Overview
An Old Fashioned Education is another free homeschooling option. The focus of this program is on teaching scripture and building character. There is a heavy focus on Religious Study using the Catholic Catechism, Hymns, and carefully selected reading material. A 40-week schedule is provided for every grade level from Kindergarten to 12th grade. The lesson plans are available online and most of the reading uses online sources from the public domain.
Reading
An Old Fashioned Education uses old-fashioned books that aren’t watered down or “dumbed down” like most educators believe today’s children’s books are. There is a heavy focus on scripture and character development, taught mostly through the Catechism, Hymns, and carefully chosen reading materials.
I do not know what her philosophy on teaching reading is, but you can find her Kindergarten curriculum here and her Preschool recommendation here. The Preschool curriculum is not one she created, but is a free preschool recommendation from her site. Because she uses the McGuffey Eclectic Primers, if I had to guess, I would guess that she uses sight words as her approach to reading.
This curriculum also uses books with expired copyrights to teach in their curriculum – books that are now in the public domain. A lot of the free options for homeschool curriculum do it this way because it keeps the cost of buying books down – all you need is a computer to access most of these materials for free online.
Homeschool Style
The creator of this curriculum does reference using “Living Books” as the main focus in choosing reading material, which is typically a Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling, rather than “Great Books,” which are used in a Classical style of homeschooling.
The reading expectations are very heavy in this curriculum, and History is taught chronologically; both of these characteristics would be more comparable to a Classical approach to homeschooling. There is also no reference to nature walks, oral narration, or short periods of study, which are more of a Charlotte Mason style approach. There is a heavy workload. I might even veer off enough to say that this could be considered a School-At-Home, or Traditional, approach to school.
The creator of this site does not claim a specific homeschool style for the curriculum. If I had to put it in a group, I would say it was a Classical approach, but teetering on the edge of being a School-At-Home approach to homeschooling.
Subjects
This curriculum includes instruction in 10 main subjects. Religious Study, Language Arts/English, Literature/Reading, and Mathematics are completed daily. Weekly subjects include History, Social Studies, Life Skills, Science, Character, and Electives. The mathematics and science suggestions are materials you should expect to buy, but the rest of the curriculum uses free resources online.
You can take a peek at her general year plan by grade level here. A 40-week schedule is provided for all grade levels from Kindergarten to Twelfth grade. She also has a link on her site to a recommended preschool curriculum.
Adapting to Fit Your Needs
I think this curriculum could be easily adapted to include less reading from the student, and many of the books could be read aloud to the student by the parent, instead. This would give your children the same great exposure to wonderful reading materials, but without overwhelming them. You could also choose to adapt the curriculum by cutting out some of the books entirely.
I also think if you were to group the History lessons together and teach all of your children the same material, instead of focusing on specific eras of history during specific grade levels, it could be more multi-student friendly. Because the materials are listed by grade level, however, you may have to do some research to find more variety of age-appropriate materials for your own children’s ages. You would have to sift through the suggested book selections and make that decision on your own.
Taking it Offline
If you do NOT want to do most of your reading online, you will be able to print the reading materials from the public domain. Because the copyright on these books is no longer active, these books are available to print and use in any way you’d like.
The downside is that this means you would need to print off all of your children’s reading selections ahead of time. You would need to take the prep time needed to find, sift through, and print these reading selections into consideration when you are doing your planning each week. By printing the materials, you could turn this into a completely offline curriculum, but doing so would take time, paper, and ink. She does offer suggestions for organizing your printed materials on her website.
You could also look for some of the books to buy, but since they are older texts they may be difficult to find. It is the same with getting them from the library – you will likely have a hard time finding the resources suggested for this curriculum if you don’t want to do your reading online.
If your concern is not having an actual computer, you can likely look up most of the books for free on a tablet as well and have your child read from that. We’ve also used e-book apps, such as Google Books or Kindle app, to read from my phone when needed. You’d be surprised at how many free options are really out there.
My Thoughts
My personal take on this curriculum would be that it would be a great option for those who don’t mind taking the extra time to really invest in their child’s education, especially Biblical teaching (which I believe should be a main focus in homeschooling). It seems to be extremely thorough, and I love all of the focus on scripture and character building. It could be a great option for children who are able to complete their work independently, and especially children who absolutely love reading.
That being said, this doesn’t look like a curriculum that is for the faint of heart. I wouldn’t suggest new homeschoolers attempting this curriculum, as I could see burn out being a major issue. I also wouldn’t recommend this program to homeschoolers with multiple children unless their children are older and highly independent so that they may be able to do most of the work themselves.
Getting Started
Getting started with this curriculum would start with placement. The creator of the website encourages you to look up some excerpts of books from the grade levels you’re considering to decide which level is best for each child. Once you’ve figured out which level to place your child in, you can go to the weekly schedule for the selected grade level to start looking at the lessons.
Links to the online books are provided at the left hand side of nearly every page of the website in menu form. The hardest part is figuring out which books are listed underneath which subjects – the website is a little difficult to navigate. Judging by the weekly schedules provided, I would guestimate that you should expect to spend some serious time homeschooling each day using this curriculum, especially if you have multiple children. I would plan accordingly, and then if it doesn’t take as long as expected, you can be delighted when you’ve finished more quickly than expected.
I think this curriculum would fit well with many peoples’ Christian values and could be adapted to be manageable by experienced homeschoolers. I do think burn-out should be a matter to take into serious consideration, however, if you are drawn to this option. As homeschoolers, most of us are in this for the long-haul – battling discouragement can be hard enough without difficult curriculum to bog us down.
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