Homeschool "Curriculum" -- What To Teach... And How

The cool thing about Homeschooling is that you are not TIED or CHAINED to a curriculum determined by *Ivory-Tower* "Boards of Education" such that your children will become Bored of Education!

Sure, you can buy curriculum specifically designed and developed for homeschoolers--the ABeka curriculum, the Bob Jones University Curriculum, and so on.  But since all kids are not all alike, you can mix and match, or choose to go in a different direction altogether as well.

Like I said in one of my other Squidoos (lens?), early settlers in America usually had only one book for their journeys and eventually in their homes. And like I said before, you can imagine which book that it was.  From this one book, the children were taught how to read, write, and think. From this book they learned their morals and their view of how to deal with what they'd find in their environment.

Of course, now we have a wide variety of media--not only do we have access to almost any book or document that has ever been printed, but we also have newspapers, magazines, journals, audio and video (on tapes, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, and MPEG/WAV) as well as the Internet to access most of these and other information.

So... with all this information overload, where do we start sorting out the good stuff from the questionable and *bad* stuff? 

How about parental discretion?

If you are not a total idiot and you can manage to run a household, keep the checkbook relatively balanced, and rustle up some grub once in a while, you are most likely qualified to teach kids something.

Because, let's face it, this may be what most of us need most to do when we get out of school anyway.

However, it is helpful if our kids actually learn something. Long before we had kids and even before we got married, my wife and I had been public school teachers in a school district that was severely underfunded. Most of the books we used in our classes were more than a decade old--some were more than 20 years old. Not that there was anything bad about them. In fact, most were quite good.  However, it was an interesting task to explain to the students in 1980 and 1981 that the book saying that someday humans would journey to the moon in a vehicle called a "spaceship" wasn't science fiction--especially with events like the Space Shuttle Enterprise being test-landed at Edwards AFB in California and the Soviet Space Station Solyuz orbiting the planet.  Also, the science equipment was so old it looked like it was recovered from an archeological dig for the dark ages.   But the funky science equipment actually made the science experiments more interesting (at least in my opinion) than if it had been shiney new stuff.  Some of the science experiments my wife and I cooked up for our classes used just ordinary stuff we gathered from trips to the market or stuff we scrounged up from a hardware store. 

Not sure if most of you remember your own elementary school science experiments -- you know, the baking soda and vinegar experiment; the thread, salt, and ice experiment; and the soda-straw and apple experiment.  But when doing them the second time for high school students, you can regain the fascination with science all over again (because most folks don't remember the one done in elementary school--but the second time they see it in high school, they are more capable of really learning the principles behind the experiment anyway).

And science isn't the only class that can be taught quite effectively with most things found around our home or garage. 

We all live within a short distance of something of historical relevancy.  Whether it be on Guam, or in New Mexico, or British Columbia, or New York, or Florida, or Hawaii, or Japan, we can tie the historical monuments and museums and exhibits found near our homes to the world historical events and people. 

In New Mexico, you can see living history--Taos Pueblo looks pretty much the same as it did more than 1000 years ago (except maybe for the pickup trucks parked in front of it, or the Casio wristwatches on the wrists of the inhabitants and the MP3 players in the inhabitants' pockets). You can visit the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico (also close to White Sands National Monument--a great place for science discussions about environment and geography--and White Sands Missile Range, the site of the Space Shuttle Columbia's landing in 1982).

Ferdinand Magellan? Well--he was a Portuguese Captain/Navigator who, under the commission of Queen Isabella of Spain took his ships to circumnavigate the world. He landed on Guam in 1521. He landed in the Philippines also in 1521.  Note that I said his ships circumnavigated the world.  Magellan didn't make it alive. He died in the Philippines. In about the same manner that Captain Cook (who was sailing for the Queen of England) met his fate in Hawaii.

The Portuguese Navigator/Captains and their Spanish crews were adept at scooting all over the oceans of the world--as were the Dutch and English.  And they played an interesting role in the Pacific with Hawaii, Tahiti, Japan, Indonesia, India, Australia, and Africa.  So, if you vacation in Hawaii, you can make some of this history come alive by visiting the actual Hawaiian temple sites where some of this happened. If you travel to Japan, you can do likewise.

One thing my wife and I discovered was that history is a timeline--with stuff happening in more than one place all the time.  While stuff was happening in Europe, simultaneously things were also happening in China, Russia, Japan, Hawaii, and South America.   Too many books we found were "Western Civilization" oriented. They talked about all the things happening in Western Europe without mentioning all the advances in knowledge and science and technology in Eastern Europe, China, India, Japan, and the Americas. The Mayans had very accurate calendars that tracked solar eclipses, comets, and the years, months, weeks, days, and hours with accuracy greater than any others developed during that time period--in fact, those calendars are still unsurpassed.  The Egyptians had engineering and masonry skills that were unparalleled--for things like the pyramids and their obelisks and temples. The Greeks and Romans developed stonework for their buildings and temples that is still awe-inspiring.  The Japanese developed a skill of building temples and pagodas that were not only assembled without nails, but were also earthquake resistant and also had security features such as "nightingale floors" and battlements. The aborigines of Australia had weapons such as the boomerang that took advantage of aerodynamic properties to effectively target and take down prey and enemies. The Chinese developed printing presses, gunpowder, noodles, and earthquake seismometers. 

What our kids can do (and what we did as well) is use a long roll of butcher paper and post simultaneous "timelines" for different areas of the world to see how all these events and people in history interacted and affected each other.