Question:
Have you ever heard of a transitional home school curriculum? One that is designed to take a child who’s just out of traditional school setting and slowly or directs learning to get them in the place where the parents want them to go such as from Traditional to Classical, from Traditional to C. Mason Method, etc?
Actually, I have not heard of transitional homeschooling per se, but that should not be a surprise because homeschooling is growing at an amazing rate and new philosophies and methods are introduced and labeled every day. While I have not heard of the phrase transitional homeschooling, that does not mean I have not experienced transitional homeschooling myself. I actually have been through a transitional homeschooling period twice, but as far as I knew, it did not have a label or name.
Our first homeschooling transition happened when my kids moved from public school to homeschooling. We never went through a de-schooling period where homeschoolers take the time to de-stress from their public school experiences so they can start homeschooling fresh. Instead, we pretty much moved right into homeschooling, but we did it gradually and slowly. I began homeschooling the children using educational computer games over the summer and slowly moved towards an internet curriculum so that by the time it was officially time to start homeschooling, they had changed their idea of what learning involved.
As I mentioned in Knowing You have Found the Right Curriculum part one and part two, our second transition was from an online interactive computer based program to taking classes twice a week.
I do not necessarily believe that transitional homeschooling needs to be a purposeful planned step in the process of homeschooling, but a natural organic transformation as a part of a child’s overall life. If you are homeschooling your children and are worried about getting them to move their mindset from one kind of schooling to another, remember to always try to make the process as smooth and natural as possible.