Tag: classical homeschooling

Homeschooling, Theology

The Problem with Cultivating Good Taste in our Students

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

The Problem with Cultivating Good Taste in our Students - Classical Education, Classical Christian Homeschooling, What is Beauty?Among certain thinkers in classical education, there exists the idea that one must strive to cultivate good taste in children, to the betterment of their eternal soul. Here’s the problem: good taste is often confused with parental preference. Poor taste is elevated to a place reserved for actual sin.

Lest you think I have imagined this — lest you think I have imagined the pedestal Christian classicists have given to taste — consider this from a prominent writer in classical education:

“One of the most important things we can offer students is good taste, by which I mean learning to love beautiful things that have lasted. Bad taste is not a personality quirk, but a significant moral problem. If our students don’t love beautiful things, we have failed them. If we are graduating students who love shallow things, they might as well go to public school.”

Bad taste is a significant moral problem? Sin is a significant moral problem. Taste is not. We cannot, and must not, equate taste with worth.

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Curriculum Reviews, Homeschooling

Review of Veritas Press Self-Paced History Courses

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

Veritas Press Self-Paced History Review

Now through JUNE 28, 2022, get $100 off any self-paced course (omnibus, Bible, or history) when you use code INDEPENDENT.

If some part of homeschooling isn’t working for you, change it!

Depending on when you started school, Thanksgiving break marks about twelve or fifteen weeks into the academic year. By now, you’ve been at this long enough to grasp a sense of what curriculum is working well for you — and what isn’t. Enough time has passed for you to take a healthy assessment of your real homeschool situation, as opposed to your ideal homeschool situation. If things aren’t running as smoothly as you had hoped, don’t despair! It’s early enough in the school year to make changes.

Homeschooling, like parenting, is a strange beast. It requires humility and flexibility — but it also requires confidence and assertiveness. Like Kenny Rogers sang, “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em / Know when to fold ’em / Know when to walk away…” (Probably not a song that shows up in many homeschool morning times, I’m guessing.)

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Homeschooling

5 Ways to Streamline your Homeschool for the Holidays

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

5 Ways to Streamline Your Homeschool for the Holidays

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day rush at us at seemingly breakneck speed, our calendars full to overflowing with recitals, shopping, family gatherings, and endless errands. Each year, we promise ourselves we’ll slow down and make time for what’s really important, yet each year we find ourselves captive to the tyranny of the urgent, swept up in the cultural chaos of Christmas.

We limp through holidays, then let out an exhausted sigh in January, wearily vacuuming up the fir tree needles and boxing up the nativity while vowing to do better next year.

Instead of resigning ourselves to overwhelm and lack of margin this holiday season, let’s redeem the time, as Paul instructs in Ephesians 5:16. But how can we hold the hours accountable?

Continue reading my Holiday Homeschool Survival Guide on the Veritas Press blog

Homeschooling, How To

How to Study Art History with Kids: FREE Printable

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

How to Study Art History with Kids: FREE Printable from the Oaxacaborn blog

Figuring out how to study art with kids doesn’t have to be complicated. This free, no-strings-attached printable provides art history discussion prompts you can use with any piece of art you encounter in your homeschool studies.

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Curriculum Reviews, Homeschooling, How To

Gifted Classical-Leaning Homeschool Curriculum Choices (2nd Grade)

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

Our favorite educational resources and homeschool curriculum for homeschooling a neurologically gifted child, blending a literature-based approach and classical education with an emphasis on science.Gifted Classical-Leaning Second Grade Curriculum 2017-2018 by Gina @ Oaxacaborn

I’ll just get it out in the open right away: my daughter eats curriculum for breakfast.  She’s gifted, and I mean that as a neurological identifier to explain why we have such a crazy life, not as a bragging right. Since the age of two, she’s been on a mission to flatten forests. (Don’t fret. Trees, lumber, paper, and all the various related accouterments, are a renewable resource.)

Here’s the thing. If I had held rigidly to the no formal education before age seven doctrine, I’d probably already be in a padded room.

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