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Pagan Homeschoolers: Curriculum Thread

27K views 153 replies 60 participants last post by  paolalormar 
#1 ·
Welcome and blessed be Pagan Homeschoolers!

This thread is intended to help us create a homeschool curriculum that is based in paganism.

I have a framework that I use for homeschooling that I will provide as a starting point.

See below post
 
#2 ·
Curriculum

Our curriculum is designed to meet the developmental needs of each child. Each child develops at his/her own pace, using developmentally appropriate practices. The curriculum utilizes authentic assessment tools as well as child led lesson plans.

Curriculum is rooted in play. (1)
Children learn through play, which allows the child to explore the environment freely without direct adult control of the environment. (2) Rather, the environment is designed for each aspect of development and set in learning centers. (3)

The natural world and local community of the child is pivotal in helping the child develop a sense of self as well as being part of the larger, global environment. The child participates in their own culture as well as the multicultural world.

While specific content areas are focused on, they are developed in such a fashion that they are seen as part of the whole child. These areas are:
Math
Science
Social Justice/Social Studies/Multiculturalism
Language, Writing and Reading
Music
Art
Physical Development- Gross and Small Motor Skills
Social/Emotional Development
Cognitive
Sensory Experiences
Health and Safety

Please note that these areas while separated by content, are not learned in a vacuum, they are part of the whole child and are learned in varying combinations of lessons/skills.

While prepackaged curriculum may be purchased, the basis of our curriculum is rooted in Early Childhood Theory that is based in sound scientific research and studies. (4)

Overall, we feel our curriculum is designed to help the child move from isolated, one time experiences, to a coherent intentional plan that capitalizes on the opportunities that emerge each day.

Assessment

The child is assessed using as many authentic tools as possible. (6) The primary form of this is through anecdotal records. (7) At times it may be necessary to assess the child using outside sources in the form of tests or evaluations but these should be limited. The child will collect samples to be included in their portfolio. (8) The child is in control of the content of the portfolio, while the adult may ask to include documents in the
, the child is the one to assess their own growth and development through annual review of their portfolio work. The assessment will be used to help guide lesson plans.

Lesson Plans

Lesson plans will reflect the assessment and interest of the child. (9) Plans may be theme based but should always reflect the interest of the child and their learning objectives. Webbing and KWL (10) will be utilized. While some lessons may be pre-planned, many will be written as a reflection of the days learning activities. The curriculum also guides the lesson plans.

Created by Karen Taverna
 
#3 ·
Most states require that homeschoolers teach basic content, some states have more requirements than others.

Since my children are fairly young, play and exploration are our foundations for learning. I believe their is a place for worksheets and workbooks in the child's day, as learning tools and resources.
I don't want to get bogged down in whether you use a certain math book, or reading program because it will detract from our goal.

Basic respect for the learner is essential and will aide us on our journey.

How should we proceed? My curriculum is pretty open and most anything can be inserted into it.
Once completed it would great to see this developed into a website.

How about a Month by Month curriculum?
 
#5 ·
Nice start Aeress
Sounds like you are a bit more organized with your hs ... in that you've written all that down I guess
. It's very much along the lines of my thoughts on how curriculum ought to be put together though, just have never gelled my thoughts into a statement.

I'll have to do a bit of thinking about HOW deeply I want my Pagan beliefs woven into our learning honestly. Bits DO come up now & again... like with the planets we are getting a chance to learn a bit about quite a few ancient Gods of the Romans and their Greek counterparts


As tolerance of all faiths is very important to me, I am aslo planning to do a bit of a world religions thread through our year as part of our social studies(haven't put this together yet though!) so that my children know a little about what other religions believe so they can be accepting of all people.

Will ponder some more and post again later
 
#11 ·
I would think a nature based curriculum, following the wheel of the year, would be an easy way to begin.

Many parents and teachers find seasonal or month by month curriculums easy to use and implement.

Please add your ideas. I am happy to organize resources and projects into a wheel of the year curriculum. Wait, I like that---what do you think?

The Wheel of the Year, Curriculum for Pagan Homeschooling Families?

comments
 
#15 ·
We are actually half-way through using a homemade Wheel of the Year calender as a focus for learning activities for preschoolers (age 3, 5, and just turned 6).

Just got interrupted. Will be back to edit this post with more details.

Ok, here is the standard calendar set I've been using for years with my own and home daycare children of toddler-early elementary years. Boring. But this is what time looks like for most early childhood/elementary kids.

Last September, the older preschoolers and I made a Wheel of the Year calendar, which involved writing practice, circle geometry, lots of learning. Here is a closeup

This is the Wheel calendar after 6 months (faded, now!). I am already planning to add more for next year -- photos of seasonal changes in our garden, more tags for religious holidays of other faiths, and definitely the moon phases and cross-quarter Pagan holidays. I think the children will learn a lot where holidays cluster, such as on Feb 2, which has Pagan, Catholic, and secular meaning (Groundhog's Day).

We have talked about the origins of the days of the week, and next year I'll use this as a springboard for Scandinavian mythology, I think.

I still haven't figured out what to put in the white space, so I will probably make that smaller with the next one.

I was thinking about making a reusable felt version, but, honestly, I think the kids get more value out of having made it themselves -- they "own" this calendar.

Editing again because I wanted to make clear that I am using both the preschool month calendar and the Wheel calender in conjunction. We do a calendar time together at the start of each month, switch over the numbers/holidays on the monthly calender and update our Wheel at the same time. Lots of earth/spirituality/ world religion activities have come out of the focus on holidays, especially the Winter Solstice, Day of the Dead, and Chinese New Year. I can see this approach working very well for older kids who are ready for more sophisticated materials.

I think using the two calenders together helps the children understand that there are different models for representing the same thing (time) and that different models do different things well. I'd love to have more calendars and timelines to juxtapose with these. We talked about the 12 year Chinese Zodiac cycle, for example. And with older children, timelines would be interesting -- it is 4706 in the Chinese calender, 2010 in the western one. Why the difference? etc.
 
#16 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by DaughterOfKali View Post
Not to rain on the pagan parade but is there way to make it more "Earth Based Spirituality/Nature Based" than outright pagan?

I only say that because when reporting the curriculum (etc) I use to the school department, I don't want it to say pagan. My town would sic the buffoons on me for that. (I'm not kidding)
Isn't it absurd how one little word will freak 'them' out? Not that leaving said word out changes what's IN the curriculum one little bit
(and we dont' mind you raining on our parade.. I like rain hehe)

I like the month by month idea... makes it especially convenient for those of us down under to 'rearrange' things to fit our seasons. I found with Oak Meadow, that I had to rework the entire curriculum by flagging the pages with 'start of spring stuff.. use septemberish'. Or we could even go with 'The months of Spring' and a subline with the months for each hemisphere?
 
#17 ·
Aubergine- that is great. Can I add it to the curriculum? If you pm me I will be able to give you credit


I could very easily do a Infant/Toddler and Preschoool section if people are interested.
 
#18 ·
Oh, yay! I'm so glad to see this thread here.

We have an eclectically pagan, nature-based spirituality, but I still consider our homeschool "secular" because I'm not actively "teaching" her a certain path.

We study comparative religions and altars of many faiths; we meditate. I don't guide her belief system. She believes in reincarnation and fairies, and all of this comes into our learning time, tho I'm not promoting one or another path to her.

My girl has big respect for Buddha and often asks what Buddha would have liked or done or eaten; she is very thoughtful about it. She is all about the gods and goddesses or Greek/Roman pantheon, and was PSYCHED to learn to write GAEA in Greek (the cutest thing I've ever seen in her little kid scrawl).

Being peaceful and honoring the earth are very important to us. So I'm taking an environmentalist (and feminist because I have a GIRL who deserves to have heroines) slant as I am picking out biographies, etc.

For now the most actively pagan homeschool thing that we do is mark the moon phases, talk about the names of the full moons and celebrate both the new and full moons--usually with some sort of "witch school" thing (she digs this) like really simple divination, etc. on the new moons and then mostly just giving a lot of gratitude and counting our blessing with the full moons.

I kind of suck about celebrating festivals. I'm working on that. I'd like to be a lot more prepared and have it together; but somehow they always creep up on me. So we haven't done a lot for Equinoxes/Solstices, but I'll get there!

I have a great book, "Pagan Homeschooling" that I like a lot. We also read "Earth Prayers" every morning, and I'd like to get more active into having morning "devotions" (to borrow a term from the Christian way) where we read some wise books and write or talk about our prayers and blessings.

So yeah! Great idea for a thread!

btw, have any of you heard of/tried "Curriculum of Love"? I am curious about it as I've been trying to build up resources to promote peace/spirituality in our school and keep seeing the name come up but haven't heard any first-hand reviews.
 
#21 ·
Hi Aeress and all the Pagan mamas I've missed so much (I will go post in the spirituality forum, hopefully this afternoon).

I am feeling pulled towards homeschooling and yet I guess I am a little scared of the unknown...DH is worried about socialization of course but he is a pretty open guy - I'm the research one.

Anyways, having a 2.5 year old, I would LOVE information about pre-school/infant/toddler curriculum! I've been searching and doing what I can come up with.

*hugs to all*
 
#24 ·
My DH feels very strongly that science would need to be an integral part of the curriculum, and while I agree with him, how to do that while keeping the wonder of it all, e.g. the moon phases, what happens scientifically and spiritually? Any thoughts?
 
#26 ·
So what is the goal of a pagan curriculum?

I am personally more interested in presenting my children with information about a range of religious and spiritual beliefs than in raising them to believe what I believe. I'm not hearing anyone on this thread say anything different, though if anyone out there has a different point of view, I'd love to hear more about it.

It *is* important to me to raise my kids with a strong awareness of nature and ecology, and the spiritual and physical benefits of living "green" and being outdoors as much as possible.

From a scientific point of view, I'd say maybe that we evolved as a species on this earth and that awareness of and time spent with the rhythms and cycles of nature are essential to our well-being.

Quote:

Originally Posted by witchygrrl View Post
My DH feels very strongly that science would need to be an integral part of the curriculum, and while I agree with him, how to do that while keeping the wonder of it all, e.g. the moon phases, what happens scientifically and spiritually? Any thoughts?
I will be homeschooling my oldest for grade 7 -- first time homeschooling an older child.

I expect that we will be using a good secular science curriculum alongside some history-of-science-and-scientists material (if we need to supplement, if the main curriculum doesn't have this.)

I am personally interested in the religious/spiritual beliefs of important scientists, both past and present. And in the way religions and cultures of the present and past supported or hindered the work of science. Hope my daughter is too, and that we can link the secular science curriculum to the pagan /spiritual curriculum through this kind of study.
 
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