that must be a lot of work.
It's my favorite work. It's what I would do if I had all the time and money in the world. I love helping my children discover that their goals can happen. I love watching them tackle something they don't like and don't think they can do, and come across the hurdle, and on the other side, say with a brilliant smile that it was awesome. It's exhausting, sure, but rejuvenating too.
DO YOU USE ANY PARTICULAR METHOD?
At different times in our homeschooling career, I think we have used all of the methods. I was drawn to each by a different need, and when I learned how to use what the children needed from that method, I moved on, integrating the old pedagogies and the new. From the cultural literacy movement, I developed a sense of why I want children who are broadly knowledgeable. In Waldorf education, I discovered a way to keep serious academics developmentally appropriate, how to teach without sacrificing the gentleness and sensitivity of an innocent child on the altar of rigor. I also picked up there a rather useful approach to thinking of our schedule. In neo-classical education as outlined in The Well-Trained Mind, I found that sometimes a few years of a worktext is actually a great thing, that chronological and integrated history and literature is amazing, and I found a community of adults who love learning. When I studied Charlotte Mason, I learned to make the formal homeschooling almost disappear into the details of an interesting, worthwhile lifestyle. There we integrated nature study, folk music, and a habit of reading and discussion that gives us practice connecting on a peer-to-peer level, which feels so important to me now as the children reach adolescence. In The Latin-Centered Curriculum movement, I settled down, bringing what had gone before, feeling that LCC gave me the tools to form a schedule and a twelve-year plan that was all of the above and more. LCC also convinced me of the importance of an intensive foreign language program. Gosh, what else did we try? From unit studies, I learned that I should never throw out a cereal box. Um... okay, so, we didn't really dig unit studies. I did read a lot about the Moore Method (any old-timers remember the Moore method?) and because of the Moores I have always tried to balance the work and the school that my kids do, remembering that they need to feel useful. I can't even go in, here, to how strongly we have been influenced by pre-Dodd unschooling and project-based homeschooling.
WHAT materials do you use?
It switches up a lot. This year we've used two or three English language arts and mathematics books for each kid, a large number of outside-the-house activities, and gazillions of library books. I have no favorites when it comes to textbooks. For my youngers, I make an individual match each year between the child's learning style, child's knowledge level, child's pacing abilities, and the texts available on the market. My olders tend to surf the internet and library catalogs for resources.
How about a daily schedule then?
That we have. I meticulously re-craft my daily routine every few months, looking at new extracurricular commitments and how far we've come in our previous goals. With youngers, I sit down with the stack of books I want to use and I imagine how the day will flow, noting which kid will need my attention when, which subjects annoy other kids, placing subjects we love right after subjects we drag ourselves through, and tacking stuff that would be just nice to get to onto the very end of our long days. When my final schedule is completed, I post it up in each room in the house and we follow it precisely. With olders, I ask them to make their own schedule, adding parameters and prodding them into compliance when necessary.
How can you teach calculus if you don't know it?
I don't try. Sometimes my job is to directly teach my children some content or skills. Sometimes my job is to hook them up with someone else who can teach them. I sit down with my littlest one and explain how subtraction with borrowing works. There's a book open in front of us, but just for practice problems; by my third kid, I can explain better than any book. But then his fiddle teacher knocks and comes in to teach him things I never could. No one knows everything. It's better for the children to know how to find help with learning something than to depend on one know-it-all.