elevating homeschool

To be honest, even though we've homeschooled for two years now, when I hear the word I still envision frumpy moms in long denim dresses and a million (weird, unsocialized) kids running around with too-short pants. That's not at all what I want our homeschool to be like! And probably an unfair generalization, sorry.

In order to elevate our homeschool and our days, there are a few things we have incorporated and plan to incorporate.

We belong to a Christian homeschool co-op program called Classical Conversations. There's so much information on their website which can explain the concept much better than I can, but basically, we go to "class" once a week for 24 weeks throughout the year, learn things there, and expound on those at home plus learn other things throughout the week. It's classical education, done at home.

Baby also takes piano lessons. I love for our home to be filled with music, and I think it's important for him to learn at least one instrument. Piano is our starting point.

We study fine arts at home. Going along with our Classical Conversations curriculum, we study one artist and one composer at a time. When we begin a new artist, I will set one of their pieces of work as the background on my computer. I will have baby study it for one minute, then turn around and tell me as much as he can remember about the piece. Throughout the week we will review the names of the artist and composer. At the beginning of every week, I will set a new piece of work as my background, and have him study and recall. For our composer, we simply listen to a playlist of his work in the background while we play and do schoolwork. This is a super easy and not at all time consuming way to include fine arts in our studies.

Jake is beginning to teach baby how to play tennis. Any sport you play at a country club feels fancy to me, so that's why I've included it in this list :)

And finally, I can't wait to take baby to cotillion classes! They don't begin until 5th grade in our area, so we have a few years, but I want him to learn manners and etiquette, in an environment where he will be encouraged to learn those things. I can try and try until I'm blue in the face, but as all parents know, there are some things your kids just tune out until someone else teaches them.

So these are the ways we elevate our homeschool. They also happen to help make sure baby isn't a "weird, unsocialized" homeschooler.

Do you homeschool? What do you involve your kids in? Do you prefer finer things, or is your family more casual?