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Classical Conversations Homeschoolers???

rustywest4

rustywest4

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I'm wondering if any families within our BF family uses or has used "Classical Conversations" to homeschool?

Also just curious to find out who all homeschools? And who uses a "classical" model / approach to home instruction with the children?

We (of course mostly just my wife lol) homeschool our children and we feel it is extremely important in this day and age!

In Christ,

Rusty
 
Hi, we home educated our children but we didn't use any particular program. Our focus was always to lay a sound biblical foundation so we incorporated material from doctrinally sound Christian organisations, particularly the good Biblical Creation ministries. Blessings.
 
We have homeschooled all three of our boys, the youngest now being a senior. We didn't follow a single program, but we used a lot of Abeka material.
 
We tried some different curricula along the way, but essentially use an "unschooling" model, followed by early college. Twelve kids, four still learning at home, two in and out of college, six beyond that.
 
It can seem that way, and it's a huge responsibility, but it's worth it. Let me know if I can help in any way.
 
We're homeschooling, sort-of unschooling with an eclectic curriculum drawn from many different sources. Zec, check out "Life of Fred" mathematics curriculum - it's awesome, the kids do it themselves, keep asking for more... Suits my sense of humour anyway! And for reading, find the oldest set of graduated readers you can obtain. The old ones worked and kids learn to read fast, the newer ones don't and seem designed to keep kids having to learn and buy more and more resources in a vain effort to get them to learn and make the publishers rich. Cultivate contacts with local schools so you can get boxes of all the old unfashionable books they're throwing out for free.
 
FH, have you used the LoF readers?
 
No, and I didn't know they existed. Just had a look. To be honest, based on the sample pages, I'm less impressed than with the maths curriculum. There's little evident structure. What you need with a basic set of readers is a very clear vocabulary, starting with a story using almost no words with heaps of repetitition ("Dick". "the dog". "Dick sees the dog". "The dog sees Dick"...) And gradually adding words. That clear structure is missing from most modern resources, and is missing from the LoF readers as far as I can see. I suspect the author's expertise lies in teaching maths, not necessarily teaching everything else!
 
Yeah, all of mine have used McGuffey and done very well with reading. No complaints. Also used Sing, Spell, Read, and Write, which is very helpful. But having used Saxon and others as well as Khan Academy online, I'm still looking for a good math course, so I'll check out LoF (website certainly looks interesting).
 
McGuffey is good for the USA, but incorrect spelling for us, so we've used the Royal Readers (the Commonwealth equivalent of McGuffey from the same time period, available for free online also) and various other early readers we've accumulated from school surplus materials. Get a good cheap laser printer and use McGuffey.
 
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Chiming in here: Ecletic-unschooler-whatever works for the kiddo..........curricula I've enjoyed: Sonlight, Math-u-see, Life-of-Fred for math, Sing spell read and write, read read and read tons of good literature, get out and DO stuff.
 
We used Sing-Spell-Read & Write to get them started reading and after that we used the Robinson Curriculum. Saxon math, reading and writing. Strongly recommend anyone homeschooling or thinking of it to read "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto. It's critical that you understand how school has been set up in the western world. You can find the book on the internet in a number of places, he had it on his website for free for years. That's the reason we went with the Robinson Curriculum. The kids must learn how to learn on their own. Most homeschool curriculum's are actually the same sort of thing that public and private schools do, just repackaged with some Bible for homeschoolers.

Not everyone can do it, but IMO a farm is the best place to raise kids because there's plenty of work to be done. They can have real responsibilities and know they make a real contribution to the family. Nice pool of labor too. The key is that everybody has to be miserable together. Camping is good for that too. Everybody miserable makes for a bonding experience. They look back on it years later and laugh.
 
What he said. Also have had good results with SSRW & Robinson, and recommend Gatto's book.

Only tweak: Farm is great, but any family business is good.
 
I homeschool and use the "whatever works" approach. We don't use a purchased curriculum. Books, internet, pulling it apart to see how it works, going for walks, educational games, etc.. Eclectic. My son wants to build a wind turbine to add to our solar system. YouTube is a way to learn. There are also MOOCs, Open Courseware, free courses and Khan Academy, websites. For readers you can use the books you've read to them when you tucked them in at night. They usually have simple wording. I've use the Peter and Jane series and Fitzroy Readers. The latter are Australian though. The former are originally from the UK but are sold around the world. I believe that Peter and Jane readers were originally published in 50's / 60's and are still being printed.
 
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I have a couple of washing machines I've been saving to use the motors for wind turbines one day. I'll probably never actually do it. But there are plenty of guides online to use Fisher&Paykel Smart Drive washing machine motors as generators on wind turbines. You have to rewire the motor a bit to change the voltage, so doing that would teach him a lot about how electric motors / generators work. Look for guides aimed at third-world situations.
There are also plans for using split PVC pipe to make turbine blades. Not perfectly efficient, but very simple, cheap and light:
http://www.windpowertothepeople.org/PVC Wind Turbine Blades.html
That's an interesting website by the way, he's got all sorts of stuff on there your son would find fascinating I expect.
 
FollowingHim said:
I have a couple of washing machines I've been saving to use the motors for wind turbines one day. I'll probably never actually do it. But there are plenty of guides online to use Fisher&Paykel Smart Drive washing machine motors as generators on wind turbines. You have to rewire the motor a bit to change the voltage, so doing that would teach him a lot about how electric motors / generators work. Look for guides aimed at third-world situations.
There are also plans for using split PVC pipe to make turbine blades. Not perfectly efficient, but very simple, cheap and light:
http://www.windpowertothepeople.org/PVC Wind Turbine Blades.html
That's an interesting website by the way, he's got all sorts of stuff on there your son would find fascinating I expect.
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I've heard about the Fisher & Paykel washing machine idea. We're only just starting to look into it. He's done a bit of electronics via Jaycar Short Circuits. Also he's seen me tinkering in the solar shed. We're probably going to use PVC pipe because it's cheap. I often scavenge for things chucked out on the roadside but haven't (yet) found anything I could use for blades. My property looks like a scrap heap. Lol
 
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