Eclectic homeschooling

Ah, yes...the debates over homeschooling philosophies, approaches, and methods! I pretty much stay clear of all that controversy these days, having long ago decided which tried and true homeschooling mags I'll stick with while avoiding many support groups, online "communities", and conferences. Frankly, having collected years of absurd advice from people who didn't know me or my children and, in all too many cases, had never actually attempted to educate any children at home, I pretty much know the drill well enough to manage without all that foolish annoyance. (I'm not saying that there is no value in groups, conferences, etc. It's just that my limited time doesn't allow me the luxury of sifting.)

Eclectic is where we're at these days. Standard textbooks aren't my cuppa tea (or coffee) although we do use them on occassion, usually more as references. Instead, I tend to gather books and resources and a bit of this and a bit of that. Recently, for example, we've been handling our "subjects" this way, bearing in mind that there's a lot of overlap between subject areas:

Bible: We take a radical approach and---shocking though it sounds---use the Bible as our main text in studying the Bible. Right now we're reading through the book of John.

Worldview: Although we have some nifty resources and an actual course we may do someday, recently we've been analyzing current events and stuff from the newspaper. Today, the newspaper had some reports about hurricane destruction in Haiti, which tied in with our geography study. It also quickly became science as we whipped out the encyclopedia and started looking up stuff about tropical storms.

Logic: We were using the Bluedorn brother's book, but now we're about to start a private online study.

History: Typically we begin by discussing anything I think interesting from my "this date in history" calendar. Today's entry sparked a discussion about confirming Supreme Court justices. We're studying about Cortes, and I've been reading aloud (also counts as literature) Henty's "By Right of Conquest".

Geography: We use a number of atlases, outline maps, and other resouces, and tie this in with whatever we're studing in history.

Civics: I was going to tie this in a bit better with history, but decided not to do so. We're doing my version of a basic Civics course. This is only a weekly class.

Grammar: We're using Nancy Wilson's "Our Mother Tongue". There's a lot to recommend it, but I'm not completely enamored, so I'll probably pick and choose among other stuff as well, possibly Saxon's new grammar stuff.

Penmanship: My favorite standby---the Italic Handwriting series. This year, I am bound and determined to force everyone to practice their penmanship every day!

Spelling: Miriam is using Spelling Power. The next two kids are using something called, I think, "Apples", which involves daily worksheets targeted for secondary students. They aren't exactly thrilled, but then they both cheered wildly at a sentence I came up with for a recent spelling test: "The students decided to form an anti-spelling committee." The youngest kids are doing my own program.

Composition/Narration: This is still way too fly-by-night for my tastes.

Reading: Phonics (Play & Talk) and self-directed reading.

Literature: usually tied in with history.

Science: Whew. This is turning out to be "delight-directed" this year, with lots of exciting unschooling projects going on. Officially, we're studying health & nutrition, but there's lots of other learning going on as well, especially by my resident bird expert.

Foreign Language: Only Miriam is doing this one so far, using the Rosetta program to learn Spanish.

Math: This is our most "schoolish" subject.

P.E.: Martial arts, bicycling, surfing, and, lately, volleyball and table tennis.

Practical skills: This runs the gamut from learning all sorts of life skills to construction to hunter safety training to work experience to...you name it.

I think I covered the gist of what we're doing now, but I have a feeling I've left something out.

Some days we look almost "school at home"---not because of the materials we're using, but because of the way we're all sitting at desks and behaving quite classroomish. Other days may find us looking far more unschoolish, with multiple projects going on all over the house and even someone out in the yard, book in hand...Yes, definitely eclectic. Very much so.