Homeschooling with a Friend

Central IA LDS Home School Support Group

Using LDS Church Materials for Homeschooling Curriculum

Welcome!

Hi. Let me tell you about myself. I'm Debbie H. and I have six kids, a girl, and five boys.  The five oldest are homeschooled.  I've been homeschooling for 11 years and I love it.  We have done just about every approach to homeschooling, changing around as assessment circumstances have changed. We live in Iowa and how you homeschool depends somewhat on what method of assessment you are doing. In years past, we worked with the district, but this year we are working with a supervising teacher  so we now have more freedom.  To me, the Charlotte Mason approach is the best, and this year I have the support to do it.  As an LDS homeschooling Mom, I am using as much of the resources of the Church I can in our homeschool.  The Charlotte Mason approach focuses on developing nobility in our children and what better way to put the best ideas in our minds of our children than by using the literature of the Restoration?

Church Magazines

How to Develop a Curriculum Using the Friend Magazine

How to Make a Study Notebook of New Era Articles

Schedule

My Booklist

My CPI Information

What does the LDS Church Say about Homeschooling?

School of Abraham

Do a search for the exact wording on the church's position.  It is readily available, but here it is in summary.. The church is neutral and considers the education decision to be the parent's decision.  "The Church encourages the use of Church materials by families in the instruction of the families."

Project Gutenberg

The Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators

Iowans Dedicated to Educational Alternatives

More About our Appraoch

About Brilliant Men and the Best Classics

Charlotte Mason said it is a parent's responsibility to make sure that bad ideas are kept out of our children's minds and make sure the best ideas are put in.  I kept this in mind as I generated a long list of books that I wanted to include in our school.  While doing so, I kept realizing over and over again that the journals, and literature which sprung from the Mormon Experience had the best quality of literature I could find.  There isn't enough time to include all of the books on the lists suggested by other Charlotte Mason educators, and the wonderful writings that have come from the people of our church.  I had to find a way to narrow things down.  Our General Authorities, especially the older ones, often quote from classic works, and realizing this, I decided to study up on their lives to see if I could find out what they read.  In doing so, I found that Joseph Fielding Smith learned his history from the early church publications.  Hmmm....  I decided to spend some time searching the Improvement Era and the Millenial star.  And then I went into the archives of our own magazines, the Friend, and New Era.  I went back to the 70's when they were started, and what I found was a wealth of excellent literature that covered all subjects.  From the church magazines, I printed off articles for my kids to read and put them in notebooks.  My links, found on this page, will lead you to the detailed information on how I accomplished this.  I believe using church resources for our literature coupled with a few good classics is the best "twaddle free" education there is.

The Website of Iowa's Home Education Pioneer

Since I'm homeschooling boys, educating them to be brilliant men is of interest to me.  So I did some studying to find out what some of the brilliant men I know learned from when they were little guys. I wanted to know how much time they spent on Homer and Shakespeare.  What were the books that shaped their lives the most?   First, was Abraham Lincoln.  He says he went to ABC school for a year, and then he studied some English grammar, and then mastered the six volumes of Euclid. His formal education amounted to "no more than 12 months".  Joseph Fielding Smith read Catechsim for Children by John Jacques and "Primary Books" and learned history from the Millenial Star.  Benjamin Franklin read Pilgrim's Progress, Burton's Historical Collections, DeFoe's Essays on Projects, and Mather's Essays to do Good, John Taylor read Pilgrim's Progress. President Benson read Pilgrim's Progress, the biographies of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. He also read  Little Visits with Great Americans by Marden, What Men Live By by Leo Tolstoy, and books by Horatio Alger  None of these men had access to large libraries, or Amazon.com, or homeschool swaps.  I don't think they had time to read all of the Shakespeare or Homer, if at all, but what they did read prepared them well to be great leaders, and of course, they all read scriptures as their primary source of knowledge.

Introduction to Charlotte Mason

The Charlotte Mason Series

Questions or comments? email at uintadreams@msn.com

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