In response to the mother who feels she needs something more formal in the way of curriculum

by Laurie Bluedorn | Delayed Formal Education, Math | 0 comments

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From Amber B.

We started homeschooling my son when he was four.  We love the Bluedorn’s approach and have stuck to it because it fits  our ideal of what a homeschool should be. My son is now soon to be nine  and he has yet to do formal math or grammar. For me personally, there  are several reasons we like to do math and grammar informally. It frees up  our time for reading great books, nature journaling, and field trips.  Too much sit-down work can be frustrating for a young child. Focusing on  reading, narration and copywork/handwriting to us at this age is more  important.  I am sure everyone does this differently, but what we did was just to  naturally teach our son about math through our daily interaction with  it. Living Math is  a website that has book lists for  teaching children math through literature, reviews of math curricula, and dozens of articles on all aspects of learning math through living.

We have also not studied grammar formally yet, but we have chosen to focus  on phonics, reading aloud with gusto, narration and  copywork/handwriting. We have informally touched on grammar by  simply coming across it in our Latin studies. Just this year our son is learning parts of speech simply by doing his Latin every day. Most Latin books will touch on grammar, and it is a great way to  kill two birds with one stone. We also have chosen this method of  teaching grammar through Latin when our children reach the logic stage. We  will probably not purchase a grammar curriculum. Not everyone chooses to do this, there are some  great grammar texts and curricula out there to choose from when your  child is ready for it. And by the way, we used to study Spanish as a  separate subject, but we have come to the realization that so many  languages, including Spanish, are so closely knit to Latin that we dropped  Spanish as its own subject and we just study Latin instead. When  the kids are older we will allow them to focus on reading and writing in  other languages. For now they get exposure to other languages  through audio CDs, talking with family, easy reader books, and videos .

If you have not read Teaching The Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style, I encourage you to do so. The  Bluedorns go into great length about when to teach grammar and math.  They have some great articles and references for this argument.  I have had the pleasure of  learning how others have experienced success through the method of waiting  till age ten for formal math and grammar. It is amazing how much  children will learn and understand by simply living and participating in  everyday tasks. They learn without a formal textbook or  curriculum.  I hope this helps you.