This is an old-fashioned parlor game. We each have post-it notes on our foreheads with famous people's names written on them. We each ask questions about our mystery person and eventually guess who we are. The people have to be ones we've studied. We could be Robert Frost, Joan of Arc, or Beethoven. Imagine them at a table together!
education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire
Click here to view our educational activities from summer 2008
Click here to view a summary of the 2007-2008 school year
What Is Our Homeschooling Philosophy?
We're excited about facilitating a learning lifestyle that encourages free high-order thinking, problem-solving, and inquiry; one that emphasizes discovery, interaction with the world at large, and hands-on adventure.
We encourage our kids to question everything: authority figures, teachers, scientific "fact," religious doctrine, our values as parents, everything. Doesn't all learning begin with a question?
I love learning and making discoveries with my girls. They often witness my excitement during the learning process, as well as my frustration.
It's good for them to see me getting confused, asking questions, searching for resources, and eventually coming up with hypotheses, answers, and creative solutions.
This gives them the opportunity to see me as a regular person, not an expert. We are students together, and this makes all the difference.
But what is my approach, technically speaking, you ask? My approach is a progressive, incidental fusion of secular Charlotte Mason, high-tech Montessori, and classical education (logic, Latin, rhetoric, Shakespeare, poetry, etc.).
Mainly, I create our curriculum myself with a bit of elbow grease, creativity, tons of research, help from public school teacher-friends and fellow home-schoolers, and with expert analysis and feedback from my kids. : )