School News

Well, I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm considering using a "curriculum in a box" for school next year (first grade). Things are going fine with kindergarten, but with #2 coming up to school age the year after that, I thought that if I could find something good that would save me some time, I would be quite happy. As long as the "issues" I might have with the curriculum are minor, I can improvise the changes I need to make as I go along. So I am considering doing this.

I fall somewhere between the Charlotte Mason and Classical camp with my homeschooling ideas. The important thing in both of these methods is reading good books. I disagree with the idea that bad books are ok if it "gets them reading" (e.g. Captain Underpants). When I say "bad books", I mean books poorly written, formula-ized, or based on a tv show or movie that makes no sense if you haven't seen the show or movie. I think it's probably better to not read at all than to read bad books, unless we're talking about the mechanics of learning to read (learning to read using bad books is better than not learning to read at all). Even for very young children, there are some books that are objectively better than others. I have noticed that even though we do have a few "bad" books in our collection, our kids tend to gravitate toward the good ones.