Our Days...

Well, I wrote a response to a post Leonie made at UC about the Latin Centered Curriculum book she is reading, and decided it could be a blog post. So here it is! It is nice to have in my scrapbook/blog here. As I find I will go back and read this blog and rarely read UC archives. It gives a nice flavor of where we are now... and will be nice to read when things start changing, or to look back and see where we have been.

This got me thinking about my homeschool journey over the years and how I would read things early on and want to jump from one method to another thinking I might be missing something, or that one was best and I was on the wrong ship. (Leonie is not doing this... but I did) Then after dabbling all these years, it does start to come full circle, that I guess I gravitate toward a certain atmosphere or principles... and it ebbs and flows.

I think for us, interest led has become fairly dominate, but I still love the great ideas that are out there. They 'whys' of learning.... bringing in new ideas, but always encouraging the boys in what they find interesting.

It is funny, the boys are in the midst of learning how to do modifications to software code to create their own levels in a video game. B was showing me how and I saw all this geometry, cad cam work, logic, creativity... in fact I could not keep up, and I have always prized my ability for logic, etc. It is funny when your kids begin to pass you. While B was doing that, S was working on a novel he is writing in LOTR style.

The funny part (to me) was as I was checking in with them (as i have been busy with some projects of my own the past few days), I asked S what he was doing and he said, "Oh, I am being productive, I am doing ...... "

I liked that as they see they are being productive and stretching. But then I asked what they are reading, listening to, etc- as I had not seen much on that front...... so now B is starting Lillies of the Field, S listening to Peter Kreeft. So I find gentle reminders work pretty well here to nudge them in new areas. It is like I can sort of sense when they need that nudge? And boy can I sense when they don't.

I once heard Chris Davis from Elijah Co do a talk and they lived in the country. It was time for math. He called his son. No answer. He called again. Still no response.
He went outside and looked and far off in a pasture, his son was laying face up on the back of his horse, dreamily watching the sky.

Chris decided math could wait a bit. :)

Just some rambling. But your LCC sounds like something I would like in that I do love higher ideas. I like the Plato quote I read recently, that the goal of education is to bring us to higher things. St. Augustine took that as his motto. And he knew 'higher things' was God. But St. Terese also told us there is a "little way' to God. I think all of these things (video games and Latin) can bring us to God if we are involved with the dc and talking about it all and the context of how it fits in the world and in our love as a family.