Book: The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education

This is NOT a giveaway hor!

Also a recommendation from a learned mummy (I am so fortunate to know so many knowledgable mummies!). Very thick (800+ pages!), hardcover book. But luckily I can skip quite a lot of it cos it's divided into different school levels - Kindergarten through fourth grade, Fifth grade through eighth grade, and Ninth grade through twelfth grade. I have only read the prologue, the kindergarten part and the last part on How to educate your child at home, which is more of the practicalities.

It is quite a detailed book as it has separate chapters for each subject for each level, with recommended books and how-tos. But most of it is still too advanced for Jiale (and me!), so I shall do a very brief review based on what I gathered.

The main insight I gained from this book was to read, read, read. The author, who homeschooled her three children, advocates exposing the child to many genres of books and for him to read a lot. The classical method also seems to include a lot of memorising, because 'memorising, organization and expression... the tools by which the mind learns.' But urmm, Jiale is only 2+ and I definitely won't worry about memorising anything for now. (But yes, the tiger mum in me has no qualms about making him memorize. 'Tiger' not because I die die want him to get good results. 'Tiger' as in if mummy says so, you better do it. No idea yet whether I will think it's necessary to make him memorize things. See how.)

So, as part of the homelearning I do with Jiale, books is the main focus. No worksheets, no activity sheets etc. It's books + field trips + hands-on stuff. (shall blog on that when I am free)

Anyway, this is quite a good book especially if you intend to do proper all-out homeschooling with your child. I gotta keep this book cos, who knows, I might end up homeschooling the boys even for primary school!