Dripping Opinions: Smith-School: My Interest in Homeschooling

I've become a big believer in the theory that with parenting when you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. I've really embraced the idea of the Homeschooling the Smith Littles in the past few years. I'm passionate about education, specifically education reform, and having a holistic view of learning that's intended to build lifelong learners not miniature test-takers.

Personally, I was always technically successful in school, but without a true love for learning. I was entirely focused on my grades and learning to the test so that I could get into the next year's advanced program, or a good college with a good scholarship. It took me years and years to realize that test scores and straight As didn't actually make me feel fulfilled. On the other hand, my husband is a very smart guy but was a bit of an unconventional student, not interested in busywork or bullshit in his smaller Catholic schools.

Because I have strong beliefs about education itself and about the type of family life that I want to cultivate, I started looking at homeschooling even before we were married. I'm really, really looking forward to giving it a try in the coming years. This will be the first in a series of posts about specific curriculums or approach that I'm interested in. For me, it's a nice way to bring together resources and theories that I've been exploring and store them all in one place.

I believe that the more time I spend devoting myself to building a home library rich with living books and learning about the way little minds work best, the better educator I'll be when the time comes to formally begin Tot School at 2 or start Baby Sign Language when the Eldest Little S comes along. So in this series I'll be covering all sorts of interests as I try to figure out what might be the best way to make all of this come together.

What I'm interested in so far:

Charlotte Mason's Philosophy: