How is Catholic Schoolhouse Classical?

Classical education is different.

Are you curious about providing a classical education?

Wondering how to start homeschooling?

Wishing to create an authentically Catholic homeschool?


A classical homeschool experience is a journey you walk with your child, engaging in joyful conversation. 

Our classical education method recognizes that your child goes through stages and uses those stages to your advantage.

From birth through adulthood, your child is growing through classical stages–stages where their brain changes.

During the grammar stage, you child’s brain is wired for memory! Classical education grabs the opportunity to create hooks and pegs in your child’s brain through classical memory work of learning facts and information. Catholic Schoolhouse creates these pegs which become hooks on which your child will hang and depend upon with future learning.

Catholic Schoolhouse provides dialectic and rhetoric programs guide students through these developmental changes, helping them to analyze in a respectful way during the dialectic stage (approx. middle school) and gain confidence with communication skills with our rhetoric program.

With our the Catholic Schoolhouse Program, individual families, chapters and co-ops are able to succeed, bring family unity to teaching, and belong to a greater Catholic community.

 

Classical Education

As children progress through the classical Trivium, each stage represents a change in their brain--a beautiful change designed by God our creator.

 Catholic Schoolhouse offers classical memory work and so much more – it is a comprehensive scope and sequence; a foundation to build a true one-room schoolhouse for your family.

  • Classical programs for pre-school through middle school and high school.
  • Resources such as art, science, and saints that integrate with the timeline.
  • Beautiful, full-color books for easy use and planning.
  • CDs with memory work set to music makes teaching fun and easy. 

Our free resources, downloadable resources, and free printable resources make it accessible to begin today.

Catholic Schoolhouse focuses on family unity. All of our programs from pre-grammar through high school continue to be anchored to the memory work topics, allowing your family to stay unified.

With our classical program, individual families, chapters and co-ops are able to succeed, bring family unity to teaching, and belong to a greater Catholic community. We have the Catholic homeschooling resources to help you succeed and thrive. Our catholic classical curriculum gives you confidence–and our many free resources help you homeschool on a budget.

 

Memorized language was a mainstay of education for almost all of recorded history until about 60 years ago, when misguided educationists began to promulgate the idea that memorization, along with other types of 'rote' learning, was harmful to children's creativity, understanding, and enjoyment of learning. . . Neurologically, memorization develops the brain in a way nothing else can.

-Andrew Pudewa

Classical education is holistic: it is not limited to the training of the intellect, but aims to form the emotions, the will, and the aesthetic sense. If fosters love for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful wherever they may be found. Its goal is to produce men and women both knowledgeable and virtuous.

-Andrew Campbell, The Latin-Centered Curriculum

Catholic.

The real goal of classical education is to engage the being deep in their soul. Only a Catholic program can engage your students from your world view. 

 

We need well-educated Catholics, but we also need in them a burning desire and ability to use that education for God. We need students who will impact the world – not by our plan – but by living God’s plan for them! That leads me to the significance of our endeavor. I believe with my whole heart that the significance of homeschooling, and secondarily classically homeschooling, is that we create a place where our children can grow and learn – being taught by parents from a place of rest.

Kathy Rabideau, Catholic Schoolhouse Co-founder and Executive Director

Flexible. The key to family unity.

Classical education is an approach that pulls students into the learning, that doesn’t segregate it as a series of lessons. It is a dialogue between teacher and student happening in a natural way. We invite you all into the classroom so that you can become part of that dialogue, then continue that dialogue all week at home–that continuation and flow is what makes your homeschool classical.

Classical Approach – that is a carefully chosen word, because it is our approach. We are not and will not require it to be your approach. 

Catholic Schoolhouse is flexible, so that how you have chosen to teach your children, what you have found works with your family style, can be continued at home.

 

How do I do this with kids of different ages, don’t kids have to learn separately, each in their own grade? I don’t know where to start!

Schools evolved to use grade levels as their structure—but it wasn’t always that way. Think back to the one-room schoolhouse—a place where the entire family went to school together. You can have that one-room schoolhouse in your own home, but you still need some type of foundation… Catholic Schoolhouse gives you that foundation!

I’ve been homeschooling for some time, doling out lessons—I feel more like an administrator than a teacher! How can I gather my family and bring joy to my schooling?

Think of Catholic Schoolhouse as the system and program to help you bring joy into your homeschooling.

I get it, I love the idea of family unity, classical memory work, and joyful learning. I get the philosophy - now what? Please tell me how this works!

Catholic Schoolhouse

 

Catholic Schoolhouse was founded in 2007 to enhance education in the grammar stage by providing classical memory work for the Catholic homeschool. Going beyond simple memory work, the developers enlisted experts in all areas of study and a wide variety of resources, Catholic and secular, homeschool and non-homeschool to determine what information is typically encountered during the elementary school years (K-8). 

Individual families, chapters and co-ops are able to succeed, bring family unity to teaching, and belong to a greater Catholic community with Catholic Schoolhouse.

Homeschool Success through a Classical Approach

Reviews

... Catholic Schoolhouse covers a lot of subject matter [Memory Work Audio CDs, History Cards, Science, Fine Arts, Math, Language Arts, Geography, and Foreign Language] even though it isn’t your entire curriculum. The Catholic Schoolhouse site has links to a blog with additional activity suggestions that should be very helpful. Their “Now What Do I Do? page” has suggestions for those working on their own. A “Local Chapters” tab lists active Catholic Schoolhouse chapters in which you can enroll. There’s lots of help and support from those already using Catholic Schoolhouse. I expect Catholic Schoolhouse will continue to sprout new chapters as more Catholic homeschoolers discover they have a Catholic option for this type of education.