Gruta Family- What we love most about homeschooling...

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There we were discerning the schooling path for our family, starting with our then 4-year old daughter. Neither of us were homeschooled; in fact, I (the mother) went to public schools from kindergarten through college, while my husband had 16 years of nominal Catholic education under his belt.  We are good friends with a handful of homeschooling families and their testimonies were amazing, yet we doubted whether their wonderful experience could be ours. We prayerfully weighed our options for a full year before we finally took a leap of faith and began our homeschooling journey. We started lightly with a transitional kindergarten program to get our feet wet. When we completed the first year, both teacher and student found this homeschooling gig was actually doable! The second year came and went without too much difficulty. The third year presented the new challenge of teaching two students in different grade levels.  As each year brings its new trials it also brings forth new bonding moments – spending time together not just as teacher and students, but also as a mother and her children.  While our family circumstances are always changing, whether it be a new baby or another child getting older and becoming a student, we strive to take every year as what it is, a year.  In our four years so far of homeschooling our oldest two girls (second grade, and kindergarten), we have come up with something of a mission statement for our domestic school, located within the parish grounds of our domestic church.  There will be good days and bad days in homeschooling; when the bad days come, this mission statement acts as a reminder of why we chose this truly natural method of educating our children.

(Catholic) Homeschooling: An intentional method of educating children focused on the building of a deep foundation in the scholastic disciplines of Western civilization, with the aim of developing the whole person; informed, in particular, by the Catholic faith through the virtues of…

Faith

  • Transmitting the Catholic faith to our children so they can pass it on to their children and to their children’s children

  • Celebrating the faith along with learning and not separately; living as a disciple of Jesus Christ serves as the golden thread throughout the entire educational experience

  • Practicing the faith (e.g. going to daily mass, adoration, works of mercy, etc.)

Hope

  • Shaping of each child to grow up to be kind-hearted and well-rounded; always seeking out what is true, good, and beautiful

  • Providing them with a true liberal arts education in order to become critical thinkers, be prepared to pursue any field of study and thoroughly discern his or her vocation

  • Learning by the Classical Method

o   Trivium: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric

o   Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy and Music          

Love

  • Giving children educational opportunities that did not exist in our own educational experience

  • As our children’s primary educators, being involved in the learning process every step of the way

  • Sacrifice

We end with a quote by Saint Augustine:

“Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being.  Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric?  Think first about the foundations of humility.  The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.”

-Michael & Vhinice Gruta