Ken Nelson

My family homeschools. This year we’ve decided to try something called a Thomas Jefferson Education (http://www.tjed.org/). 

TJED follows these keys:

7 Keys of Great Teaching
There are seven principles of successful education. When they are applied, learning occurs for any learning style or interests. When they are ignored or rejected, the quantity and quality of education decreases.
keyinkeyhole2

    Classics, Not Textbooks
    Mentors, Not Professors
    Inspire, Not Require
    Structure Time, Not Content
    Simplicity, Not Complexity
    Quality, Not Conformity
    You, Not Them

I can tell you that my son is not digging the “classic” Uncle Tom’s Cabin… but decoding 18th century slave jargon must build something – character perhaps?

We’ve only been doing it about a week now, other than a short prep period, so the results are a bit early to decipher.  It has its plusses, a bit more social interaction than they’ve had in the past couple years, for instance.

And it’s cool that my son built a sextant and computed our latitude.

One drawback is that they meet on Thursdays. And I’d forgotten how “used” I’ve gotten to not having to factor our family schedule around pretty much anybody else.

I’ll update periodically on our experience with TJED.

My home schooled son has posted an essay from his home schooling on his site:

http://briankevinnelson.com/report-richard-henry-lee-60

He’d love feedback.

We have him write most days. Not every day yields a full essay, sometimes we focus on just strong parts – like active sentences, or a strong paragraph from a particular essay.

While there subscribe and be notified of future posts.

Use the new Periodic Table:

So why change it? According to Mohd Abubakr from Microsoft Research in Hyderabad, the table can be improved by arranging it in circular form. He says this gives a sense of the relative size of atoms–the closer to the centre, the smaller they are–something that is missing from the current form of the table. It preserves the periods and groups that make Mendeleev’s table so useful. And by placing hydrogen and helium near the centre, Abubakr says this solves the problem of whether to put hydrogen with the halogens or alkali metals and of whether to put helium in the 2nd group or with the inert gases.

or the old one…

Our new school

When we split our time between Utah and Vermont, we planned to home school. We decided, however, that the Montessori school our kids attended in St. George was probably better than we could do with kids of that age.

Our 12 year old son, Brian, entered public school this year because the Montessori stops at 6th grade.  He has attended a public 7th grade since mid August.  And it has largely been a waste of time. He spent the first couple weeks being  indoctrinated in the school and various class “rules”.  He won’t cover new areas in the classes we prioritize (English, Math, Science) for most of this year. In English, it might be two or three years til they reach what he has already done. 

Concerned over academic idling, time spent on material we wouldn’t prioritize (Home Economics, Channel 1, Keyboarding), and the general inconvenience of being tied to a bureaucracy’s rules and schedules, we’ve mulled home schooling for the last couple weeks.

Tonight we held a family meeting where we decided to home school Brian for the 7th grade. Jenny will continue in Montessori.

Utah law makes this relatively simple. Our school system also supports homeschoolers via testing services, allowing involvement with extra curricular activities and even attending classes on a case by case basis.

Thinking it over, I believe we started thinking this way on our RV trip this summer. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the flexibility to do this in the off season, we thought. And wouldn’t a trip to Europe be more comfortable and cheaper without the flood of summer tourists accompanying us?  We saw so many things we would like to go back and see or do that are only available Sept – Jun. 

So off we go. The nation, the world, as our class room.  I’ll report periodically.

Update: This KenNelson.com post WAY back in Jan forecast home schooling. Interestingly, I didn’t foresee curriculum problems.