Homeschool Fridays: Susan Wise Bauer

Before I go into any of our school subjects in any great detail, I feel that I must first describe our general philosophy about school. For the most part, it revolves around a woman named Susan Wise Bauer and her book, The Well Trained Mind. We use the classical approach she suggests. Describing the classical method here would take up at least one whole blog post. So, I will only talk about the most important parts. I highly recommend you read this article Susan Wise Bauer wrote about the classical method. It is long, but thorough.

After you have read that, you will have a much better idea about how we do things. Basically, we follow the four year cycle she suggests. I will describe the different subjects in more detail in the coming weeks, but here is a quick overview.

Since I only went to school for Kindergarten and 1st grade, most of my ideas about school are based off our homeschooling. One of those ideas is the priority that school subjects take. In our house, there has always been a hierarchy of subjects. At the top is History. History is by far the most important subject. Number two is Science. These are the two subjects that we do/did in the evening after Mom got home from work. Every other subject was done during the day.

After those two, English and Latin are the next most important. Math is just below those, and everything else is after that. I think that mentality is one that I would never have picked up if not for The Well Trained Mind.

Really, we have followed Susan Wise Bower's suggestions for pretty much everything. Mom is rather devoted to her, and loves all her books. There is not much more that I can say on this topic. Really, just read that article I linked to up at the top. It will all make sense then.