Home Educating At Heart

I've decided I need to write more posts specifically about how I home educate.  It is one of the things I love most.  All my other posts still allude to home education because in our home education/learning are going on all the time in many ways.

The ability to recognize the snares of Babylon or allowing God to fight my battles are all crucial elements in the master class I teach everyday and every moment-parenting.  All of the elements I blog about I have found are vital components to the over all education of my children.

I think though that I want to write some posts about the day to day teaching of history and math though.  When and if I get into that it must be prefaced by restating my education model for you.

I know some people don't like pigeon-holeing themselves into a model or method.  I think a lot of people do not need to.  I don't think it is wrong though to have a method if you feel that is what you need to do.  My ultimate model and method is Jesus Christ and what He says for my family.  The scriptures and the prophets are my ultimate resource.  I read and study my scriptures and the living prophets for several hours every day.  I am constantly learning, growing, changing, pondering, and applying new things for each new day.  I believe that my mission of rearing my children in the last dispensation requires more out of me (and us) than parents have ever been called on to give.  I know that immersing myself daily in the Spirit is my way for success and conquest over Satan.

That being said I have adapted numerous methods and made them my own through the guidance of the Spirit. My overall outline still continues to be The Thomas Jefferson Education Model or TJEd.  I have been implementing TJEd principles in my family for over seven years and have seen success after success.  I have also found scriptures, scripture stories and other real life examples of this model played out repeatedly and I feel confidant that it is necessary for our family.  I have  added a good dose of Charlotte Mason and Headgate principles because I believe they match up with our overall mission and contain true principles.

I am so grateful that Heavenly Father allows us to have variety.  My brain works well with these principles. 

In the past I have sometimes started steering away from TJEd and have gone after other things.  However, I am quickly reminded that these principles are truth and God wants me to follow them. I know they contain the structure for education implementation and lifelong learning for my family.  The basic principles of TJEd include (Celeste might not come up with the same list, but that's what the list looks like to me):

1. Classics
2. Mentors (leaders, teachers, coaches...)
3. Personal Experiences
4. Personal discipline, established during Core Phase

Classics. I learn from great books just like the scriptures teach us we must. All of the truth contained in any book has it's origin in God-the source for ultimate truth.   Why don't I read just my scriptures then?  Just as I blog and share ideas, writers around the world also share their ideas about what they are learning.  These ideas further improve our lives as we judge them first to know if they are of God (Moroni 7) and then, when having passed the test, we take them and work with these new ideas in our own life. 

President Hinckley grew up with a great library in his own and studied under great teachers at college.  He said this about what he learned at college,

" I read Carlyle and Emerson, Milton and Longfellow, Shakespeare and all the others. And from there I went on to study Latin and Greek. I couldn’t do it now, but once I could have read you the Iliad and the Odyssey in the original Greek. I finished up my work at the university with a minor in ancient languages." See link here.

We also do it because we are commanded to seek out the best books.  I have studied hard and long about the concept of rejecting Greek Western thought in our lives.  I have researched it, pondered about it, and many more personal things in my quest to see if it is evil for me to study Shakespeare and Greek.  The answer has always been forceful-I must study Greek thought.  Perhaps this is unique to our family.  Our nation would not have been built had the Founding Fathers not studied in depth Greek thought.  President Hinckley was instructed and mentored in Greek thought.   Great people in the last several generatiosn have been great because of the classics. Am I different?

As I read classics and books that I feel impressed to read I see human nature at it's best and worst.  I see where my own misconceptions have been created and stemmed from.  I see where society has gotten his mixed up messages today.   I see clearly what happens when others follow truth and when they do not. 

To prepare to meet God requires that I learn how to think, how to be and how to live.  I get this from the Word of God and from wise men and women who have gone on before me and left their words. I am grateful for the scriptures and best books that bring home these powerful messages to me.

Mentors. I learn from my leaders and other great role models alive and past on.  Learning from someone is a powerful way to learn and grow.  I love reading biographies of great people.  I also enjoy talking with the elderly.  They have a lot to teach me.

Experience.  I take my knowledge and apply what I've learned that I may have my own experience in knowing good and evil.

Discipline. This concept is taught in TJEd as "core phase."  I learn to submit and to become a little children through the whisperings of the Spirit and to establish key habits that will keep me focused on God.  Through a strong foundation I gain my freedom.

Again, the TJEd model simply helps me clarify principles I already believe in.  I think many people don't need to read certain things and apply certain things outside the realm of the scriptures because they already do it and they don't need clarification.

I'm grateful for a model that makes sense to me.  I love to home educate and I love to learn personally.