Donna’s Curriculum – Living on a Goat Farm

Donna’s family lived on a goat farm. She had a pragmatic approach to schooling and was very adept at taking from school and from homeschooling what worked best for her family. Schooling at home gave the children the opportunity to build feed racks, things for the garden, and various pens and gates. They helped take care of the animals. Scott raised turkeys and Jake helped with selling livestock. They even made soap. These experiences weren’t found in a traditional curriculum.

I asked Donna why she homeschools because she also sent her children to local schools. She explained, “Quality I guess would be my biggest thing. At home they have access to better materials and also get to be involved in things that they actually would want to do. In school, there is so much dead time for them while they wait for other people to learn things." When a class full of children have to complete the requisite curriculum, everyone assimilates skills and knowledge at different rates, and when everyone must absorb everything, many children will have to wait around.

Donna was not an unschooler and neither did she buy curricula, “We’re definitely not unschooling. We do use, but we don’t buy a curriculum.” She used many books, workbooks, and textbooks as well as live classes and online classes for her kids. She paid for some but found many offered for free. For example, she borrowed and used books from the school district the first two years she homeschooled. She used them as a jumping off point:

We did complete them but…let’s say if you’re reading about history and there’s this particular figure in history, maybe you want to read a biography about that person."

Donna kept a pretty tight rein on their learning but was also flexible:

For the little guys I obviously pick their materials. They have a spelling book that I choose. They have a math book that I choose. If they do like an online game for learning I would choose that. I require them all to play piano, but beyond piano, if they want to play another instrument, they can. Freya chose violin. If one of the little ones shows a particular aptitude for something, I definitely would encourage it. Scott's got a turkey project right now. He’s raising turkeys. That’s his project.

Also, when you’re learning at home it was easier to move at your own pace and according to your own needs. One child learned math on her own using Khan Academy, and only searched out Donna if she needed help.

To augment their writing curriculum Donna encouraged them to participate in a contest held at a local library. You wrote a story and entered it and the winner’s story was turned into a book, entered into the card catalog, and the author got a certificate and lots of attention:

We like our contests. Over the years contests have served us well. I always did those book contests because I wanted the kids to think of themselves as writers. And if they did a book contest and their book was hardbound in the library in the card catalog and they had a little certificate and they went to an awards ceremony, it was official, they were good at writing! I just loved that opportunity for them to really think of themselves as being good at writing.

Amelia, Jake, and Freya all wrote stories or poems and won this contest. Jake wrote a book about programming Python for sixth graders as well as a book on the history of Linux and the Linux operating system. He explained what it was about, “How to run Linux on your laptop and run your other operating system at the same time” (I’m sure you all understand this as well as I do. We should read his book). The library created a non-fiction category for the contest and Jake won first place two years running.

As Donna’s children grew older and approached college, heading them in the right direction was important:

We have to cover all the subjects. Then if they have an intense interest in a particular area we follow that. As they mature the key is to figure out what they are really into and what they are good at and find them opportunities in that area.

One year, Jake built a desktop and worked on other laptops:

I take the older computers add a Windows 2005, that’s the first edition that had WIFI, and all you have to do is install a Linux operating system onto it. I think I have two or three laptops now that I’ve converted to run Linux.

He worked at a grist mill and ran the the online accounting aspect of their family goat business which helped him buy the parts he needed for his computers. None of this was part of a traditional curriculum you would find in school.

Photo by L ley on Unsplash