If you don’t like workbooks, busywork and tests…we’ll get along great.
Hi! I’m Katie and I started homeschooling during the 2020-21 academic year just after COVID sent Wisconsin public school students home. I went from a mindset of “I would never” to “This is totally doable.” You’ve landed on a section of the site where I share my perspective on how to homeschool… err…roadschool in Southeast Wisconsin. I hope it inspires you to start or continue your journey!
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We're Eclectic
Our homeschool has evolved over the past five years and looks a lot more eclectic than it did when we started. Our foundation is literature-based with a historical spine. We lean on the core values of British educator, Charlotte Mason, while allowing ample room for interest-led pursuits.
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We Leverage Experiences
Like many home educators, I wasn’t trained as a teacher. My roots are in video production, live event production and experiential marketing. Operating through that lens, I realized I could leverage the same strategies that marketers use to create emotional connections to new information.
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We Library Hop
If you’re intrigued by the idea of road-schooling across the nation but it’s not in the cards for your family, it doesn’t have to be a hard stop. Library hop! We view libraries as visitor centers; our first destination on a local day trip. Pack your road snacks and learn how we make the most out of each visit.
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We Lean on Interests
Because we take the scenic route with year-round learning, our afternoons are dedicated to interest-led pursuits that would typically be classified as electives. We tinker with subscription boxes, play games and seek out community classes for further exploration.
Southeast Feast?
To understand the story behind Southeast Feast, let me introduce you to Charlotte Mason. Mason was a British educator that emphasized the importance of a broad curriculum, literature, and nature study. She was passionate about reforming the British educational system and advocated that a child is a person and educators must educate that whole person, not just his or her mind.
To that end, she urged parents to lay out an abundant feast of ideas and programs:
“Our business is to supply him with due abundance and variety and his to take what he needs. Urgency on our part annoys him. He resists forcible feeding and loathes predigested food” (A Philosophy of Education, p.109)
A mental roadblock that I had to overcome when we started homeschooling was how to provide this abundant feast. How could we compete with public school offerings? We don’t have the resources at home for things like fab labs, clubs, music, art, gym, debate, theater, etc.! And what about socialization? Enter library hopping.
Once we started visiting different libraries, we quickly realized the incredible infrastructure that was already in place…for free*! It’s so much more than books. It’s classes, homeschool meetups, library-of-things, instruments, crafting spaces, fab lab technologies and the list goes on.
So get out there…start exploring the 70 public libraries in Southeast Wisconsin and discover the incredible feast that awaits!
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*Your taxes are paying for it, so you might as well leverage it to your full advantage!
Thought starters from the blog.
Guiding Principles
Natural Approach
We learn by discovery, observation and emulation. In the professional realm knowledge is shared, adopted and often labeled a “best practice”. It’s how Ben Franklin taught himself to write and how some of the brightest minds in history taught themselves…at home.
Respect Perspectives
We regularly read and engage with authors who genuinely represent a diverse array of different groups and perspectives. This practice helps us actively listen, broaden our understanding of the world, and develop a deeper empathy for various viewpoints and experiences.
Narrate & Discuss
We ditch the worksheets, tests and most rote memorization. These tools are often used to measure multiple students. Instead, we practice narrating what we read about or discovered and discuss what was most interesting, boring or confusing.
Intentional Atmosphere
Since homeschooling , we’ve learned to understand the value of creating a home atmosphere (not a classroom) that encourages natural experiences with people and things. We’re not perfect but we try to be intentional about what we bring into the house (i.e. books, artwork, maps, music, etc.)
Opt Outside
As a faith-based family, we believe that God displays His glory and power for all people in the natural environment. We love exploring! “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.” Psalms 19:1-2
Learning Lifestyle
When adults set out to learn something new, sometimes they take an in-person class or workshop. But often, they watch videos, buy or listen to books and look for mentors to learn from. In other words…they homeschool. Our goal is to practice being lifelong, resourceful learners.
