Question We wish to take our early teen child out of school and home educate him/her. Can we use the Robinson Curriculum? Both parents are working, one self employed. Our answer It will not be easy, but neither would it be impossible to start home educating a young teen, using the Robinson Curriculum, having taken him/her out of school at this late stage. However it is vital that you think it through carefully first. Ask some hard questions and give real answers:
RC requires a lot of self- discipline. Although we do not require it of a child initially, as s/he will need to be trained to be self disciplined if s/he has not already been so trained - and it will look different in the home-school setting to that of school anyway, we do need to be, ourselves, modelling it to the child every waking moment. Basically, RC requires the parent (at least one) to work in the same room as the child. It is not realistic to expect a child to work unwatched as the sinful heart cannot cope with that much responsibility, so young. Set:
It would not be economically necessary to buy the RC discs as the child is not starting from the beginning. But you can use the principles. After the basic principles, RC recommends these things which I highly recommend for good attitude and for encouraging a thinking mind:
I would never want to discourage anyone from home-educating, given the perverse nature of education in the schools at this time. However, teenagers are on their way to becoming young adults and if they are not whole heartedly behind the idea, there will likely be more resistance, when they cannot see their friends so often and need to be alone much more. These things are so much easier when the child has been trained to them for the very start of life. But never under-estimate prayer, and always seek God's will for you as a family. Sometimes life calls for us to be tough, for the good of our child in the battle for his/her soul. We need to bring up our children on our knees in much prayer for wisdom, guidance and strength.
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'Teach your children to teach themselves and to acquire superior knowledge as did many of America's most outstanding citizens in the days before socialism in education.
Give children access to a good study environment and the best books in the English language and then get out of their way! Academic knowledge is in books. Each child must learn to extract and use that knowledge to the greatest extent that his or her abilities permit. This curriculum enables the student to learn these skills with very little teacher help, and it provides the student with 120,000 pages of knowledge from the greatest science, history, literature, economics, reference, and general education books in the English language.' From the Robinson curriculum website
Read our home-educating story here.
Overview of the Robinson curriculum
The Robinson Curriculum is basically a self-teaching curriculum for ages 5 to 18. It is very simple: 2 hours maths, 2 hours reading and 1 hours writing daily. It says that it is successful - and in our opinion it is - VERY!
Its beauty and its success can be laid at the door of its simplicity. Simple to implement as you haven't got to spend hours preparing lessons. Simple as it doesn't take all day - a morning's work and you are through studies. Too simple to be true? Then read on! What I liked about the Robinson curriculum
Friends introduced us to the Robinson curriculum after I suffered burn-out trying to replicate school at home. Internet access was still by dial up broadband in those days and we only used it briefly, but I managed to find the website and started to read. It was completely different to anything I'd ever heard, but I liked:
So we started. No TV - No sugar!!
Dr. Robinson advices users of his currciulum not to have a TV in the house. I think these days he would add computer games and other such distractions. He has good reasons!
'Television wastes time, promotes passive, vicarious brain development rather than active thought, and is a source of pernicious social contamination.' Dr. Robinson
This was not a problem for us as we had already decided not to have one in the house while the children were growing up - and probably never.
Sugar is not just a threat to the teeth. It has subtle and undesirable effects upon mental attitude and performance.
Dr. Robinson
No sugar was a bit more challenging as we are addicted to it, but we started reducing it. We never gave out sweets to the boys, except on Sundays after lunch, when they were rationed to 4 each but we did like our puddings and biscuits!! We have now after 14 years eliminated all but a little honey used sparingly as we adopted the GAPS diet for various reasons.
Is the Robinson Curriculum an easy option?
I won't deceive you into thinking it was easy. No curriculum is going to take away the daily struggles and feelings of wondering if you are doing anything right, along with encouraging ones children to do the work set. They come primarily from being a parent and secondly with home-educating. We felt our way through, which is what we are still doing, though with little more confidence now than we had in those early days.
I soon found that this curriculum was very demanding and expected high things of my children in their few short hours of schooling each day - right from the start. It certainly set the tone for our home-school. Learning was serious business. Here is an excert, for example, of a page from a book that is for the child who has just started reading for him/herself. In fact it is Number 4 on the Robinson booklist, following 'Nursery Rhymes'. This is high expectations!!!
The life of George Washington by Jospehine Pollard
Parents are often astonished by the remarkable progress of their children.
From the RC website Maths and the Robinson Currciulum
The curriculum expects children to learn their number flashcards through to 12 times 12, preferably by age 7 for all four operations (yes this curriculum has high standards from the start, remember!) before moving stright into Saxon 54 (for 9/10 year olds) at age 7. Robinson says that we should teach children to work hard from the start and remove the crutches of 'fun' workbooks. He advocated just using flashcards and manipulatives. Ideally the child would work at the flashcards by him/herself as much as possible - he outlines how to do this,
We did spend ages 5-7 learning flashcards as the RC curriculum suggests, but I did break the rules of nothing else and used Christian Liberty Press work books K and A, which gave them practice at writing numbers and doing sums in books. It was not entertaining, but gave light relief from the drill. These books also helped them overcome tens and units and other basic skills, before they met them again in Saxon 5/4, which was especially helpful for my eldest who had a speech delay, and although progress in 5/4 was slow, I think it definitely helped them cope better. We spent a long time practically learning tens and units: bundling up sticks into tens, or bricks. for example I'd give them 23 bricks. We'd make as many towers of ten as we could and see how many were left over. 2 lots of ten and 3 left over = 23, until they could see what was happening. I also made extensive use of the times test sheets in 5/4 for number bonds and didn't let them start 5/4 until they could do them in 5 minutes or less. We also did a lot of counting (everywhere) and cooking with weighing and measuring, helping to do DIY with more measuring etc.. in those early years. This was rigorous maths - but they both managed to learn all the bonds by at least age 7, despite my eldest still struggling to speak at that age! Once they started Saxon, Mr Robinson said they should do their maths by themselves with little help from me. Maybe that worked for his children but we struggled along. I never gave up on the aim, but reality meant that mostly in their Primary years, I would have to help a bit at least and often a lot! I had to be ready to get the practical bits out to help Son 1 especially, but also Son 2, sometimes, when his turn came to grasp the concepts. They would work by themselves, with me in the room and then we would go through it together to mark and correct. I only really let them have some responsibility for marking in the late teens as I found the temptation to cheat too strong, and it was too easy for me to take a back seat and not check! Very often we were only doing a third of a lesson a day, so progress was slow, especially through book 5/4. …with some teacher help in learning phonics and understanding arithmetic, the student is ready for self-teaching.
Robinson advocates teaching reading and spelling with a good phonic programme.
I used phonics for both reading and spelling. I could never let them just learn spelling from copy work and reading as suggested. I knew they would need a good phonic programme to thoroughly ground them in both reading and spelling. I used my own reading programme which teaches spelling as well. We did use the Peter and Jane Ladybird reading scheme as I had not yet written my own phonic reading books. My first son finished all 12 levels by age 6 and a half and could read way better than he could speak. The second son by age 4 and three quarters. It is not a phonetic scheme, but having ensured they were having a good phonic foundation, we looked at each new word phonetically as we read through. The beauty of this scheme is the constant repetition which builds confidence. Robinson advocates the use of the McGuffey readers for their rich moral and biblical content. I personally had no experience of these when I started Robinson and they didn't fit my way of teaching phonics, but I now see their value for copy work at least. Reading is the bedrock of all other learning. Reading must become both easy and enjoyable and a phonic system is the only way to achieve both. This curriculum as we have already seen, demands a high level of reading ability.
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Writing - The simplicity of copywork
Handwriting
We also used Getty and Dubay, a structured handwriting programme once I'd got them going. We only did a few books in the series and found they were enough. Alongside all of this, we did copy work and I know that it helped to cement what they had learnt in the programmes, so it was certainly valuable and it actually allowed them time and space to concentrate on the spelling and handwriting before having to compose at the same time.
Writing is a complicated business with a lot to think about all at the same time. Spelling, handwriting, grammar and punctuation as well as composing good writing. Many are destroyed along the way, especially in schools, where they are expected to be writers from the word go and not given the tools to do it well. I am very thankful to Robinson that both of my children LOVE writing!
Copywork was good for both of them despite their different styles of learning and abilities.
We didn't just do copy work: they often wrote letters to friends/relatives instead of copywork some days.
We would also add in a little 'project work' on a Friday. We really enjoyed these days! It gave our copy work/writing a purpose and linked it to other subjects, without 'teaching' these other subjects. So a visit to a wildlife sanctuary was a chance for us to take an animal each, research it, and write about it - either through copy work or own writing. Then we made a book of our work, with photos from our visit. Other times it was a special holiday we had been on, other times we pretended we were a character in the swallows and Amazon books and wrote postcards from our destination, planned camping trips with maps etc... At one time we did Geography based projects. Son 1 explored the effects of HS2 on communities in the UK - asking other Home school families to fill in a questionnaire for him to base his study on. Son 2 did a project on a local river. Again, fun days, with excuses for trips out!
Daily essays
Like most learning, it was often one step forward and then what seemed two back. I was constantly having to say 'What do they need to help them move on?' Which book next to read? How best to approach writing, especially as they came to the essay writing years and I knew I needed help. Now it's 'Should we do GCSE's' and what next, so the questions don't stop, but we press on.
The Robinson Curriculum is a self teaching curriculum. Does this work?
Do you have to follow the Robinson Curriculum exactly to get good results?
We added in music lessons - at one time a whole day per week was spent with a retired deputy head-teacher who was also a choir master. He lovingly taught them to sing hymns and accompanied them on the piano (which he made into CD's for them to hand out) and then they would listen to classical music together. He has now passed away, but he was a very godly influence on them for which we are very thankful. We now only do piano lessons. Grandpa teaches us Greek. Son 2 adds in Apologia Science, Latin and Welsh - both of which he self-teaches.
Do you have to do the Robinson Curriculum six days a week as stated?
We always had realistic amounts of work set for each day and they were expected to do it. In that we were firm. I liked the idea of the reading time being 10 minutes for every school grade and so that has increased year on year. Maths was pretty much 2 hours (with breaks) for Son 1 once he started Saxon at age 7, as he takes a while to process information and had a tendency to day dream (which he has grown out of) and needed lots of breaks. Son 2 rarely takes more than an hour if that.
When they were little, we started work at 9am after morning chores. Dad does 'Bible time' before he goes to work at 7 am.
We would start with maths and work through the flashcards and a page of their maths book. Then we would have a break, before doing literacy. When they were 3-4, this was just working on phonics and handwriting practice. As they started to spell, then the spelling took a few minutes each day, then some days it was copy work, others handwriting and we would finish the morning with reading. One would look at books by themselves quietly, while one read to me and then they would swap. This kept a working atmosphere while I was concentrating on them individually.
Our afternoons were free.
Junior days usually took 9am though 12pm, and then as the reading increased, we have gradually worked up to 5 hours.
Son 1 (17) now works 8am through until 1 for lunch, then piano 1.30 to 2pm. Son 2 (14) works 8 am to 1. Then he is finished.
What about other subjects?
The key is to balance the reading list to reflect different subject areas. If I felt an area was lacking I would slip in a book on that subject. When they reached 13, I did buy them the Apologia Science book 'Exploring Creation with Physical Science' which they read independently for reading and we did spend some days doing experiments and wrote them up for writing that day. Again, like the projects, these were relaxed, fun sessions. Son 2 now does the Apologia Biology course as part of his reading.
What about sports?
Robinson is more than a curriculum. It is a way of life.
However I see now the fruit of the curriculum. They want to work! They don't seek entertainment. They enjoy working!
To that end we encourage them as far as we can in their chosen interests: Son 1 Transport - especially trains; Son 2, birds. We get them a subscription to the best magazines, buy them the best books on the subject and their pleasure time is spent studying, but they think it's play! We never palmed them off to Sunday school either while we stayed in the 'sermon'. They stayed too and were taught to sit quietly and join in singing and Bible reading as soon as they could read. Now they see themselves as part of the church - not just the 'Youth', expecting an entertaining service.
So back to the 'Is it easy?' No! It's self-teaching, but not 'Go get on with it yourself.' It's the parents taking the initiative, quietly encouraging, disciplining where necessary to keep that work ethos through school time. Then organising nice 'school outings' to fun places (not entertaining!) - wildlife walks, train rides to interesting places, friends to visit, us being with them, not casting them off to be entertained while we do the serious stuff.
So far we are very pleased with the results of RC. I didn't see it's full potential when we started out, but now whole heartedly agree with Dr. Robinsons outlook. It is an excellent education. How far it is removed from a State education!
Welcome!
After studying for an Early Years Specialism degree (B.Ed. Hons), and teaching in mainstream education, I home-educated my own children, after my husband and I were persuaded of the need to take responsibility for bringing up our children 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.' (Ephesians 6:4)
Our children are now grown and I help home-educating parents teach reading and writing, especially to those with special needs. Please contact me if you think I might be able to help you.
In addition I help my son to write the Nature Observations magazines and helping Chris Eastwood with her FREE Christian Home Education daily lessons.
This costs the purchaser nothing extra.
In this way I can continue to provide free resources.
Thank you for your support.
Here's one I heartlily reccomend for ages 10 +.
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