I love fresh starts and new beginnings, a clean piece of paper, a new book, or a brand new day. My favorite "beginning",though, is the start of the school year. As I write, we are on break before we begin our tenth year of home schooling. Though I should feel like a veteran, I feel some rookie jitters, for our oldest starts high school, and our youngest starts kindergarten. Yikes!

The Wheeler family includes John, a schoolteacher by profession who moonlights as a home educator, laundry folding expert, and general great guy. Our children are Madelaine (14), Zachary (13), Rex (11), Claire (8), and Brennan (5). As for me, Diane, I supervise the educational dayshift, and enjoy being daughter to my mother, Jean, who lives in our granny flat. Add chickens, cats, rabbits, and a dog, and you have met our family here in Placerville, California.

When John and I got married, we lived near two homeschool families. We spent hours visiting them, raiding their bookshelves, and asking questions. We read the Moores, Susan Macaulay's For The Children's Sake, and Edith Schaeffer's What Is A Family? These books, and our dear friends, helped us prepare for raising and teaching our children.  

We used many of Charlotte Mason's ideas in our first years, enjoying the rich variety of living books and nature and art studies. Eventually, though, we found we were lacking structure, and we knew we needed something a little different. A friend recommended The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer, so I ordered the book and found what I was looking for. I love the classical model that is explained throughout the book, and the opportunity to tailor it to what works best for us. We needed a system that allowed for both rigor and flexibility. We don't do subjects at a certain hour each day, other than outside lessons or online tutorials; instead we work through lists. My mother is a huge help to us, but we also make sure she is well cared for; we are happy to be flexible with her needs. Therefore, we school year round, taking breaks throughout the year. This also allows us to work the garden, visit friends, or take a family trip. Of course, our free time is filled with reading, music, exercise, art, and other things that could be called school. There might be binoculars in the car for bird watching, skeins of yarn for a crochet project, piles of books or books on tape, or baseball statistics being written up in a binder. I have never caught anyone doing math flash cards on their own time, but some things feel more like school than others. 

John's summer schedule is usually lighter so he helps us finish our school year. Everyone looks forward to working with him on history newsletters, made fancy on the computer. I am grateful for John's help, as I have a terrible time finishing a history year. He pulls me out as I cry, "We haven't finished it all yet!" The Well-Trained Mind helps, too, with their recommended four-year cycles of history. I can rest in the fact that we will be back, to fill in the cracks, in three more years. John also works on writing skills and Latin throughout the year, reads our evening read-aloud and is active in Boy Scouts with Zack and Rex. We are definitely a team. 

One of our favorite resources for history is The Story of the World by Susan Bauer. We loved the ancients and we are eagerly headed toward the Middle Ages. Madelaine will add Wes Callihan's Great Books tutorial and The Gileskirk Curriculum by George Grant for high school history. We love Memoria Press' Latina Christiana for beginning Latin, and their Traditional Logic by Martin Cothran. Our math favorites are Math-U-See and Videotext Algebra. For writing we have been happy with Wordsmith, and, in addition, we have used Cindy Marsch's Writing Assessment Services at www.writingassessment.com. For phonics and early language arts we have been grateful for the simple, easy-to-use and affordable Phonics Pathways by Dolores Hiskes and First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise. My friend Barry Stebbing's classes and his How Great Thou Art curriculum have given us the courage to be artists.  

It is important to us that our children see us learning. We try to stay sharp by listening to Ken Myers on Mars Hill Audio Journal and by reading piles of books and Touchstone Magazine. Our children now join in on the dinner conversations and the late night ramblings about culture and Christianity; we love it.   

My greatest strength as a home educating mother, I believe, is that I know my limits; they don't call me "Boundary Queen" for nothing. This has forced me to do a few things well, and to train my children to be self-motivated. Time for reading or working in my art journal rejuvenates me, and I take that time when it is needed. Each day can feel like a never-ending challenge, but it is one I never regret accepting. This new school year, complete with those rookie jitters, looks like the best of new beginnings. I can hardly wait.