Our New Adventure...

For four years we have been part of a great tutorial. It is led by some of the godliest women I know who I have the pleasure of calling some of my dearest friends. I have also been the history teacher there for four years teaching all 4 volumes of Story of the World. I loved teaching. It was great to be back in a classroom setting again teaching the most precious children. It has been a pleasure to relearn history by looking at it as His-story. I loved the families in our tutorial and have been blessed beyond measure by our participation in it!

However, after much prayerful consideration we have decided to do something different this upcoming year- Classical Conversations. With the twins starting kindergarten this year my official student load doubled! I have just felt so overwhelmed trying to teach 2 kids to read, a fifth grader who has been diagnosed with an eye problem (convergence insufficiency) requiring therapy at home and 45 minutes away, and a middle schooler diving into Latin and chemistry!

I have always felt this constant pressure to reinvent the wheel in my homeschooling. I am also always stressed about filling in the gaps. Confession time: my kids have never learned about plants. How did that happen? Along with that comes the mommy guilt all homeschoolers face of "Am I messing them up?", "Can I do this?", "Are they missing out on things by not being in public school?" Of course, I know that God called us to this and it is absolutely the right things for my kids, but the devil certainly knows how to attack me in my thoughts and doubts.

I don't want to have to worry about missing things on the "2nd go round" with the twins so I really wanted something that was laid out K-12. We had visited a friend's Classical Conversations Community the year before, and I was blown away by how much my kids learned in just that one visit. I knew the fast pace would be great for my very active boys, and the auditory aspect is ideal for my daughter.

With all of that said, there is nothing I enjoy more than lesson planning- no seriously! I love reading blogs and pinning ideas on Pinterest. Therefore, I wanted a curriculum that was laid out but not scripted. I am just enough of a rebel that I don't want it to tell me what to say and when (that is terrible, I know). I feel that Classical Conversations gives me an outline of what to cover but allows me the freedom to decide how deep I want to go. This cycle we will be studying the human body. When we get to the five senses I already have some cool hands-on activities and crafts I'm planning to do.

But here is the beauty part: if life gets busy (as it does more often than not) and we don't get to all that hands-on goodness, it's OK. Did you guilt-ridden mommies hear that? It's OK if I'm only able to do the CC memory work with some math and reading because they are still learning a huge amount of information. There is such freedom in that- freedom from guilt of not doing over-the-top crafts every day while still allowing me freedom to do things the way that best fits my kids. The thought of it makes me giddy :)

So now that you know I'm a planning geek, I am hoping to use this blog to document our new adventure and share anything I figure out that might help others as we begin our new classical adventure!