Homeschool Ideas for Pagans

At some point in every Pagan parent's life we consider homeschooling our children. I myself studied on the idea a long time before I actually put it all together and set out to do it. One of the most daunting hurdles I had to overcome in setting up a Pagan homeschool environment was surprising to me. It was a lack of Pagan curriculum. I had assumed that the hardest part of homeschooling would be keeping my daughter interested, managing time or doing paperwork to comply with the board of education, but no, when it came right down to it, I was defeated in setting up a homeschool by a lack of decent pagan appropriate curriculum. I had simply not expected that the majority of homeschool resources I would be able to find would be solely geared toward a fundamentalist Christian audience. So I had to improvise, and in doing so I learned a great deal about teaching homeschool and I believe I made the experience far more enjoyable for my daughter and myself. Here are a few ideas for creating your own Pagan homeschool curriculum, by subject, that works at any age.

Reading , Literature, English : Reading is the easiest area in which to incorporate Pagan belief into your homeschool curriculum . We began with the Mabinogion for at home reading when my daughter was still in grade school before we even began homeschool. I read over the stories and picked out ones that I thought we could use for homeschool purposes. Then , we used them for read aloud time and rewrote them in story book form with illustrations. Similar use could be made of the book for any age group. Have older children do some vocabulary words, or write essays on the topics in the stories, have them analyze the stories, write them as screen plays or use the sentences for diagrams. A little creativity can go a very long way!

Science: Science is a realm also uniquely suited to Pagan flavoring. When studying astronomy create some curriculum about the history of astronomy and the Druid's understanding of the planets. When studying planets include some of their zodiacal relevance, if that is your flavor. When studying botany blend in with flower and leaf identification magickal use and lore associated with the plant. More advance sciences like physics open up a unique realm for experimentation and explanation of spiritual principles in a homeschool classroom. Science is about the natural world and so is Paganism, so any topic you are teaching should have a pagan association, bear that in mind and your curriculum will almost write itself!

History: Any period in history that you can think of has some relevance to paganism and can be incorporated into your homeschool curriculum. Only recently has the world become largely a monotheistic planet. Whenever teaching the history of a location or of the world touch on pagan topics of interest from that period. There is more interest out there for pagan homeschool than the Witch Trials (which in retrospect isn't very interesting from a pagan perspective). European history is solidly made up of pagan elements and you can devise your entire curriculum from that perspective, but if you consider the history of our own continent it too was populated by pagan natives when our ancestors arrived.Use that in your curriculum! All countries and continents have pagan histories, educate yourself on what they are and share this with your child. Homeschool for mom is as necessary as homeschool for the kids, sometimes. Incorporate crafts into the lessons for younger kids, such as creating papier mache torques or standing stones for the bronze age and so forth and so on, and build interest in the older kids with movies and maybe even on line language learning.

Math: Does everyone hate math or is it just me? I was truly intimidated by this subject at first. You can't homeschool without a math curriculum though, so I plunged right in. I didn't even intend to attempt to keep the curriculum in line with pagan beliefs...but then I saw that it was a sensible way to keep us interested. Pyramids have their place in geometry and algebra and certainly Pythagorean Theorem does as well. Obviously they have their place in Pagan homeschool curriculum! Starting at those points and including fun sheets with sacred geometry, we managed to get through the dreaded algebras one and two and geometry~ without too much agony.

Electives: Often times homeschool parents forget about electives, but this is where you can really let your beliefs, creativity and learning come together and run wild. We had a lot of fun with our homeschool electives and they had a lot of Pagan flair! We created an elective curriculum that included Celtic Art , including weaving, drawing , pottery and appreciation. Classical folk music on guitar, Gaelic language lessons, Goddess and Women's Studies, Politics From A Pagan Perspective, Astrology, Numerology, Ritual Tool Crafting, World Religion, Primitive handicrafts and so forth and so on, right along side life skills and home economics! By the time my daughter finished with her electives she had already gained ordination as a first degree priestess!

Overall creating pagan homeschool curriculum need not be an overwhelming task to the point that it prevents you from giving your child the benefit of a homeschool environment. Resources to help you plan curriculum are plentiful on the net and in the world around us. Just trust in yourself and tap into your own creativity, you may surprise yourself!