The Classical Preschool

Enquiry into Early Years Liberal Arts Education

Although I have been teaching homeschooled children since I was fourteen, I never had much experience with the “preschool” crowd. Give me a group of sixteen year olds any day. Teach Latin? Writing? High school Lit? No problem.

Give me one single preschooler (my own, as it happens)? Panic. Doubt. Death before arts and crafts. Lord please don’t make me have to use glue sticks.

But what I have is, in fact, a three (nearly four) year old. Who unfortunately needs to learn how to read before I can teach him Latin.

Being the way that I am, aided and abetted by my Liberal Arts degree, I am incapable of opening up a boxed curriculum and jumping in. I need to understand the philosophy of said curriculum, from whence it comes, and whether or not I agree with it. So when my oldest was born I launched into an inquiry into the broader philosophy of education, knowing that before I know it we will be caught up in the weeds of the day-to-day math and spelling lessons, and I will have less time to think about what to do because I will be busy doing it. My readings on education so far have ranged from Quintilian and St. Augustine to Charlotte Mason and Susan Wise Bauer, and into the present day with authors such as Ravi Scott Jain and Kevin Clark.

Whether you plan on homeschooling or not, every homemaker “homeschools” for the first 2,3,4,5 years. What on earth are we supposed to be doing with these chubby-fisted little wrigglers who can dialogue like Socrates and philosophize like Boethius, but couldn’t tell you the difference between an A and a W?

In the beginning I was tempted to long for the future days when we can get into “the interesting stuff.” After we’ve got the basics like phonics out of the way. But with every walk, lunchtime read-aloud, rock pool squelch, and trip to the zoo I can see a little more of the wonder of these years, and have become convinced that they are criminally under-appreciated, and absolutely critical to the education of a child.

Musings on the relationship between imagination and reason, the difference between memory and assimilation, lessons from ugly ducklings, and the merits of cows jumping over the moon are constantly tumbling over in my mind. Because I think better on-paper, I’d like to document my thoughts as I puzzle through what a classical, liberal education looks like in the pre-school years.

I will warn any reader that, while this is not my first home-education rodeo, it is my first as a parent, so all thoughts are prescribed cum grano. I can promise that I will always try to keep myself in the good company of the great minds and walk in well-tested paths of the centuries.