All the curriculum listed in WTM is frustrating for me to wade through. I may black out the curriculum and read it again since the new version is coming out anyway.

I haven't bought any sets yet because of lack of funds. But I am using the Hirsch books for them to earn beans in the bean jar.....and as a jumping off point for the day. Just started with the older ones yesterday, but going very well with the younger ones so far.

Have you ever thought about using The Well Educated Mind? Didn't she just come out with a new one that includes science?

It is absolutely ok to just study chemistry right now. Do you have anybody you are tutoring right now?

Hunter, I also have to write to learn :-) So I come on here and write out all my crazy thoughts even if they make sense to no one else, because at the end of it I have clarity even if I was talking to a screen :-) I wrote down the bottom of the Rainbow Curriculum because that is the part I need. Why have you shelved that? Maybe I missed a post somewhere explaining that? Couldn't you do that with just a few books and the library? I know that if I were to use WTM I would ditch all the curriculum and just use the methods and the library. It is still great guidance for showing kids what level of writing is good for them. I may even need to go back and read that part myself as I guide my kiddos in how to get the most out of the books we check out. They can take my writing advice or leave it, but I want to show them anyhow. Usually when I show my kids those kinds of things and back off they end up wanting to do it sometimes, which is cool to see. Cycles are comforting, which is why I divided my books up that way. You don't have to stress when you know you are going to come back to something in a few years. I probably have more to say but I have to read to my 2 year old......

I don't have time to read all the previous posts right now but I think it is funny because I used to feel like this. Then we had a bunch more children, health issues, and money issues. My oldest hit puberty at 10 and really began to rebel about school. I had always done full school loads since she was 4 1/2. She was burnt out and tired of being "behind" (she's my struggling learner), and I still continued to push my ideas about education and rigor and excellence and all of that. After my son got leukemia, I began to realize that math is less important than his reality and the what I wanted to do with him in the real possibility of losing him was not math if that isn't what he wanted. But I STILL pushed many days and tried to live as normally as possible, and for me that included schoolwork. I used that to help me cope. Bad idea. I ended up a physical mess with all the stress I put us under and dealing with their reactions, etc. to my pushing. After I fell apart physically things changed. I began to simplify and sometimes unschool simply because I wasn't well enough to teach consistently. I went back and forth each day between teaching a class outside of our home and crashing. It was miserable. Then we moved to the country and dropped most outside commitments and I began to relax and enjoy more but I also sort of freaked out about how to school without the co op we were used to guiding us. I tried a few things that were more independent but they ended up not being so independent and not my style. Lately we've been doing more of a Robinson method (rigorous but pretty independent) and it helped bring me calm. I began to be able to focus more on resting and healing. But I have still been pushing and I don't like it. My oldest doesn't want to do school unless I make her. That is not internal drive. She is either doing her chores (which she drags out ALL day) or she is attempting to do her schoolwork and may or may not get it done. My son reads voraciously and is learning sooo much but he still doesn't like math. My third one loved math and now he is losing his love of it because I am making him do a textbook. My fourth one doesn't want to read or do phonics most of the time. This really isn't how I want homeschooling to be. I don't want there to be a line between school and real life. I don't want rigor if it hurts our relationships and makes my kids want to avoid "schoolwork". I don't know that I am comfortable with unschooling either, though. Carole Joy Seid reminded me just how much I love reading aloud and learning with my kids. I love educational materials. So that is why being a "relaxed" homeschooler (or maybe you would call it TJEd or literature-based) appeals to me. I want my little ones to play and have their childhood and be available to be their mommy and play and learn with them, teaching all along the way. That will naturally evolve into learning alongside them when they are reading and getting ideas for things to do from books and other educational things around our house (which I acquired while trying every known curriculum in the world in my early years when we had money and I was a curriculum junkie). But the learning will be fun and it will be THEIR idea. I want to help guide them to their mission and provide the resources to get them there. I want to discuss great books with them without a curriculum! But I don't want to provide the motivation! I do want to set an example for them. All those years of pushing them I was trying to get my education through homeschooling them and I DID learn a lot, but I would have learned more if I had spent more time learning myself and less time pushing them. I also think our relationships would have been less strained. My kids are so fun and affectionate when I want to do what they want to do and I am teaching them what they are ASKING to learn. When we are cuddled up with great books or sharing an audiobook experience rather than forcing curriculum our days our delightful. And I had even pretty much dropped most read aloud because I deemed that less important than getting the curriculum done. In order to get them independent, I essentially gave up all the parts of homeschooling that gave me joy and kept the parts that were rigorous to make sure that the curriculum got done so that I didn't have to worry about their education or feel guilty for lack of consistency. I couldn't seem to fit both reading aloud and exploring in with getting our schoolwork done. I was handing electronics to my 2 year old so I could teach my older kids what they didn't want to learn. How backwards is that? I am still finding my way after 9 years, but after reading more about unschooling and Carole Joy Seid's words about needing a Bible, a math book, and a library card, and the Moore's ideas (backed up by tons of research) about better late than early, I really feel much more relaxed about whether they will learn math and grammar and graduate.....lol. And it is a much better place to be. I still want to help guide them with weekly meetings and help them form their own goals and such, but I want the motivation to be their own. I don't think you can teach a child to own their own education by talking about it. You have to step back from the pushing. I LOVE teaching.....but I want to teach what they WANT to learn. Not what I want them to learn. I need to learn what I think they should learn and set the example and share my passion with them as I go. And I need to accept it if they don't choose to immerse themselves in that subject when they get older. They are not me. They are individuals with individual missions. I am so thankful that I spent so much time learning from programs like SWR and Right Start and IEW and CC's Essentials because now I am equipped to naturally teach my younger ones as they are looking for it. I am thankful that we spent time with Saxon and Hake because I would still recommend those programs to them (and I may very well use them myself). I am excited to be inspirational by studying in front of them (which I had neglected to do before even though I wanted to). I am thankful that we don't have a lot of money (even though it is so hard and frustrating at times when I want to buy books for myself or materials for them), it has forced me to make use of what we have and the library and that has reminded me of the enormous value in just reading like crazy. It has forced me to narrow my book selections to more classics since most of the modern books I want aren't there. It has helped me see that I can use free methods (like copywork, dictation, narration, drawing, memorization) myself in front of them and show them that these learning tools are available to them as well. I don't have to plan. I just have to be present. Pick up a book and read. Write about it. Draw. Read to my kids. Listen to them read to me. Go on an outing together. Take a nature walk on our land. Be myself. Be their mom. Love on them. Tell them all the gushy things about them that I forget to say when I am pushing curriculum. Dream big with them and offer the wisdom of the learning methods I know and the books and materials they can use. For me, that is the actual fulfillment of the picture I had in my head when I started homeschooling when years of curriculum and scheduling attempts never was and only lead to discouragement for all of us. So I understand when people want to talk curriculum and schedules. That was me for eight years and if I hadn't had the amount of trials I've had it probably still would be. But going forward, I'm going to recommend a different way of doing things. I sure wish I'd listened to those silly veteran moms who told me to relax. They were right. SWB said in her talk that she wishes she had sent one of her children to school because she couldn't be both his teacher and his mom and she would rather have been his mom. (I'm totally botching up the way she said it). I understand that and I don't judge her choices at all. I find myself in the same place with mine. I don't think the choice has to be between sending her to school and continuing to push her to do her schoolwork. I think I can be her mom, let go of school (as scary as that is), re-establish her love of learning, and then be here to teach and mentor when she is ready to tackle her education. There is a risk that she may not be as far along in her curriculum as she would be otherwise, but the other way around risks our relationship and her passion for learning and I'm just not willing to risk those anymore. And I think once those two are solidly in place, she will fly through whatever "curriculum" or class she needs to do what she feels called to do with her life.

AHHHH!! Hunter!!! If I knew you were going to wipe out your signature and your Rainbow Curriculum, I would have copied it all down for future reference!!!!

Right now I am back into TJED and considering deschooling my oldest. For the rest of my crew I am wanting to use my Core Knowledge books but I am not sure whether I am going to require math and grammar for awhile until I can buy TT or just drop all of it for now or what. I am so confused right now. But I just met a TJED Mom who is running the co op we are joining this year so I am hoping to talk to her soon. I know no one else around here who uses TJEd philosophies. I thought simplifying our curriculum was going to solve the problems and it did help, but I am still not feeling the joy so something needs to change. I need a little bit of structure (or some kind of jumping off point or base) and I think that TT may bring joy to our math time (or at least no tears). But of course that is dependent on money. I hate having several Kindle books I want to buy and the Carole Joy Seid dvd and a few books I can't get on kindle (Ruth Beechick and The Living Page), but no way to buy them :-( I also want hard copies of Leadership Education and The Family United (I think that is what it is called) because I just refer to Leadership Education so much and because I want my husband to read it and the other book. They are great for parenting teens as well as education ideas. Sorry for my ramble....nothing to do with the post. But I am thinking that with a guide and a few books on my principles I could get by and may even actually have a fabulous year of exploration. I also want to at least look at Books to Build On. If that doesn't work, I am just going to freestyle at the library....lol. I had something else to say but I can't think at the moment......

I would be wanting to move somewhere else if that were at all possible. I envy your ability to trash it all and start over. I can't tell you how many times in a week I think about wanting to do that. But I can't.

Hunter, I love reading everything you write,from your unconventional adventures to your profound insights. You really should write a book someday. I have CC rotations in my head and they make more sense to me except for the science. I divided my books up by cycle when we moved in December, but I still haven't rotated my books out of storage and the ones I have here are a mix of the ones I wanted out all the time and my American cycle. The boxes are all open from me digging for books and chickens and cats have been in there so probably some things are ruined. I am trying not to think about it. I found another book I want to read called Plan to be Flexible. I can't wait to read it and I am so frustrated that we don't have money. It is hard to have this need to read and research certain topics for my own growth that the library doesn't have.

I also wanted to add that more and more I think I can get by with a set of charts to teach from or refer to as needed. SWR phonograms and spelling rules, CF chart, IEW Word Wall. With the charts of information organized in a way that makes sense to me, I can teach using any book as long as I had a way to provide practice without having to think up all the examples and such. But I like the kind of teaching where I show them how to do something and then back off and give them the tools to refer to as needed. And charts and references are usually pretty cheap. One time I drooled over the reference charts section on rainbowresource. I thought I could even make a whole curriculum out of various charts. But changed my mind......Charts are useful, but you have to have enough practice examples to make it stick.

This wins the award as the weirdest question ever! J/K I don't know that I would get rid of anything because I grew up with roaches in SC and that's just how it was no matter how much money you had. But we didn't have some huge infestation, either. Obviously my life and amount of belongings is way different than yours with all my kids, but at this point I think I could more likely get rid of a lot. The sets I would most want to keep would be too heavy to move. If I were going to attempt it, it would be the Core Knowledge series right now. What I would really like to keep is the Annals of America, but those are too heavy, as I said. Childcraft is also too heavy. I probably would keep All Through the Ages and The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. The reason I would grab the CK books is that even though the library has them, if I were truly going to use them, I would need to have them out all the time or use them at the library. My library close to me only has the 2nd grade one. I have another library 15 minutes away that has several of them, but I am not allowed to check them out, so I could only use them there. At this point I am astonished at how little I care about keeping, but I am also typing in the middle of the night in the dark, so if I could actually SEE all my books I might feel differently. I would probably be most interested in keeping books related to science by Christian publishers since you can't find that at the library. I would also have to take into consideration how likely certain things would be replaced due to lack of finances. I don't know. I sometimes think that the downfall of using the library is that there aren't enough exercises to practice with, but I bet if you picked up a couple of workbooks that are all the same grade level, there would be enough overlap and spaced out repetition that it would work and would be cheap. But I'm not sure how that works after 6th grade..... I still wish I had WTM 1st edition.

I actually have no problem with them starting formal math instruction in 3rd grade (or whenever they can actually read).

Hunter, Can you tell me more about how you used the WY_GNTK books? I own most of them and could use them as a spine potentially. Money is such an issue right now that I can't buy a bookshelf for my existing books and I can't buy new sets of books that would allow me to get rid of a lot of my existing books. I do have a Childcraft set that I could also use as a spine by doing a little from the holidays book, a little from the craft and activity book, a little from one of the literature books (or one selection of each since the three books are for varying levels), and then do one of the other nonfiction books as the unit study of the month. I could use my audio Bible cds for Bible mostly. I would read the section and then go check out supplemental books that they either suggested or the real copy of their adaptation (in the literature books). Using these I could keep us together (all except my 8th grader probably). Or I could just let them read whatever they want. Or I could use the WY_GNTK as a read aloud and activity guide for each child and use the World Treasury of Children's Literature (which the library carries and which I own volume 3 out of 3) as a family read aloud spine (also checking out the full book from the library instead of the excerpts). I think I would be more likely to include geography this way, but I might feel a little all over the place. I also wonder if my 6th grade will not be happy with either scenario since he likes to pick his own books out. I guess for now I am keeping what we are using for curriculum for math and grammar. I am fantasizing a bit about TT because I've decided that for now I think I could live with easier math and fill in any gaps later if needed, but TT costs lots of money so it is irrelevant right now. I found a book about grammar that includes exercises in our library, but it doesn't have any repetition, so I don't know if I like that well enough to use it. I am doubting that something spiral with exercises exists in the free world. We have enough lessons in Hake 4 to keep us going for a few months maybe, but then I'll have to decide whether to spend the money to order the next one or drop the formal study of grammar and writing and pick it up again later. Having to do things for free or next to free is scary. Either you dig up what you can with no idea if it will fit with anything else you will have after that, or you completely drop the subject and hope that they can get by without formal instruction as some people claim. I am wondering how studying a language would go using library resources that have to be returned in 2 weeks.......

Just curious...

Just curious...

I am going to look tomorrow and see if I could pull it off in our county. There are three other counties and a university library within 45 minutes of us. The one that is 45 minutes away will give me a free library card. The one that is 30 minutes away I would have to pay $30 per year to get a card. I used to live in that County so I have a card already, but I am not sure if they will check it. The university is also 30 minutes away but I am not sure if I can get a card or not. I heard it is $10 per year but I need to check on that. The county that is 15 minutes away won't give residents who live in other counties a card so we could go there on Saturdays since our library is closed, but we wouldn't be able to check anything out. So I might be able to teach everything from the library, but I would probably have to use surrounding counties and the university. $40 a year would be much cheaper than any curriculum we could buy, though.

Interesting. Thank you for your help... Does she recommend having a curriculum for those other subjects or just using good books for those, too? If so, does she give specifics?

Does she say anything about how to teach reading? Or higher level math? Or music?

I will check that out! Where does SWB talk about building her curriculum from their library? I would love to read or listen. Did you buy Homeschool Made Simple? I really, really, really want to watch it but can't spend money right now :-(

Also, I want to say that I wouldn't just leave them to do whatever. I still think that reading and studying would be required daily, but that doing their textbooks each day may not be. And that I would be purposeful to study math, fine arts, and grammar or another language in front of them. Because I actually want to and I know that would inspire them. I also think they will tend to copy what they see me doing. So I don't think I am really talking about unschooling, but more of a TJEd type lay out....

It is going really well still. But it has kind of sparked a lot of thinking for me in that when I was little, going to the library was my favorite thing to do. I checked out tons of books and they were my friends (not that I didn't have live friends, but books were a constant companion). Books were a huge part of my childhood, and though I was a people pleaser and studied to get good grades, at some point I lost the love of reading and learning for the sake of learning and decided I didn't like math or science or history. I pretty much only enjoyed English and fine arts. Being in the library has made me realize on a different level how much I enjoy children's literature and reading aloud and how much I dislike forcing my kids to do their schoolwork. It has somehow reminded me that simplifying means getting back to basics and that even though I do feel we have simplified, I STILL feel like there are basics we are missing. By that I mean LIFE basics, not school subject basics. Also, I have many things I want to learn and do for my own education and fulfillment and I put those aside to homeschool my kids and tell myself that I will get to them in x number of years when my kids are older. But maybe it doesn't have to be like this. So there are six areas I have identified that we are missing out on. There may be more I haven't thought of yet. These are things that I keep waiting to work on or fit in some day, but my oldest is less than 5 years away from 18. If I don't make those things happen now, they won't be part of her growing up. To some degree, all of these things have been part of our lives, but they have never been given the full attention they deserve because I have always been busy researching or teaching curriculum or reorganizing the house for the umpteenth time (less necessary now that we have so much less stuff in our house, though we do have a storage unit to empty at some point). Anyway, there are one or two elephants in the room for me that I am still mulling over. Those are math and maybe grammar. I have whittled our school subjects down to math, grammar (or phonics for my young ones), reading, and narrating (either written or orally) what they read. I think that is pretty good and we are getting everything done most days. But I still don't feel like there is enough time for read aloud and in fact, I had basically convinced myself (based on Charlotte Mason and Art Robinson) that reading aloud wasn't really that necessary once they could read except maybe at bedtime. And that when they are younger, they just need short readings to narrate from (like one chapter or section). And that may still be true, but inside I just want to take our Little House book and just read and read until we can't stand anymore. Also, we are missing out on the shared experiences of books, so I want to bring that back in with read aloud and reading the same books as my older kids at least (if not out loud) so we can talk about them. I also am missing that with Bible since dropping our family devotional. So now I am thinking that each morning or evening I may want to put on my Bible cds (pure Scripture but with sound effects and the voices of actors) in the morning while everyone listens on the couch so we can enjoy it together and talk about it. Big kids can follow along in their own book perhaps. Anyway, back to math and grammar. I don't believe grammar is necessary for someone to be an excellent writer. But I do think it is very helpful for learning a language. I really like diagramming, but maybe it isn't the only way to learn grammar. Maybe a program like Analytical Grammar or Winston Grammar would be good enough to do once before starting another language. For math, people say that sometimes algebra is not attainable for most people before about 15. That makes sense to me (even though I admit hoping that is not really true for my kids) because I didn't understand Algebra 1 in 8th grade (despite whatever grade I received) and HATED it, but in 10th grade I loved Algebra 2 and it made sense to me and that was probably just because my brain was finally ready. I did have a horrible 7th grade math experience, so maybe my problem in Algebra 1 was that I didn't have a strong enough foundation, but I would say my math up until 7th grade was pretty solid. Pre-Algebra was just a mess. So my question is, why can't someone pick up the natural math they need as a child and then at 15 study remedial math and pre-algebra for a year and then take higher level math for the rest of their high school years through a community college or by flying through textbooks on their own (if they prefer or money is an issue)? Or at 14 they could learn enough arithmetic to learn about personal finance and then do pre-Algebra at 15? Part of why I ask is that even though my kids would agree that Saxon math has made the most sense to them of any that we have tried (with maybe CLE being an exception), and despite the fact that it makes the most sense to me as a teacher, my oldest two dislike math and are convinced they are no good at it and my third one (who is a natural with numbers and taught himself all kinds of number concepts) dreads doing math every day now that he has a textbook. I feel like I'm ruining what could be a really fun and interesting subject. I do know that if I were to decide to continue a curriculum through their school years that Saxon would be what I would stick with. If an adult wants to learn math (and I mean one who isn't already familiar with the homeschool curriculum world), he or she goes into a bookstore and finds the necessary materials or signs up for a class or gets a tutor. Why can't a teenager do the same? So the 6 areas I am thinking about (and you will have to pardon my alliteration again) are: Hearts Health Home Holidays Hobbies Hands-on By hearts I mean that sometimes I am so busy making sure we get school done that I forget to shepherd their hearts the way I have always intended. I really want to be more purposeful in one-on-one discipling and family meetings to talk about family vision and big ideas for them to chew on. Health is obvious. More time for exercise and cooking healthy meals. By home I mean that I am always lamenting that my house isn't clean enough or decorated the way I'd like (cheap antiques). Discovering that I have an interest in antiques (or things that look antique) is pretty new. I want to have time to go browse, whether for fun and to get ideas or to actually buy something sometimes. I also might want to experiment with making my own cleaners. By holidays I mean that we are frequently too busy to focus on holidays and traditions and seasonal rhythms. I don't fully know what I want to do with this, but I know that I want to have the time and space to figure that out. And it is especially important to my oldest who seems to have a deep need to celebrate holidays and form and continue traditions and I am always brushing her off. By hobbies I mean that we never have time to dabble in our own interests or things we might potentially be interested in doing for our own self-education and enjoyment. I have this obscure idea that I might like to try to make something cool out of pallets, but I am too scared to try. I used to like to work with clay and I had a fabulous time learning batik in a class as a kid, but I have never taken any of this up. The closest I got was a couple years of doing scrapbooking years ago. My oldest and I were trying to think of what we could do to occupy ourselves during football season and neither of us could come up with something. That's pathetic. And by hands-on I mean that we don't go on field trips or take advantage of local opportunities for learning. That seems silly to not have ever explored your own surroundings (besides the beach, which we regularly explore). I think we are going to join a super cheap, laid back co op this year. Maybe even two. One of them explores local history and science and the other includes play dates at parks. I am thinking that daylight should be for work, outings, enjoying nature, exercising, and creating things and that studying, discussing or having meetings, and reading aloud should be for evenings and rainy or cold days. Isn't that how they used to do it? Of course, that doesn't mean one can't read or study during the day, but isn't there enough time to study and read and talk together at night when it gets dark early? (Well, at least in my house since the kids go to bed late). If screen time isn't allowed 99% of the time, wouldn't they naturally fill their time with productive activity? (And productive doesn't always mean getting schoolwork done. Daydreaming can also be productive in the life of a child.) In regards to study, I definitely think that most subjects can be studied with real books, but that it is important to teach research skills and other learning skills like copywork, drawing, dictation, narration, and memorization. I also think it is fine to use some basic guide to help make sure bases are covered (like the Core Knowledge series or a children's reference or anthology set), but I think most things I feel lead to ingrain in them should be done by repeated readings (or listening on a cd) or by song. I have found those to be more effective than chanting, though I think chanting is good to teach as a learning tool. I do also still believe that reading should be taught explicitly but without stressing about when the child will be ready and without pushing before they are ready. I think most children are ready by 5 or 6 to begin learning but I am not stressed if they are not fluent for a few years. The lightbulb comes on when it comes on, but as long as they can make steady progress I think it is worth plugging away at. I still like the workbook approach because it includes learning to write and their frustration with learning is directed at the workbook and not at real books. There is no pressure to read a real book so that when they do pick one up and discover they can read it, it is exciting. This actually happened to both of my girls yesterday. Anyway, I am not convinced 100% that I am ready to drop our math and grammar books (or that my husband would be ok with that), but I am definitely leaning towards trying it for a month and seeing what happens :-) A visit to the bookstore and library to look at math materials and a visit to the local community colleges (I think we have 5 within reasonable driving distance) would be good to help me discern. I also want to make a point to go to a few homeschool conferences as a family in the spring and let my kids browse the vendor hall and pick out what they WANT to study. Ok. Thanks for letting me ramble. This has probably morphed into another thread, but it needed to happen.....

I am wanting to know what she recommends for other subjects. I loved the podcast, though. She is a woman after my own heart...

I thought pre math it had dominoes with it?

I am trying to move in that direction, but I have no guide. I am lost and ideas regarding rhythm are fuzzy. I guess I will have to read Waldorf books?