panic. I seem so busy all summer without school, how will I ever squeeze in our school schedule? Somehow every year it works. Even now I am looking over my summer reading goals and feeling let down. With a week and half to go I can only hope to finish 1-2 more books at the most. I had hoped to reread a few CM books this summer but the only education book I have read is Norms and Nobility. Still, I have been reading more to the children and doing some fun things like nature walks. I have also planned out the 3 older students schedule through November. My Morning Time planning is pretty easy since we just do the next thing.

Our composer for the 1st term will be Beethoven per se the Ambleside list but we will skip Michelangelo this term and do the Hudson River Valley artists which we missed earlier.

Here is a sample schedule. The schedule reflects some planning but mostly an acknowledgement of how our days turn out. The older boys follow their own schedule after attending the morning meeting. This is the plan but it will never happen exactly like this. Some days Morning Time will take too long and I will cancel a few things. The reason we finish so late is that we do take breaks for laundry, chores, life & play. We usually average 5 hours of school time on a good day, 45 minutes of play counted. Do not read this schedule as 7:30-4:00 School. The word schedule is like the word diet. We all have a diet and we all have a schedule. This is just a picture of what our days usually look like. Getting up early is about the only real tip that I can give anyone. It makes all the difference.

5:30 Awake
6:00 Bible reading
6:30 Breakfast
7:00 Clean-up
7:30 Math
8:30 Morning Meeting
9:00 Morning Time
10:00 Latin/Greek Alt (Spanish)
10:30 Language Arts (Spelling Monday, Grammar Tuesday, Handwriting Wed, etc)
11:00 Phonics with Andrew & Alex
12:00 Lunch
12:30 Clean-up/baseball/tennisball/basketball
1:00 Recorder (Andrew, Emily, Alex)
1:30 Science /nature walk
2:00 Ambleside: Andrew & Alex (Reading all)
3:00 Reading
4:00 Play
5:00 Supper
5:30 Clean-up
6:00 Evening activities

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Once again, if you are looking for homeschool recordkeeping software, look no further. The Gentile family has once again made terrific updates free to those who have purchased the Plus version. They are available daily on the discussion group, too. It just doesn’t get any better. I have been given 2 free major updates since my one-time purchase 2 years ago.

Homeschool Tracker by TGHomeSoft

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Here is Christopher’s list for today (actually yesterday :typing:
Not including Morning Time, Tennis Ball and Latin which are done in groups. Take this with a grain of salt. I picked Christopher because he usually gets everything done on his list and it is an 8th grade list (not elementary, not highschool.)

1. Free Reading, one hour, pick one book. Christopher is reading Penrod and Sam.

2. Written narration. (Some days Christopher does a lesson in Harvey’s Elementary Grammar.)
In his spare time, he is working on a book (novel) about Iwo Jima based on true events. Some days I let him do that instead of his narration.

3. Ray’s Spelling (computer spelling program, 10 minutes max)

4. Dr Aardsma Math drills ( 5-10 Minutes) computer program.

5. Saxon Algebra 1/2 lesson 103

6. Apologia General Science test 9 ( Slow and steady on the science. I begin this book as a first science course in 7th grade and give the student 2 years to complete it.)

7. Sketches From Church History chp 40

8. Ourselves (small section)

On different days of the week Christopher reads different books, but I only scheduled through the first part of November knowing we would fall behind. Now I need to add to Christopher’s schedule. He is also reading A Knight’s Fee by Rosemary Sutcliffe and Idylls of the King by Tennyson and a few other books in the Charlotte-Mason-small-chunk way.

I have a list I am working from to schedule his year. We will NOT cover all of this but it is my working list from the summer so I won’t forget what my goals are. Plus if you are like me it is fun to look at booklists.

Here it is:

Reading List Ideas:

Norms & Nobility Ideas:
Churchill’s The Age of Revolution & The Great Democracies (He already completed Vol 1 of this series.)
Chute’s Shakespeare of London
Poetry: Marlowe, Raleigh and Donne
Pilgrim’s Progress
Mayflower Compact
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Declaration of Independence
A Tale of Two Cities
Red Badge of Courage
Great Expectations
Kenneth Roberts Fiction ?

Other:
Church History
Grace Unknown
The Hiding Place
The 39 Steps
Ourselves
How to Read a Book
The Scottish Chiefs
Adam of the Road by Gray (13th cent England)
The Trumpeter of Krakow by Kelly (15th cent Poland)
Otto of the Silver Hand by Pyle (middle ages)
The Red Keep: A Story of Burgandy in 1165 by French
Rolf & The Viking Bow
The Lion of the North by Henty (early 1600s, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden)
Wulf the Saxon by Henty (last days of Saxon England)
Call of the Wild
Rifles for Watie (civil war)
House of Sixty Fathers
The Winged Watchman (dutch in ww2)
The Endless Steppe (1941 siberia)
Number the Stars (1943 escape from nazi, denmark true)
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
David Copperfield (Dickens)
Murder on the Orient Express (Christie)
Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
Prelude to Foundation (Asimov)
Best Short Stories of O. Henry
The Yearling (Rawlings)
Penrod (Tarkington)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe)
The British Josiah
Carry on Jeeves (Wodehouse)
Bruchko
The Knight’s Fee by Rosemary Sutcliffe
How to be your Own Selfish Pig

Ambleside Ideas:
Beowulf
Sketches From Church History
The Hobbit
Penrod
Idylls
The Eve of St Agnes
John Christopher books When the Tripods Came

MEMORY:
I am The Very Model of a Modern Major General G&S
Shakespeare “ A Sea Dirge” from The Tempest
Marlow, Faustus, “Ah Fastus now has thou but one bare hour to live….”
Donne, “Batter my Heart”
Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
Horatius at the Bridge

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Lately I have been thinking a bit about many things and my my thoughts have been tumbling all over one another rather incoherently. I have lots of things to blog about if I could just get my thoughts organized.

Homeschooling is always on my mind, since that is what I do 24/7. I believe for most of us the focus of our homeschooling becomes outcome. We have future goals and future hopes for our children. But I am wondering (vaguely) if that is where our goals should lay. I mean does it sound any better when we talk about how we want our children to turn out than when the public school does it: Become familiar with Beethoven (Year 3, day 57), Learn different concepts of a family: traditional, 2 mommies, 2 daddies (K , day 1). You get the picture.

The reason I say that, is that the outcomes I have envisioned for my boys have not been the outcomes that took place. As I have said here before, I was a bit shocked after Timothy graduated to find out that after all those years I was not the potter; (S)omeone else was at work, and His plan was entirely different from mine. This is not to say that I am not proud of my 2 older boys. I am much happier now knowing I am not the potter. I can sit back and enjoy watching the wheel spin without feeling like making too many suggestions to the Spinner.

That is very freeing but then I turn right around and look at the children under my care, especially my highschool boys and begin to question the outcome. Did I mention James is taking the SAT today? :wacko_tb:

I do think the agrarian model deals with some of this and that is where my thoughts head these days. In spite of the the path my older boys are now on, they are both highly agrarian in their worldview. They were both excited when we visited HSC to see that people were living on rather low incomes happily. They both long for a simple life in a country place and I believe that is where they will end up. They already have goals of finding land together somewhere.

But in the meantime they are both in what has been termed, “the real world.” The path to their goals leads through some ugly territory. Nicholas had to watch a childbirth video the other day. That wasn’t too terrible but the comments of the other officers during the video were degrading. How do you prepare a child for that? I know for a fact my boys don’t tell me all the garbage they see and hear. Yet through it all God has faithfully kept them.

Why do I belabor this? Ok, honest answer ahead, not meant to offend any particular ministry: When I get these homeschooling catalogs in the mail and I see all the bright shiny families I begin to doubt what God is doing in our family. I know from personal contact with some families that most of the creme brulee families are shocked that we “let” our boys join the government. It is not my desire to be negative or to dismiss another family’s work for the kingdom of God, but I have seen more than one creme brulee have its fragile sugar crust shattered only to find there was nothing underneath. I don’t say that as mere critisicm but as fair warning to my homeschooling friends: A sugar-coating does not make a meal.

The reason I find some of this alarming is that it encourages a fundamental lack of honesty among families. You don’t want to create an environment where everyone just pretends. In the last 20 years Tim and I have known some very famous pretenders.

I appreciate the visions that some ministries have, we need visionaries. But we don’t need anymore Bill Gothards and we don’t need anymore vanilla pudding.

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In light of our recent conversations I thought this webpage was very funny: Seldom Asked Questions About Homeschooling

Here is an excerpt and a baseball cap doff to Pat at Classed:

Recently I attended a state homeschooling convention. At least half the women there were wearing denim jumpers and had lots of children with them. If I decide to homeschool, will I need to buy a denim jumper and triple my family size?
Well, it depends. Some homeschoolers like to be nonconformists. In order to identify
yourself as a nonconformist, you will need to wear the right kind of denim jumper,
never cut your hair again, and have a larger than average family. All the boys will
need to wear slacks and dress shirts whenever you’re out in public, and the girls will
need to wear denim jumpers or pretty flowered dresses. Of course, if you don’t care
about being a nonconformist, this doesn’t apply to you; you’re free to dress however you choose.

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Are you busy with your homeschool planning for next year?

I am.

The first thing I do is figure out how many students I will have and what grade they will pretend to be in. Then I spend every summer reinventing the wheel, coming up with all sorts of extravagant plans. Then we fall back into our old routine just as soon as the real school year starts.

If you will keep that in mind I may over the next few months share how my planning is going. You just have to promise not to hold me to anything. For instance, we have not bought Just David yet. Nor have we taken time out to make books. It seems when life gets busy it is just easier for me to revert back to reading, writing and arithmetic, than enact a new plan.

Here is my first go round overview for 2006-2007:

I will be losing a student and gaining one.
In 2 years when Nathaniel graduates my days of gaining students will have ended.
Later I will flesh out everyone’s reading list and my Morning Time plans.

2006-2007 Overview
Students:

Nathaniel 11th grade:
Modernity/Christendom?
Saxon Algebra 2
Apologia Biology
Spanish
Latin
Bible: Chapter Summaries,

Christopher 9th grade:
Modernity/Christendom?
Teaching Textbook Math Algebra ?
Foersters Algebra 1 ?
Modernity
Rod and Staff 8th grade grammar
Apologia Physical Science
Henle Latin

Benjamin 7th grade:
House of Education year 7, or pre-year 7
Saxon 76
Rod and Staff 6th grade grammar
Apologia General Science
Latina Christiana 2

Emily 6th grade:
Ambleside year?
Rod & Staff 5th grade Math
Rod and Staff 5th grade Grammar
Latina Christiana 2

Andrew 3rd grade:
Rod & Staff 3rd grade math
Rod & Staff 3rd grade grammar
Ambleside year 3?

Alex K:
Phonics: TATRAS
Rod & Staff K Math

Notebooks to buy for each person:
Nature Notebook
Math Notebook
Journal Notebook
Narration Notebook

Ambleside Terms: Composer, Artist, Plutarch, Shakespeare

These are not stictly in line with next year’s Ambleside terms because I am usually behind.

Term 1:
August-November
Artist: Holbien, Brugel
Composer:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1785) (Classical/Roccoco) term subject to change
Listening selections for this term:
Piano Concerto 20 (2 weeks)
Symphony 40 (4 weeks)
Quintet in A maj for clarinet (2 weeks)
Piano Sonata in A maj K.331 (2 weeks)
Concerto for bassoon and orchestra in B-flat major, K. 191 (the only
bassoon concerto he wrote)
Plutarch: Demetrius
Shakespeare: Comdedy of Errors
Folk Song: Cockles and Mussels

Term 2:
January-March
Artist: Turner, Constable
Composer: Robert Schumann (1848) (Early Romantic)
Listening selections for this term:
Carnaval (for piano)
Scenes from Childhood for piano
Symphony no 1 in B flat Op 38 “Spring”
Symphony no 2 in C Op 61
an arabeske or humoreske
Liederkreis or other song cycle
Plutarch: Philopoemen
Shakespeare: Richard III
Folk Song: Ministrel Boy

Term 3:
April-June
Artist: Titian, Veronese
Composer: Richard Wagner (1813-1883); Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) (German Romantic)
Listening selections for this term:
Wagner: Siefried’s Idyl (orchestral)
Wagner: Selections from The Valkyries (opera)
Wagner: The Love Feast of the Twelve Apostles (choral) (massive work
requiring 1200 singers and 100 instruments!) (4 weeks)
Offenbach: Selections from Orpheus in the Underworld (opera)
Offenbach: Selections from The Tales of Hoffmann (opera)
Plutarch: Titus Flaminus
Shakespeare: King Henry VIII
Folk Song: Star of the County Down

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I woke up at 2:00 am with lots of thoughts to put in this post. I am afraid I should have risen and written them then.

I have blogged about this before and I didn’t really invent the term. Paul Washer, the homeschooling dad and evangelist, used the term when he spoke at our church. Here is how he used it:

He was with a group of people from church at a restaurant. He was waiting for his wife outside the bathrooms and his baby started to scream. He frantically looked for a pacifier which his wife rarely used. Coming out of the restrooms was a little homeschooled girl from his church. She saw the pacifier and kinda huffed and turned around looking for her mom. Her mom came out of the bathroom took one look at the baby with pacifier and said something to her daughter like, “It’s Ok, honey, some people just don’t know any better.” Paul said he was ready to punch the lady.

So that is one picture of the gestapo homeschooling mom.

The truth is that it was very hard to homeschool 25 years ago and almost any family that did homeschool had to have a certain amount of strength. Sometimes this made those families hard to get along with but they did pave the way for the rest of us. Those days are over for now. It is time to end the reign of the gestapo mom.

Gestapo moms are those who having control of a small world in their own homes, seek to spread their control outside of their sphere of influence.

It isn’t just a matter of being opinionated. Blogging is opinionated but to tell the truth the best blogs are the most opinionated ones. I enjoy reading people’s opinions on their blogs, but the gestapo mom seeks not only to give her opinion but force her ideas on those around her.

The gestapo mom is not a Calvinist. She is an Arminian of the worst sort seeking through her own efforts to build her own kingdom. She is self-righteous and lacks humility. ( Please read this sentence in the tongue-in-cheek mode. She is metaphorical arminian.)

Instead of being strong she is manipulative. Her concern is more for outward appearances than true heart issues.

She is a perfectionist who is afraid to let those around her make mistakes. She is usually completely taken by surprise when confronted with sin in her husband or children. She is blind to her own sin unless she does something that makes her look bad and messes up her perfectionist image.

Her sons are effeminate, happily baking bread and cookies, proud that they aren’t any good at sports. (Again, generalization, my sons bake cookies when they get hungry, too. Sadly, they usually taste terrible.)

Her husband obeys.

Her children are not allowed to be cold or dirty. She makes all their decisions for them even when they are beyond her reach. She has unreal expectations about their future plans.

Her children are obnoxious and opinionated, too. They are carbon copies of their mom, telling everyone their opinions and ideas, spouting knowledge (so-called) at the least provocation. She admires their boldness. “Mrs Rollins are you sure you want to let your 4 yo carry that (a tiny NASV Bible) to church? That is wrong.”

As I said yesterday, she is boorish. She speaks confidently of things she knows nothing about. She is smug and sure. She nods a lot during the sermon. She looks down her nose at you and your children.

She is headed for a fall.

Have you met her?

In the mirror?

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After the post yesterday I thought I better come out of the closet and admit that I have been a GHM. I am a recovering GHM, so to speak. I think what helped me to recover was having a stubborn husband and lots of strong-willed boys. Not to criticize…..

My dear friend, Linda and I, frequently discuss how obnoxious we used to be. The good news is that we are still friends and are recovering together. I once assaulted a lady in Linda’s own home, but to tell the truth when it comes to Bill Gothard I still have trouble keeping my mouth shut. After 5 years of intensely studying ATI and 5 more paying attention, I have lots of facts and figures readily mounted in my cannon. I have planted my flag on that hill but I am trying to learn how to win the war not just the battles.

Have you guessed that I am more bold in writing than in speech? I usually fall prey to domineering personalities. Then I run home and blog about the culprits, something I couldn’t do pre-blog.
Blogging: therapy for chickens!
I used to just call Linda and she would say, “You always meet the weirdest people.”

I don’t want to tear down homeschooling moms either. I really want to build them up. It is just from my perspective we could all use a little lightening up. Sometimes homeschooling enables controlling women. As women, I think we all tend to be controlling already. We need to understand the sin behind a controlling spirit, not feed the beast.

We need to make sure we have compassion on those around us, even the domineering ones. I think, in the end, God allowed me to be surrounded by GHMs in order to let me see what I was becoming.

Phil 2:3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

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One of the reasons I homeschool…the way that I homeschool….relates back to yesterday’s post on not separating the secular from the sacred. For several years now I have been trying to wrap my mind around why I believe in a strong liberal arts education.

It would almost seem pedantic for me to state my reasons if it weren’t for the fact that the obvious so easily slips away in the atmosphere of education we see on all fronts today.

How naive it would sound for me to say that I believe in educating the “whole man.” After all John Dewey said something remarkably similar. I believe Dewey was wrong, very wrong.

It isn’t that we should educate the whole man: send the boy out camping and call it a school day; it is that we should not be separating the mind from the soul.

To teach “subjects” in the way that they are now taught almost universally is to strip the glorious creation of God down to the barest facts and call it education. Ha, I am not original. Didn’t someone really smart once say that,

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful.”

Yes, I believe it is just too easy for homeschoolers to castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful. More and more of us are doing that everyday.

This all brings me to why in many ways our homeschool is so weak in some areas and so strong in others. I just cannot bring myself to compromise the soul of education in order to fit in the dry bones. Even so, I am a long way from the mark. Every year I strive to find more and more ways to feed my children’s souls.

This does not mean I shy away from rigorous study. I love rigorous study. It is just that I don’t confuse taking a test with learning. I try not to forget the things that can’t be measured: poetry in the heart, deep discussions, time for thoughtful reflections, love of beauty, the fellowship of suffering, the euphoric feeling of using the right word, honest toil, gentle breezes and warm days.

None of this is original; Charlotte Mason said these very things a hundred years ago, “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life,”
it is just so easily lost as the train we are on barrels on towards unifomity.

I hope this little drop of water will remind not to get too carried away with that homeschool catalog. You can’t buy souls for your children.

Recommended Reading:
Norms and Nobility

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I thought I would continue by trait of transparency by telling you how my homeschool planning is going.

First my dh decides that I need to stop trying to do everything myself and perhaps spend more money on homeschooling. So we start looking around at the local private school/baseball situation for our soon to be 11th grader. All roads lead to a dead end, which is good since I don’t want him to go to a ’school’. I am a homeschool zealot.

Option 2: We look at the local co-op. It is expensive but maybe worth it, until you add in gas prices.
For $1500+ a year we could drive to the co-op.

Option 3: I begin to add up how much it would cost to buy everyone a year of Sonlight so that I can stop trying to plan. I know there are families that homeschool successfully in a serendipitous manner but my goal is to actually read the books on our shelves not just collect them. It is harder to be serendipitous with a large family. Children in a large family know how to conspire against their mother and her small mind. Putting things on paper helps the mother remember.

How much would Sonlight cost? More than the private school and more than the co-op gas prices. Plus I get irritated with the Sonlight catalog.

We buy a van.

Now I have this brilliant idea of planning 180 days in detail for each child and have them sign off each day, especially my highschoolers, using only items we already own. Only everytime I sit down to begin the details I get discouraged.

Thankfully, we can pretty well homeschool with or without a plan. Some things are just second nature as long as I am making sure the kids don’t think each day is an exception to the rule. That is my big problem, my children believe the exceptions prove the rule each and every day.

Even so, every single one of my children treated me with great love yesterday. I mean, I felt it. I think they really love me!! Maybe we will unschool next year.

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