Oh Lord, I'm reading again!

It has been so incredibly busy around here lately. We just put our house on the market and keeping it "show" clean is a full-time job in and of itself. With the 3 dogs and James..and a husband, I have been busy. We have had one Open House and an actual showing in the 3 weeks we've had it on the market. The showing went well and I have been praying for not necessarily for the house to sell but for the right timing of everything and a smooth...everything. Our sweet neighbor even gave us a St. Joseph to plant in the yard. I had never heard of this practice before.

 

And in addition to dealing with trying to sell our house, I have been doing some reading about Classical Conversations. I had considered using this method of educating James because it is a rigorous course of study and the children get together weekly for academic course studies as a group. There is a renewed interest in public education in the country for this kind of education. I have gone to the workshop about it at the NCHE conference last year and found it a little intimidating but I can see the value in this style of education. Then, while at work the other night, I was looking at the Hillsdale College website because I have heard radio advertisements about them. It is a small liberal arts college in Michigan that is an independent institution. They don't take a dime of federal money or state-funded subsidies. I was daydreaming about a second career in constitutional law or politics. Anyway.....I saw that Hillsdale College has "Hillsdale Academy" and a charter school. Cool, right? I checked out their recommended reading list and one of the books was about Classical Education: Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America by Gene Edward Veith, Jr. and Andrew Kern. It piqued my interest so I went over to Amazon to find out more. So now I have a book on Classical Conversations being shipped to me. I chose this one: 

The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at home by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Bauer 

This Susan Wise Bauer has written a plethora of books on the subject. She a a professionally trained teacher. I was able to read the first few pages of the book and I was hooked. She writes about her personal experience in teaching her young children to read and to LOVE reading when they were 4 years old. Once they started kindergarten, things went downhill. I can't wait to get it and start reading. I also ordered the 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum

Hopefully, I will be at a good place in my reading so that by the time I attend the NCHE conference in May I will be well-prepared to make some curriculum purchases. The book fair is amazing....and completely overwhelming for newbies. Soooooo many choices! And I will be attending workshops on Charlotte Mason and Classical Conversations. :)