School Days

My youngest son was a late bloomer, academically speaking. We studied phonics for 4 years before he finally “caught it” and began to read. Since then, he has become a voracious reader; just in the last weeks he has read Robinson Crusoe, Red Badge of Courage, Watership Down, Around the World in 80 Days, and reread The Two Towers and The Hobbit.

I am grateful that we are doing classical homeschooling with him. I believe that the training of his mind to memorize and think is essential to his ability to do well in academics. This year he is working through Latina Christiana I after having done Prima Latina last year; Latin trains the mind to think, and I can see that the constant review of terms and usage is helping him transfer the use of these skills into other subjects. He has always done the memorization of the Bible verses for AWANA, and I believe the training of the mind to recall long versus, and several verses in a row, has helped him to memorize other facts such as those he uses in science class. (As an interesting aside, we found that he could memorize while jumping on the trampoline better than when he was sitting still--curious.) I am also convinced that the requirement of learning scales and chords in piano lessons has helped him to find patterns. Rod & Staff English has much reinforcement and review, and this has enabled my son to learn by age 13 some of the grammar concepts I learned in graduate school. (I will not go into my thoughts on my own education here.) We are moving through Writing Strands, and with each book I can see that he is improving in his ability to express himself on paper. A classical education has been good for him.

There were times I worried about how well I was going to be able to prepare my son for his future, but now I am certain that he will have what he needs for wherever he chooses to go—whatever direction God leads him. For those of you who struggle to teach your children the basics, I urge you to be patient and keep trying different ways to obtain your goals. Not all children are created equal, but they all have talents in them that we can build upon. That is all that is required of us, isn’t it?