So, I'm blogging. :D
I was thinking I would babble about how much I like the way we use Faith and Life (nope, I'm not an affiliate with them! ;) ). But instead, I've decided to babble about what I would like to see:
A Montessori homeschool curriculum or book for the adolescent years.
Yeah, I know, demanding request. It can be hard to find any real solid information about Montessori and the adolescent years. Training programs are few and far between and, afaik, don't have online options that we homeschoolers could take part in.
Maybe what I need to do is to gather all the information I can find and make myself a little book. A guide I can hold in my hands.
Of course, I could do as I always tell other people to do: Experiment! ;)
My thoughts are multiplying and jumbling together. I'll stop here for now, but I think I might babble to myself in a Word document. And maybe share some stuff at a later point!
First order of business: I've put a request for "From Childhood to Adolescence" at my library. I was considering just seeing if there was a decent-priced one at Abebooks, but they seem to be having issues at the moment!
ReplyDeleteUp until the last year or two I used to agonize over how to teach my adolescents with a Montessori approach. I would scour the web for examples of Montessori high schools, etc, etc. I finally realized that our home really was a thriving environment for our own adolescents and that with 4-H activities (which wouldn't have to be specifically for 4-H but it helped move us along regarding cooking, leadership, community service, and other areas) and with them taking an active role in schooling decisions that our homeschool well approached 'commercial' Montessori schools.
ReplyDeleteIt does feel like sailing without a map (or GPS nowadays!) but each time I evaluated our schooling it seemed aligned with Montessori even when it stopped "looking" like a young Montessori classroom. I bet your homeschool exceeds any commercial Erdkinder... because it's your school for your children and you have the Montessori philosophy so embedded in your approach and view of your life and children. You have always been an inspiration for me and thanks for all of your sharing!
I recently posted photos of my olders giving the oldest dd's goat a bath. I love those pictures because it brings everything together in one moment: for example,their schooling, responsibility for a project/animal, cooperativeness, and fun :).
Hope this makes sense, lol!
Your comments are sweet, thank you!
DeleteI just feel like with my son, I've not put enough limits, structure. My daughter was always pushing ahead and still wanted me to give her more so I didn't really need to structure a whole lot; my son will just go off into his own world, whether it's good for him or not. He does not have the same foundation she did. There are holes in his schooling--he's 12 and maybe once written an entire paragraph, for example. There are things I really need to show him but I also want to respect where he is developmentally--his "sensitive periods" right now (even though it's not called that at his age, but you kwim).
I think part of my issue right now is that I feel so tied up in all kinds of other decisions, and tied up with helping my 15yo adjust to her choice of schooling (online, but not necessarily structured the way she'd hoped!), I just want somebody/something to tell me what to do with his schooling. lol. Maybe that's one of my keys: start each morning with an imaginary conversation with Maria Montessori. "Maria, what should I do about this boy today?" lol.
We are making slight progress with having something focused in math and now the science. I just need to explore other things to get him reading something other than comics and actually writing. That's where the history was going to come in, but I have to say, as neat as it is to look through some of the history encyclopedias that we have, I don't know what *to do* with any of it. That's where Sonlight would not only tell him how much to do each day (or tell me how much to do with him--he doesn't like working all by himself), but would tell me what kinds of things we can do.
That said, my adolescent research on the weekend has my thoughts going elsewhere, for the time being. The interconnected nature of the subjects, for example. We're both interested in growing food indoors, which could naturally lead to looking at agricultural feats of the past or the history of agriculture. But again, while I have *topics*, I don't know what *to do* with any of them. Just research projects?
(Thank you to those still reading. ;) )