"How was school today?"

 Most mothers and fathers, for the last century, have probably uttered those words to their children after a day at school.  Children would tell them who go into trouble, who was sick, what homework they had to do, how they did on their test.  I remember yapping away to my mother as soon as she would pick me up from school about everything from who was gonna be in the play to how much I hated writing my spelling words every day.  Never once was there ever a question about how I liked my curriculum.  If I enjoyed learning what I was learning.  If I wanted to learn something different.  Oh sure, I remember begging my mother to take me out of private school and put in the public school all my friends went to.  But the heart of learning, what I was learning, that was never discussed.  I doubt I was different from other children.

Its time for me to start thinking about next years curriculum.  I have some books already that I have picked up along the way.  But the majority of it I still need to decide on.  So I asked the kids "How do you like your curriculum?".  My oldest likes Abeka the best.  She says Spectrum has too many mistakes.  Even though Abeka has more reading and writing; she enjoys it more.  My youngest daughter also likes Abeka, but she likes spectrum for spelling.  My oldest son likes Abeka for history but likes Spectrum Science.  My 7 yr old hates all his school work.  There is not one thing he likes, except maybe a little bit of Spelling.  So now I have decisions to make.  And isn't that a wonderful thing?! I get to decide, along with my children, what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. 

My oldest only want to do Abeka.  My youngest daughter will probably have a mix.  My 2 oldest sons might just do something like SOS.  They want something different.  Especially my 7 yr old, who will be in 3rd grade come the fall.  I want him to enjoy his school work.  My 6 yr old and my 4 yr old (who will be 5 then) will likely be doing spectrum or some other easy work books for their core subjects.  So I could have 6 kids all doing different curriculum.  You couldn't do that in any school anywhere.  That's freedom right there. 

The people learning and the people teaching get to decide the curriculum.  That's awesome right there.