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Tell a little about your family.
We are a family of six, living in a rural house outside a village of 600 in a fairly remote area in the southeastern interior mountains of BC Canada. Dh is a small-town family doc who covers the local ER 24/7 one week in two, as well as working 5 hours a day in the clinic and caring for 30 nursing home patients. I trained as a physician as well, but work only a half day a week, doing mostly well-woman care and adolescent sexual health care. I also trained as a violinist and teach Suzuki violin and viola a half day a week, run the local community orchestra and a number of local arts organizations including a large and increasingly well-known summer music school.
Erin (15) recently began attending school part-time, after being unschooled her whole life. The local K-12 public school welcomed her with open arms, on her terms, and she is doing an independent study program of accelerated learning that leaves her plenty of time for her outside interests (travel and music especially) while affording her a space away from home to work and a bit of willingly-adopted course-style structure. She plays violin and piano at advanced levels, sings in two choirs and is a passionate and capable writer of fiction.
Noah (12) is a computer geek who loves computer gaming, scripting / programming. He plays the viola and loves chamber music, having created a string quartet for himself about 2 years ago which he loves. He is also an increasingly committed choral singer, and sings in one adult choir as a boy soprano. Adults just love him -- he's shyly friendly, serious and has a sweet vulnerability that's more apparent than real.
Sophie (10) is our jack of all trades. She is a violinist, a self-taught pianist, and can sew, bake, knit, crochet, train animals, clean, tidy, build things, invent origami creations and is interested in just about anything. She studies aikido, a non-competitive "peaceful" martial art and really loves that, and has a good friend 30 minutes walk away who lives on a farm, and often spends the day there tending the animals and working in their garden.
Fiona (6) is cheerful, resilient, studious and the most outgoing of my kids. She plays violin and recently began studying piano and is the most advanced for her age of all my kids in music. She is also an aikido student and loves math of all kinds. She enjoys as many outside activities as we can pack into her week ... provided they are multi-age and multi-level and give her a challenge she can rise to.
What curriculums do you use?
Curriculum here is only at the request of the child. No curriculum is always fine. Typically the kids have some sort of math curriculum on the go that they're using somewhat regularly in a casual way, plus a few other things at their disposal that might get used, depending on their interests.
Fiona: Singapore Primary Math, Rosetta Stone Japanese, Hands-On Equations, Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting, Theory Time music theory workbooks.
Sophie: Art of Problem Solving Introduction to Algebra textbook, Rosetta Stone French, Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting, Theory Time music theory workbooks, L'Art de Lire French workbooks.
Noah: Mathpower 9 math textbook, Editor-in-Chief workbooks from Critical Thinking Press.
Erin: she gets enough curriculum at school -- all she has at home right now is a Music Harmony program by Glenn Sarnecki.
What kind of religious works do you use? Do you mind me asking if you are Jewish/Catholic/etc.?
I'm a Buddhist-leaning agnostic, dh is Christian-leaning agnostic. Kids are agnostic or atheists. We have a variety of religious studies resources available but don't teach religious beliefs per se.
What is your typical daily routine? weekly routine?
Other than getting Erin off to school when she wants and getting out to our scheduled outside activities, our daily routine just looks like life. Kids wake up when they're rested sometime between 8 and 10. During the mornings they play, help with the animals (chickens, cat, dog), fix themselves food, read, mess about on the computer. In the afternoons or evenings they'll practice their instruments, sometimes do some math, watch a video (we watch a lot of documentaries and other films).
Weekly our lives look like this:
Once a month our Thursday-Friday-Saturday is devoted to driving to the big city (9 hours away) for Noah and Erin to have their violin and viola lessons. We drive east on Thursday, they have about 3.5 hours total of lessons on Friday, and we swim and shop and socialize with friends, and then on Saturday we drive home.
Inevitably there are extra events and rehearsals that accumulate on top of that basic schedule ... weekend aikido seminars, choir tours, orchestra dress rehearsals and concerts, piano recitals, violin concerts, composition workshops, and so on. Especially in the spring there can be a lot of juggling.
How do you evaluate progress?
I don't. My kids don't enjoy feeling confused or incompetent. So if they're enjoying their learning and engaged in it, I assume they are mastering and retaining it. That assumption of mine has always been borne out. Rarely and voluntarily my kids have been subjected to standardized testing and they've always scored extremely well, confirming my instincts.
Do you have any special methods/tips for planning? household organization? storage? record keeping?
I am very disorganized. Like my kids I am inspiration-driven rather than being a planner. We strive to have a rhythm to our days rather than a routine or schedule, but even that doesn't really gel a lot of the time. However, it all seems to come out in the wash. Two things really help.
First, we have regular family meetings where we discuss the balance we're achieving, whether we're meeting everyone's needs, whether we're acting on our priorities in a way that is working. This seems to prevent us from sliding down slippery slopes or persisting in habits and tendencies that are getting in the way of what we want to be doing with our lives.
Second, we're part of an umbrella-school type program which demands a certian amount of reporting, and that helps me appreciate and validate the natural learning the kids engage in, while also providing a responsive child-centred model for organizing a learning approach. The program we're part of is run by an independent school which gets public funding.
Hope that helps get this spotlight started!
Miranda
We are a family of six, living in a rural house outside a village of 600 in a fairly remote area in the southeastern interior mountains of BC Canada. Dh is a small-town family doc who covers the local ER 24/7 one week in two, as well as working 5 hours a day in the clinic and caring for 30 nursing home patients. I trained as a physician as well, but work only a half day a week, doing mostly well-woman care and adolescent sexual health care. I also trained as a violinist and teach Suzuki violin and viola a half day a week, run the local community orchestra and a number of local arts organizations including a large and increasingly well-known summer music school.
Erin (15) recently began attending school part-time, after being unschooled her whole life. The local K-12 public school welcomed her with open arms, on her terms, and she is doing an independent study program of accelerated learning that leaves her plenty of time for her outside interests (travel and music especially) while affording her a space away from home to work and a bit of willingly-adopted course-style structure. She plays violin and piano at advanced levels, sings in two choirs and is a passionate and capable writer of fiction.
Noah (12) is a computer geek who loves computer gaming, scripting / programming. He plays the viola and loves chamber music, having created a string quartet for himself about 2 years ago which he loves. He is also an increasingly committed choral singer, and sings in one adult choir as a boy soprano. Adults just love him -- he's shyly friendly, serious and has a sweet vulnerability that's more apparent than real.
Sophie (10) is our jack of all trades. She is a violinist, a self-taught pianist, and can sew, bake, knit, crochet, train animals, clean, tidy, build things, invent origami creations and is interested in just about anything. She studies aikido, a non-competitive "peaceful" martial art and really loves that, and has a good friend 30 minutes walk away who lives on a farm, and often spends the day there tending the animals and working in their garden.
Fiona (6) is cheerful, resilient, studious and the most outgoing of my kids. She plays violin and recently began studying piano and is the most advanced for her age of all my kids in music. She is also an aikido student and loves math of all kinds. She enjoys as many outside activities as we can pack into her week ... provided they are multi-age and multi-level and give her a challenge she can rise to.
What curriculums do you use?
Curriculum here is only at the request of the child. No curriculum is always fine. Typically the kids have some sort of math curriculum on the go that they're using somewhat regularly in a casual way, plus a few other things at their disposal that might get used, depending on their interests.
Fiona: Singapore Primary Math, Rosetta Stone Japanese, Hands-On Equations, Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting, Theory Time music theory workbooks.
Sophie: Art of Problem Solving Introduction to Algebra textbook, Rosetta Stone French, Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting, Theory Time music theory workbooks, L'Art de Lire French workbooks.
Noah: Mathpower 9 math textbook, Editor-in-Chief workbooks from Critical Thinking Press.
Erin: she gets enough curriculum at school -- all she has at home right now is a Music Harmony program by Glenn Sarnecki.
What kind of religious works do you use? Do you mind me asking if you are Jewish/Catholic/etc.?
I'm a Buddhist-leaning agnostic, dh is Christian-leaning agnostic. Kids are agnostic or atheists. We have a variety of religious studies resources available but don't teach religious beliefs per se.
What is your typical daily routine? weekly routine?
Other than getting Erin off to school when she wants and getting out to our scheduled outside activities, our daily routine just looks like life. Kids wake up when they're rested sometime between 8 and 10. During the mornings they play, help with the animals (chickens, cat, dog), fix themselves food, read, mess about on the computer. In the afternoons or evenings they'll practice their instruments, sometimes do some math, watch a video (we watch a lot of documentaries and other films).
Weekly our lives look like this:
- Mondays - unstructured except Noah and Erin have choir in the evening
- Tuesdays - friends over in the morning, then at noon I take Erin and Fiona to the city (90 minutes away) for piano lessons, choir and grocery shopping, back in time for a late supper at 7
- Wednesdays - violin lessons for Fiona and Sophie in the morning, afternoon is unstructured, evening is either violin group class, chamber ensemble or community orchestra for all
- Thursdays - unstructured mornings, afternoons are aikido for Fiona and Sophie
- Fridays - unstructured days, evening is Noah's quartet rehearsal
- Saturdays - unstructured
- Sundays - aikido at mid-day
Once a month our Thursday-Friday-Saturday is devoted to driving to the big city (9 hours away) for Noah and Erin to have their violin and viola lessons. We drive east on Thursday, they have about 3.5 hours total of lessons on Friday, and we swim and shop and socialize with friends, and then on Saturday we drive home.
Inevitably there are extra events and rehearsals that accumulate on top of that basic schedule ... weekend aikido seminars, choir tours, orchestra dress rehearsals and concerts, piano recitals, violin concerts, composition workshops, and so on. Especially in the spring there can be a lot of juggling.
How do you evaluate progress?
I don't. My kids don't enjoy feeling confused or incompetent. So if they're enjoying their learning and engaged in it, I assume they are mastering and retaining it. That assumption of mine has always been borne out. Rarely and voluntarily my kids have been subjected to standardized testing and they've always scored extremely well, confirming my instincts.
Do you have any special methods/tips for planning? household organization? storage? record keeping?
I am very disorganized. Like my kids I am inspiration-driven rather than being a planner. We strive to have a rhythm to our days rather than a routine or schedule, but even that doesn't really gel a lot of the time. However, it all seems to come out in the wash. Two things really help.
First, we have regular family meetings where we discuss the balance we're achieving, whether we're meeting everyone's needs, whether we're acting on our priorities in a way that is working. This seems to prevent us from sliding down slippery slopes or persisting in habits and tendencies that are getting in the way of what we want to be doing with our lives.
Second, we're part of an umbrella-school type program which demands a certian amount of reporting, and that helps me appreciate and validate the natural learning the kids engage in, while also providing a responsive child-centred model for organizing a learning approach. The program we're part of is run by an independent school which gets public funding.
Hope that helps get this spotlight started!
Miranda
