Homeschooling

What is the Orthodox stance on Homeschooling? If supportive does anyone know of a resource for a curriculum?

I've not had to research it yet as our little Anna is just 2+ mos old. But AFAIK there is no prohibition against it. I know Iacobus/Theodora (Anna's Godmother) homeschool, perhaps one of them will be by with details/resources. If we don't get a local Orthodox school up in the next 5 years we will be looking into it.

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Thanks Oblio. Our oldest is 4 and my wife and I are looking for a good curriculum. I have been pretty unfruitful so far on the web. I e-mailed our parish to see if anyone might know. I have the summer to figure it out I guess

Ahhh!!!!! We had a discussion about this on another Ortho-board a while back, and some VERY good resources came up. I'll see if I can dig that up.

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Would be much appreciated Moses.

I plan to homeschool our two children, but I have not found any comprehensive resources from an Orthodox perspective so I will probably use other Christian resources and try to integrate Orthodox studies into it.

Here is a website that has a few links:
www.theologic.com/links/Education/Homeschool/

Basil

Yep, we have homeschooled for about the last 6 or 7 years -- since our oldest (now a junior in college) finished the 7th grade. To my knowledge, there is no prohibition on homeschooling. We have run across a number of people who homeschool their kids.

Hopefully with time, there will be Orthodox materials developed. For our part, we relied heavily on a curriculum by a company called Sonlight Curriculum. They are at www.sonlightcurriculum.com. They are heavily literature based, which was perfect for our kids. There is reading, reading and more reading. For little kids, I think they design it so that books are read aloud to the kids. They have good lesson plans and we found the whole experience pretty good.

A warning -- Sonlight is expressly and heavily Protestant and missionary in its outlook. In fact, I believe it was originally developed so that missionaries overseas could homeschool their children. You will have to make some deletions and modifications to the program. Still, having said that, I would still recommend them.

Ironically, Sonlight was responsible for a whole slew of conversions to Orthodoxy several years ago. In their 8th grade program, they concentrate on Church history. One of their books used to be Father Peter Gillquist's "Becoming Orthodox". That was our first exposure to Orthodoxy, and I bet we've run across a dozen other families who converted after using that curriculum. I think that book is now optional.

Having said all that, if we were starting over again, I would look for an Orthodox school. Few and far between, but I think it is a developing movement. There is a network of such schools in Northeast Ohio. In the Atlanta area, my priest (ACROD) and Father Jacob at St. John the Wonderworker (OCA) have a school up and running at St. John. There is talk of a second school on the north side of town, and I have heard that the Serbs have a school on the east side. You may want to check in your area and see if anything is going on that way. I wish we had that option when the kids were younger. Talk about great exposure to the life of the Church!

If you have other questions, let me know.

James

Just a quick note for people who don't think they can homeschool because of work obligations or other reasons -- sometimes its possible to think outside the box and find a way. The first year we homeschooled, we still had our youngest in regular school, and my wife was working full time. We "office-schooled" my oldest that year. I found her a cubby hole at my office, and before long she was just one of the crowd with all the lawyers and support staff, who all kind of adopted her. She would do her work in the morning, and then she and I would have lunch together, and talk about her work. It was tons of fun, for her and for me.

So a lot of times, it is completely impractical, but don't just automatically write it off.

James

Just a note to add: I have looked into homeschooling also. It doesn't seem practical for us right now, but I do want to share that my priest and his wife homeschool their son. They use the Calvert curriculum. It was developed for the dependents of US government employees assigned abroad. They are quite happy with it. here's the info:
http://www.calvertschool.org/engine/...T_CODE=CES1512

Thank you all for the information it is very helpful.