How We do School

My brain is pretty weak, usually taking the easiest path to success (and sometimes failure), so I’ve learned to compensate. If school requires planning or remembering, it won’t get done. This is not right or good, but it’s the truth.

So here’s how I compensate: every day looks the same, unless there’s an interruption. Everyone has their usual jobs before and after breakfast, and Dad reads the Bible aloud at breakfast, followed by hymns and prayer time. Once the morning chores are done, we all sit down in the living room- minus Dad and the adult kids. We have a stack of books that we read through, collected to bring in a variety of topics and types. We read the Bible (stories of characters), history, science books, poetry, and younger and older literature. Sometimes we’ve included: spelling bees, thankfulness journal, missionary prayer time, music theory, math concepts, speaking or memorizing, and reading newspaper articles. We don’t try to do everything at once, but we always have a bunch of items on the go. This takes about two hours, give or take an hour.

Then, in the afternoon, the kids have free time. During these hours, they have to do any assigned work for that year- olders have math, writing and science to do on their own, everyone has music practice, youngers learn to read and do copywork and handwriting practice. Once they are done their assignments, they can pursue other interests freely. No screens except for learning to type, until you are a teenager. No video games, period.

Late afternoon, we get everyone working on some project; house building or cleaning, food prep, outdoor needs. After supper, we gather again for reading the Bible aloud with questions from the kids, along with Dad’s interests; art study (Charlotte Mason style), reading family history or other books, watching Planet Earth or something similar.

These habits require very little preparation and no marking, yet our kids are getting a great education that gets them exposed to new ideas and teaches them how to handle those ideas.