Thursday, September 13, 2007

Ecology of Homeschooling

I love this classical homeschooling blog I found on Ragamuffin Rosie's sidebar. It is a combination of LCC and Ambleside, and she designs beautiful forms. I just love beautiful forms. And she looks very orderly. I love order.

This year looks like it's shaping up to be more on the classical side of our continuum and less on the unschooling, learning as we go side. It's interesting how our balance seems to change from year to year, though of course, there is a continuity as well. I used to think this was a weakness, but now I see it as a longterm strength -- like the way our forest ecology outside will shift, well, naturally, according to the severity of the winter or the dryness of the spring or various other factors. One year we'll have lots of wildflowers, another year an abundance of squirrels. Natural things adjust and adapt. It's only industrial type things that maintain a sterile, uniform pace.

I don't think it's a contradiction to love order and also appreciate variety. God's Creation has both, and so does the liturgical year and family life and so many other things.

Well, that's probably enough posts on here for one day. The kids are still outside filming and the house is rarely and strangely quiet right now.

5 comments:

  1. I love how you compared your continuum to forest ecology. The different seasons in our learning process all seem to bring something different and vital to our children's lives.

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  2. Wow, those forms are beautiful! But in my family all that time spent would soon seem wasted as we can never stick to a plan as long as even a week! And then I know I would be despairing over our lack of discipline.

    I too really love the forest analogy. I'm in a Waldorf/unschoolish mode right now. It fits great now but I want to be flexible and move with the changes and needs of each child.

    But those forms sure are works of art!

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  3. Yep, we can't stick to forms either. But I just love to look at them : ). So as inspiration they're great.

    Yes, I agree that the changing seasons bring richness. I used to worry about being too scattered but have seen good results now through our changes of emphasis during the years.

    Us! I really like your two blogs by the way. It sounds like we have some of the same age groups and some of the same ways of doing things.

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  5. I removed the last post because it had some big typos (must be past midnight).

    Just wanted to say that the US! should read Kristie (I am organizationally challenged (also love forms, but can't follow them) and like to just have the one email, but then I end up with goofy names like Us! so that it doesn't say Kristie on all my hubbies emails!).

    Have a great weekend...

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