As I've mentioned before, we follow a classical education model. In this model, education is divided into 3 stages: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. As children become capable of deeper, higher-level thinking, they move from learning facts, to analyzing information, and then to expressing themselves.
We have been in Grammar stage until this year. My goal has been to introduce Lily and Noah to as many different topics as I could. We've stressed memorization of poems, math facts, science vocabulary, and grammar. I've exposed them to age appropriate works of great literature, like Odysseus, Beowulf, and Shakespeare. As I've mentioned before, I've tried to give them a broad base of knowledge and lots of "hooks" for information that we will encounter again or in more depth in the future.
I have taken most of the responsibility for choosing curriculum that I think is rigorous and works well for us, for choosing subjects that we will learn, and for setting the timing. This hasn't always been successful and has been a learning experience for us both, especially in the beginning. During our first year of homeschooling, for example, I selected that I thought would be an excellent choice for grammar. When I would get that book off the shelf, my school-loving girl Lily cried. Every. single. day. She couldn't put in to words what was wrong with the book or why she didn't like it, but she hated it. I put it in my discard pile and looked around for a new book that I thought would work. Fortunately, I tried another program and it was much more successful. It worked so well for us that we remained with that series until the end of last year.
The second stage is the Logic stage. This is the stage where children are capable of abstract thought and can begin to analyze arguments and this is where Lily starts school this year. Because she's transitioning to a place where she's expected to be more responsible for her learning, I decided this would be a good time to start giving her more responsibility how she learns it as well.
I started by writing out all of my plans for what I thought we should cover this year. I had ideas for materials already, but I was curious what Lily thought of them so I packed up all of my plans, ideas, and materials and invited Lily to come with me for a "planning session." We left her younger siblings at home and went to Starbucks. I treated her to a hot chocolate and I laid out every single plan I had. I let her look through everything and I asked for her input.
To begin with she just stared at me. Then she started to open up. She told me that she liked X about her grammar program, but didn't like Y. As we talked more, I had to "put my money where my mouth was." She decided she wanted to switch grammar programs. I could have insisted that we stayed with what I had planned to use; instead, together we brainstormed, read descriptions, and chose the program that we're now using. Other things, like math, she wanted to leave just as they were.
After all was said and done, Lily and I had very similar ideas about what she should learn this year. She was surprisingly harder on herself than I would have been and I spent part of the time gently pulling her back from her expectations for herself. She commented to me, "If I'm going to be a logic stage student now, I should expect to do more work!" She asked to add in a computer programming class and to try another Minecraft Homeschooling class.
As we left Starbucks, she told me that she never thought that she would get to pick what she learns. She asked me if we were going to do this every year now. (We are.)
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