This is year #8 of our homeschool journey. I can hardly believe at times that we started this when Keilee was barely 7. And now she is 15.
Time and time and time again the more we try to ‘check things off a list’ the unhappier she becomes. She has said to me so often lately, “Mom I have so much I want to do but I don’t have time to do it all because of school work.”
I have NEVER wanted our school to look like the school down the street or for her days to consists of checklists. But it’s a tricky thing. You see these ‘High School Requirements’ and think ‘We have to do all of these things!’
In Alabama high schoolers take 2 years of US History. 2 YEARS!! Keilee knows so much about US History. We have studied it about 3 different times. And she also retains almost everything she hears or reads (unless it’s Math). So really, what is the point of doing that just because the High School does it? She took Ancient History this year that turned into using “The History of the World in 100 Objects”. Neither of these are offered at the High School.
She did Southern Literature which also is not an option here. And has loved it so much. We have read so many amazing short stories by Southern Writers and watched plays and films. We did an entire study on Truman Capote.
Next year she wants to study the French Revolution and the Renaissance. She is obsessed with the French Revolution.
She wants to study Shakespeare, an entire year of Shakespeare.
Should I have told her no about all of these because they are not “High School Requirements”?
She is running her own business via Instagram, her Art Journal is filled with beautiful pages, and she is hard at work on a YouTube channel that combines her love of knowledge with her love of performing. She is on Chapter 29 of a novel she is writing and has written several short stories. She rehabilitated a squirrel who had his own Instagram. She has a massive notebook of serial killers because she is fascinated with Psychology and what makes people do the things they do. She has a notebook full of the events that are mentioned in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. Her Bible journal is lovely. And so much more.
Keilee is NOT the kind of kid who would ever just sit around on social media (although she does love Pinterest, she is the only person I know that actually does almost everything she pins!) or watch TV. She is always doing something.
So why shouldn’t she just do what she loves? Learning is as much a part of her as breathing. It is just what she does. Her ‘transcripts’ will never look like the kids who graduate from the High School she would have attended. But when it is all said and done her 4 years will consist of the things she loves, learning that she always remembers and experiences that could never be gotten by sitting in a classroom 7 hours a day.
And THAT, is what learning SHOULD be all about.
Our Week:
Mardi Gras Dog Parade, her first entry in her Learning Journal, painting a T shirt that she dyed and cut up, Mardi Gras breakfast and parade.
Learning Rocks!
Karen
“It is… nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreak and ruin. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” -Albert Einstein
And one of my all time favorite quotes:
“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” ~ Beatrix Potter
Linking with
Mary at “Collage Friday”
Sylvia at “Homeschool Blog Link Up”
Dawn at “Week in Review“