If I Can Do It, Anyone…

I have been seriously art challenged all of my life.  I remember loving the process of creating art as a child, but the results were discouraging.  A few of the art classes I tookin school taught a specific technique and I loved those, but most of my art experience would rightly be classified as seasonal crafts. 

I planned on outsourcing our family’s art needs when we started home schooling, but reading Drawing With Children (Brooks) when Sarah was in first grade opened my eyes to new possibilities.  Over the years we’ve done some outsourcing, but have ended up working on most of our art together.  We’ve used and enjoyed the Artistic Pursuits curriculum.  The 4-6th grade books that allow students to work independently cover a lot of material even though my girls haven’t felt inspired by quite a few of the projects. 

I’m taking us on a bit of a different path this summer.  I’ve been spending some time on Harmony Art Mom (Barb)’s website and have been inspired by her practical suggestions in areas of my weakness (art and nature study!).  I was already planning on cataloging the trees, birds, and animals that live on our property this summer.  Now we will do so and take or find pictures to use as a basis for art copywork.   I’m excited to pull our nature study and applied art together in a purposeful and refreshing way.  I am planning to alternate weeks where we use Artistic Pursuits with weeks where we copy a work of art from our history studies or from nature. 

This one is mine.  Sarah has declared that I’ve moved beyond preschool and into elementary school.  I’m humming one of the songs from Peter Pan and inserting the words, “I can paint, I can paint, I can paint, I can paint, I can paint!”  It looks like a bird! 

Note Taking – Quotable Quotes

A few quotes from Levison’s books follow. 

This one is taken from Robert Hutchins and the context is a liberal, as in rich in the humanities, education. 

The aim of liberal education is human excellence. 

Charlotte Mason wrote

The more of a person we succeed in making a child,the better will he both fulfill his own life and serve society.

On building the habit of finishing, Charlotte wrote,

What is worth beginning is worth finishing, and what is worth doing is worth doing well. 

Levison shares that it is the home school parent’s job to see that a “child never does a lesson into which he does not put his whole heart.”  (Charlotte Mason)

 

Preparing for Second Grade

What a blessing it is to learn together! 

I’m Finally Reading…

John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education  and was struck by the following from the Prologue. 

The new dumbness is particularly deadly to middle and upper-middle class kids already made shallow by multiple pressures to conform imposed by the outside world on their usually lightly rooted parents.  When they come of age, they are certain they must know something because their degrees and licenses say they do.  They remain so convinced until an unexpectedly brutal divore, a corporate downsizing in mid-life, or panic attacks of meaninglessness manage to upset the precarious balance of their incomplete humanity, their stillborn adult lives. 

When Dan and I considered home schooling initially we were quite young, as were our children.  A number of influences had already led us to think a bit outside of the box and become rooted, namely Ecological Breastfeeding by Sheila Kippley and, especially, the Plain Reader edited by Scott Savage.  Further contemplation of a quiet, non-material and non-media centered life led us to the plain to off-the-grid spectrum for a number of years.  When our oldest approached preschool age and we began bumping into other families in a more concentrated way, we found ourselves viewing our culture from the outside.  Understandably, we were a bit perplexed and perhaps shocked by the media influence on everything from books to clothing to manners of speech within the framework of  the school (and I might add, church) options before us.  The thought of changing our course was fairly quickly set aside.  However, we are not isolationists so our tune became, what I call, plain at heart.  We move in the culture we are planted in, though I cannot say we belong. 

When I let my mind wander over the last nine (!) years of home education and think about why I do this every day, there are many reasons.  The over arching one is that we wanted our children to have a choice.  We knew that if they were in the system they’d be of the system and would build their lives within that framework.  I’m not enough of a pessimist to think that they couldn’t do that well.  At the same time, I knew that if we raised them outside of the barrage of media and commercialism they would be able to choose  from our culture, or not, as they go through their lives.  I also knew we’d never regret it.  As we start our tenth year of home education tomorrow I’m even more convinced that the purpose of our home education journey is broader and more encompassing than teaching them to read and write.