We use classical education as a framework to homeschool our children. But my kids love to exert their own interests and views into their learning, which is an aspect I celebrate now that they are older and possess self-control and are developing sound judgement.
And so our little homeschool takes on a new form of classical education most days: a multi-stacked classical approach.
When my kids learn about art, they also learn about history and math and science and literature. I am constantly relating what they are learning at any given moment to things they read or discussed yesterday, or last week. or even last year. Their life is a ‘zentangle‘ these days. We started when they were toddlers filling out the framework of the picture, as one does when making a ‘zentangle’, and then began with rough designs in each repeating pattern. Now we are filling in detail with my kids and when they reach teenage-hood (or youth-hood for those of us who firmly maintain that the teenage state is a suppression of a desire to achieve adulthood induced by public schooling), we will add color and character to the ‘zentangle’ that is their education.
Yesterday we spent some time with Sister Wendy, who is my kids’ favorite art historian. This time she spent over an hour discussing and looking at the stained glass panels in the chapel at King’s College.
It is a wonderful program full of references to history, art, and literature, as well as furthering a stream of strong moral principles that are so critical to a good education and upbringing. My kids and I discussed the literature and history we have read together recently in light of Sister Wendy’s discussion – everything from why the story of Jesus really teaches so much about humanity and compassion, to why the placement of a mocking bishop in a stained glass depiction of the parading of Jesus through the streets would really only be installed in a country like post-Henry VIIIth England.
And so our days are filled with multi-stacking my children’s classical education. Layers of subjects playing upon one another until it becomes difficult to distinguish many subjects from each other and it all boils down to a few keystones: math, logic, and history. From these three, all else flows and if a child does not get a firm grounding in these, a classical education is absolutely not possible.
