Curriculum

Nature Deficit Disorder. I am well aware of this epidemic that has swept through our country in the past half a century leaving hundreds of thousands of medicated children in it's wake. I think this is one of the biggest fears I have of sending my kids to a traditional school and has also become one of my biggest concerns in choosing a curriculum for our homeschooling program. There isn't much prepackaged curriculum out there that isn't very straightforward and "sit around the kitchen table doing long division" kind of garbage. Yet I'm still not sure if I am prepared to make the leap into developing my own curriculum. I don't want to "school at home". If I wanted that I'd just find a really good private school where they'd get lots of attention and send them there. I want them to have MORE. So I guess my only choice is to create MORE.

I want to create an invisible school. A program that skillfully weaves together both the human made world with it's vast scientific technology and the natural imagination based world of childhood. I want something that entices us off the beaten path, to experiment with creative approaches, to do something different then whats generally being tried. Something that leaves us with a true sense of play and abandon, teasing us out of our usual routines to connect in an intimate and meaningful way with the natural world and our natural selves. Not unschooling but in some ways a similarly radical approach without textbooks or tests, something that engages our children with the learning potential in every adventure around them from the storybooks we read to the plants and animals in our own backyard.

I pray I can capture their curiosity, engage their natural god given gifts, and challenge them in ways that help them discover confidence in their own talents. I hope to appreciate and empower discovery of these gifts, and nurture their expression in every way. I want to raise them with a sense of respect, comfort, and kinship with the wilderness. Build something for them that straddles both worlds of traditional academic knowledge and the less traditional but much more instinctive natural world as they both offer such rich educational potential.

Can I do it? I hope and pray I can and I don't see why I couldn't. With the internet and a strong support network I have almost every academic resource I could need at my fingertips. I have done a great deal of research and have a good amount of personal experience in experiential "place based" education. My husband is a 21 year Army Green Beret so while I may be able to teach them some cool things like tricks for staying warm and interpreting bird language I'm sure he can fill in the blanks on all the skills I lack from animal tracking and land navigation, to true survival skills like edible and medicinal plants. I see many exciting and educational adventures in our family future.

As I write this I am becoming more and more confident that this is something we can successfully do as a family. Of course my kids are only 2 and 3 years old so I still have a few years before I need to nail down a curriculum...