Thoughts on Classical Education and Paganism.

I am a pagan.
My son is not, though he sometimes identifies as such.  I share my knowledge and traditions with him as and when he's interested.  We revere nature, I teach the planet is sacred and to be tread upon as lightly as we can.   Classical Education(CE) is a pedagogy unfamiliar with paganism; it is mostly used by Christian home educators.  The coupling of CE and paganism works beautifully. Specifically, I employ "The Well Trained Mind" route.  CE emphasises classical literature, and exploration of myths and folktales.  The path I tread and which my son skips alongside; is sat upon a bedrock of myth, folk tales and traditions, alchemy, magic and a thirst for knowledge.

The reading and grammar lessons draw upon good literature; supplementing is encouraged, for us this means folktales, myths and legends and yes some bible stories; after all, much of our literature is based on biblical themes.  I include how these stories shape my path and my personal gnosis and in doing so my son develops his own gnosis.  There is room for the ridiculous and imaginative fancifulness; a childhood magic, different, to be sure, from the magic I weave, magic nonetheless.

An oft heard complaint is that CE is christian based.  Categorically, it is not.
Just as I can weave a pagan thread through the curriculum, so can a christian.  The CE curriculum is comprehensive and laid out for the home educator.  Albeit, it can be a little dry, employ a little imagination and flexibility and the curriculum comes alive.  Nor does one need to adhere to the suggestions regarding the amount of time spent each day on lessons, the reading hour and so forth.   All the blogs I've found where the home education is CE based, appear to be school like.  This does not appeal to me, or my son.  I am his facilitator not his teacher.   I used the CE curriculum to set a direction for our learning. We are somewhere in the middle of formal home education and autonomous home education.

How does this work practically?
My son is currently improving his reading ability.  I believe he is dyslexic; he exhibits virtually all the classical cues.   Memory difficulties means he often "forgets" sight words he's learned, and he needs constant reminding to try sounding out the letter sounds.   "The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading" provides the structure, along with useful revision reminders.  Each lesson is short with suggested additional activities.  This is the method I employ:

"Table Time:  we will look at the lesson together, usually taking no more than 10-15 minutes.

Additional Activities:  these often employ magnetic boards, letters, words and flash cards.  I use dyslexic technique of incorporating my son's different senses when learning new words and digraphs. For example, one of the activities is using words written on cards to make up sentences - which can be as silly and ridiculous as he likes.  I may add perhaps lego or plasticine to the activity, and ask him to "illustrate" his sentence with models.  I've found this helps to keep him engaged in the activity, so he's focused on the words.  I encourage my son to complete one activity during our Table Time there's no time limit here, he can spend as long as he likes on the task.

My son likes to sing, those silly sentences make funny songs.  Added benefit, he is also playing his ukulele while singing (reading the words off the index cards); or he's dancing/acting out the sentences.  This allows him to expand that fidgety energy and turns what use to be a trigger for my annoyance, into a positive learning tool.

CE advocates repeating thrice words/poems etc throughout the day.  This works well with an energetic child.  He blasts into the flat, hopping and chatting ten to a dozen.
"Sing your silly song to me," and he'll dance around singing it.
"Your Quest is to read these words to win a magical reward"  If he fails, no worries he can try again, next time he bounces in.
"Read the sentence to gain entry"

Initially, I employed "reading hour" too, which is where the child spends an hour in their room, or quiet space, looking at books, or listening to audio books.  Playing with anything else is not allowed.  The idea being to create a habit of reading.    Sadly, reading hour became a bit of a battle.  CE tutors staying firm, I prefer to be sensitive to my son's feelings and find "Sofa Time" much more fun and productive.  Sofa Time tends to happen on an evening, we snuggle up on the sofa and I read a book of my choosing and I'll read my son's choice(s) too.  I particularly love sofa time in the autumn, light candles, make hot chocolate - becomes a wonderful treat and a magical time to read folk stories and myths.

I had planned for 3 lessons a day - perhaps maths, handwriting practise and reading, another day the space project, history, science and so forth.  I've found reserving 2-3 days for reading only lessons works best.  Reading expends so much mental energy that asking my son to then do other concentrated learning activities is a recipe for disaster.  Those days we play board games, craft, my mobility allowing, we go for a wander in the park noticing the changing seasons, talking about trees, dryads, plant correspondences, whatever tickles our fancy.

For each area of learning I follow the basic structure of providing instruction or information, then cementing that knowledge through activities and crafts and repetition.  Reading is hard work for my son, consequently, so is handwriting, happily CE supports and encourages narration.  I believe this to be very important for my son, his memory is actually very good; his struggle with remembering some words is less a memory retention issue, and more his memory gets scrambled as he becomes stressed/tired/frustrated. My hope is by continually working his memory, and demonstrating his using his memory; memory paths in his mind will be further developed and my son's confidence and self esteem will increase, impacting on his self belief.

I use CE learning strategies when sharing information regarding my path.  My son is about to learn the tarot, specifically the Wild Wood tarot deck.  A beautifully visual pack.  Each card has a myriad of symbolism, and as we learn together, we will use keywords on cards, creating our own decks, exploring our feelings, dreams.  A wonderful way to delve into mythology, symbolism, nature, imagination, psyche and archetypes.

Employ CE as a learning tool with a sprinkle of imagination and its a wonderful curriculum that is suitable for any home educator who desires a literacy based curriculum.  Pinterest contains lots of ideas on how supplement the basic lessons with fun activities; and  to be fully CE led; many blogs and websites are available to show how to implement the CE curriculum.  We choose to cherry pick the parts of the pedagogy that suit us and with some trial and error (see "Pushing"), we are settling into a routine that is working.

CE is not just the purview of christian home educators.  The curriculum itself is secular; there are reading lists which incorporate a christian worldview, read them, or not, there is choice.   The main thing, in my opinion, about  the Well Trained Mind brand of CE is it's written by American mother and daughter duo, so the reading lists favour american literacy, and most of the Pinterest content is also american.   Bear this bias in mind and it's not an issue.  Supplement some of the american literacy with British literature, adapt activities based on american geography/history etc to British and all is good.

















 

This week home education looks like...

Sarah, over at Carried Family has written a fantastic post on what a week of unschooling looks like for her family.  Lovely to read as a home educator myself, who is often plague with worries of "am I doing enough, is Rye getting an education, should I "do" more with him?".
The obvious step is to record my own week with Rye, and I unashamedly admit I'm including Thursday and Friday because they were days that included very obvious learning, and were just such brilliant days, that I want to record them now.  So, our week will run from Thursday to Thursday.

Thursday:
Rye was up early.
Crashing cars and making up songs about it.
Helped pack for our afternoon at the beach with friends from the Home Ed group.
Asking what plants are as we walk along the side of the cliff to the beach.
Making huge sand mountains.
Playing in the sea, testing nerves and going deeper than ever before.
Looking at a Jelly fish that a friend found.  And shell hunting.

Initial upset and sulks that I allowed one of the boys to pull my trolley.  Rye felt it was his job; warned him not to snatch the trolley back - and suddenly fantastic cooperation happened.  The boys agreed Rye could pull the trolley once at the top of the cliff steps - and they cooperated brilliantly to carry the trolley up the cliff steps.  Very impressed.
Rye went to Street Dance class.
Once home tidied through the downstairs.
Went to bed and listened to a story cd.








Friday
Childminding day.  Mindee arrived at 8:30am.
Free silly, giggly play in the lounge.
Dancing to music on the radio.
Water play in the paddling pool, and lots of the float or sink experiments.
Running and jumping in to make big splashes.
Bubble machine on, discovered the bubbles "stick" to them when they are wet.

Friends arrive and I refill a now rather empty pool.
Rye is a little bossy - seeing where he can exert himself.
Lots of sand/trampoline and pool play - Rye mostly in pool playing with cars and planes.
Clay modelling - Rye makes a realistic looking racing car.
Kids gravitate indoors, and play boardgames:  sum swamp, trianomoes, snakes and ladders, quirkle.  All the kids have a go at sum swamp, working out the sums, working out even and odd numbers etc.  Friends leave at tea time.
Rye goes back outside and makes more clay models.
Listens to a story cd.

Saturday
Enjoyed morning cuddles.
Another childminding day, well morning, this time.
Swamp Sum with mindee - helps her with working out the sums etc.
Rye exhibits good humour when he looses the game, or when mindee gets snarky at him trying to help her.
Football club.
Visit friends, and plays with his best friend.
Pop into town for pimsoles for Rye's dance show.
Rye tries samples from the Italian Olive cart (just the biscuits and Italian quiche).
Plays swamp sum on his own.
Watches car racing on You Tube, and kiddy programmes on Netflix.
Plays Top Gear stunt game.
 
Sunday:

Rehearsals - Rye really enjoys it.
Show in the later afternoon - Rye performs in the show with the rest of the kids from his classes.  Sooooo proud of him!

Monday

Morning snuggles in bed, with the fan on.
Talked about why we sweat and the purpose of perspiration.
Dentist for me, so Rye stayed with a friend, playing and helping to put together jigsaw puzzles.
 Later when the kids were back, played with his best friend and watched some Dr Who.
Helped tidy up in prep for my crochet course this evening.
Watched Top Gear.
Play Top Gear stunt game.
1/2 hr of Reading Eggs.


Tuesday
Imaginative play with zoobs and cars.
Sum Swamp board game
building with quirkle tiles and knocking them down with the car.
Bouncing on trampoline.
Lots of talk about the weather, storms, looking at lightening bolts online.
Practicing letters on the blackboard.
Drawing.
Song and Dance Class.
Swimming Lesson - impressed his instructor with his new confidence in the water and swimming.  Just need him to be confident swimming on his back and he will go up another level.
Audio story.

Wednesday:
Sing and imaginative play with cars and zoobs on the tree house.
Sum Swamp board game.
Looking at books.
Playing in the sandpit with the cars.
Practising letters on the black board.
Taking photos and videos with his camera, and then editing the photos.
Horse riding lesson.
Working out cost of cars/buses he liked in the post office shop.
Making his own lunch (crackers with butter - I added cucumber, carrot and fruit)
Listening to audio story.





Water play at the fountain at the harbour for over 2 hours, including a water fight with me.

The lights looked so pretty when they finally came on at 9pm.















Thursday:
Cuddles
Imaginative play with zoobs, cars, big wooden jcb and play silks.
bouncing on the trampoline.
Writing numbers on the blackboard
Sum Swamp.
Junior Scrabble
Watching kiddy programmes on netflix.
Reading Eggs
Singing and dancing to the radio.
Experimenting with materials for boat making - tried paper, card and beeswax modelling clay.  Told me he really needed wood to make a boat that floated or simply didn't disintegrate once wet.

So there we have it.
The most glaring thing to me is how similar the days are, and how many resources are not being used.   There is a lot of learning through fun and games going on, yet I've noticed many of the resources available to Rye are not being utilised, and I've found myself feeling somewhat frustrated at the level of destructive play - lots of crashing things together and pounding them on the floor... watching him I honestly think it's because he needs more stimulus and plain old inspiration to fire the old imagination in new directions, and I need to think of some creative ways he can expend some of that destructive drive without ruining toys.

Domestic chores feature a lot in our day, small home means constant tidying to ensure space for us both, there's not a lot of fun chores though, cooking together has been fairly non existent.   Ok I'm juicing/raw eating again, no reason I can't help him to make his own meals.  Washing up, which he loves - again I've been doing it, or just letting pots build up enough to fill the dishwasher.

I think we both need a bit of a shake up... and potentially there's a huge one coming.  In 10 sleeps Rye and I visit Liverpool and seriously consider joining Rose Howey.  It's a big step, one we are both excited about, I could waffle on excitedly; there's really no point until we've been to visit and know one way or t'other.   And until then, we have 9 anticipation filled days to wait - good time to give us both a bit of a shake up and explore some of those unused resources on the shelves!

Catch up.

Cor, has been a wee while since I blogged about our lives, eh. 
Life, is busy and the usual symphony of love, laughter, fun, joy, anxiety, worry, fear.  On the whole the fun and laughter win out mostly.

New moon today though, so I'm letting go of nagging worries, I'll continue promoting my business, but no more worry; what will be, will be :-)

So, what have we been up to?

We attended the Cheriton Light Festival put on by the arts company, Strange Cargo.  It was a bitterly chilly night, but wow the firework display was one of the best I've seen for quite a few years, and the burning Phoenix bonfire was pretty good too.

We've visited friends, being out and about, I've done lots and lots of crochet, filling orders and posting them off.

This is a snood an old friend commissioned.  Really, really like, I shall be hooking myself one at some point, for next winter - it's soooooooo warm and snuggly - and this one is made from premium acyrlic!  I reckon it could even be worn as a shawl too!
Another friend commissioned an owl wall hanging, this is one of the motifs:

Really love this pattern.  I have so many ideas for these gorgeously colourful wee owls. 
And another commission for a japanse flower motif garland:

I've was also ill for a few days.  I really thought I was coming down with the flu; achiness and so tried I felt I couldn't move, felt dizzy when I stood up... but nope, 48hrs in bed and I was fine again.  Rye was so incredibly sweet, fetching me drinks of water and, bless him, he even made me a get well card and left it on my bedside table, while I slept.

When I wasn't sleeping we played board games - which eased some of "using screen as babysitter" guilt:

And there was a bit of hooky time; tho not a great deal, mostly it sat on my bedside, while I looked and tried to work up the energy to sit up:

After mindee's swimming lesson, I took them to wee park opposite the beach, and Rye, in particular, had a grand time.

We've had film nights, and last night Rye chose the bbc's "The Planets", a documentary that's on Netflix, and loved it; we watched two episodes, he's so keen I think we'll watch another tonight.

That photo is the documentary projected onto my bedroom wall - watching it so big was incredible!

Led to Rye, this morning, painting and drawing various planets.  As this is very clearly a new found interest, I shall take full advantage and festoon him with various resources on space and planets :-)

And of course, the predicted snow, has indeed arrived and we are currently in the middle of a snow storm - which has eased a little, but is expected to pick up more in a few hours.  We have a red weather alert - which does make me smile a wee bit -as we are only expecting about 10cms....

Rye did play out a wee bit this morning, small snowmen, bouncing on the trampoline - but that wind is bitter, bitter, bitter; he lasted about 10 mins, despite his super warm snowsuit, and hasn't wanted to go out since.  He's hoping that by tomorrow there will be plenty of snow to make a really BIG snowman :-)

I hope there is for him, but honestly, I'm so over snow now.  I love snow...but it's Spring, and I yearn for the returning warmth of the sun and sitting out in the garden with a cuppa on a morning....