I am a huge, enormous, gigantic bookworm. I love all things classical: classical literature, the arts, and history. I’ve worked as an editor for several years and I’ve always dreamed of being a novelist.
Naturally, I would love to spend all of my homeschooling days doing nothing but sitting in a library with my children gathered around as we pore over the classic works of A.A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling, and Jane Austen.
However.
My ultimate goal in homeschooling is to prepare my children for life, which means teaching them skills that will make them employable. As much I as I value literature and history, the trend in employment is veering sharply away from the humanities and firmly into technology, healthcare, foreign language, and education. Which means it’s time for me to make a homeschooling U-turn.
Now I am NOT saying that there is no value in studying the classics or in learning humanities. We’ll continue to cover those subjects in our homeschool lessons. But starting with this year, we’ll be incorporating foreign language (which we already love) even more and adding in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education.
While I love foreign language learning, I am a total newbie at STEM education. I’ve never been terribly interested in science and I’ve never consciously participated in an engineering project before, except maybe Legos. 🙂 So it will be interesting to try these topics in our homeschool this year!
Have you ever made an abrupt shift in your homeschooling focus? Tell us about your homeschooling U-Turns in the comments!
We are also making some changes to our homeschool approach this year. I value the classics too (I have my master’s in English Lit), and while we still intend to incorporate them into our schooling, I’m seeing that the classical approach is just too dry and not appealing to our children. So, we’re taking a more Charlotte Mason approach to many of our subjects because I really want them to love learning, to take in what they’re learning and not feel pressured to memorize everything without a full context.
I think taking a U-turn in your homeschool is a good thing when it’s leading your children to a better place for their learning. Good luck with your new homeschool year!
Visiting from the HHH linkup
I love the Charlotte Mason method! I’ve been reluctant to implement it because we have so many active learners, but we practice copywork, narration, and short lessons regularly. I truly think I was born 150 years too late…lol.
We love science, engineering and math projects – but those usually grow out of the great literature we’re reading – the literature inspires action – the action leads to science, math, art…all kinds of good things 🙂
I love that! I think good literature will always inspire other interests. I’ll be working on some literature-based unit studies this fall that I hope to incorporate STEM resources into. 🙂
As my boys get older, I follow their lead more and more in studying what they’re interested in versus what I THINK they might be interested in… Good call on adding in some technology. Our kids are definitely going to need that! My boys love it. Hopefully yours will enjoy it as well. 🙂
Yes! If my sons aren’t interested in the material, I might as well hang it up for that day…lol. It’s so important that they feel connected to what they’re learning. Thanks for visiting! 🙂
I feel like I’m always making U-turns! Your wise to be considering the skills your kiddos will need, even if it’s not where our heart is as a teacher. We have to prepare them! As my boys are getting older, I’m thinking about this more and more.
Exactly. By the way, I switched my college major to English over the summer so I can keep getting my literature fix. 🙂
Hmm, I am not very good at any of the STEM subjects. My oldest is just starting preschool this year and I am not to worried about what we get done. When he is older I would like to help him discover what area he wants to work in and that he loves and then we can go from there.
Thanks for linking this up at the Bloggers Brags Party, can’t wait to see what you bring this week!