Honestly, ACE was not my first homeschool curriculum choice.
When I thought about homeschooling my children, I wanted to research all the possiblities out there and hand-pick the best of the best that would fit their personalities and unique traits perfectly. I didn’t feel confident that a pre-packaged curriculum based solely on workbooks would be anything but boring to them and cause them to under-achieve.
If you would have told me 4 years ago that ACE would be a great fit for my extremely bouncy, energetic, activity-loving, attention-span-lacking little boy, I would have thought you were crazy. But, I stand here today to say that ACE has done wonderful things for my boy.
So, if ACE wasn’t my first choice, how did it become the curriculum we have put in place at our home?
A cross-country move from Wisconsin to Florida, that’s how!
Because of the move, my oldest son (who I already had before I married my husband) would have to go back to Wisconsin to visit his dad for a period of time each year. We were able to work out a wonderful scenario with his visitation time. While Justus is in Wisconsin, he attends the ACE school run by our church there. In order for him to go to the church school, he needed to be on the ACE program.
We started the PACEs with Justus about a year before we moved. It was a rough transition from a wholly unstructured day to the organization of ACE. It seemed like the bad days out-weighed the good days far too often. In my mind, I kept saying, “See! I knew this wouldn’t work!” Now, looking back, I see lots of mistakes that I was making to bring to pass that self-fulfilling prophecy. The articles in this series are a culmination of all the lessons I have learned along the way.
You see, I thought that since my boy was bouncy and energetic, that I would have to work with that personality and bring in teaching ideas and curriculum choices that worked around him. Instead, the curriculum that we use teaches him the character traits that he did not yet possess when we started. Instead of expecting him to stay where he was, we have helped him grow to something better. Instead of assuming he could never change, we laid before him the means to be different.
My boy can now sit and drink in knowledge from words written on a piece of paper and actually remember the information. He can now focus his energy into the task at hand. He can demonstrate self-control when it comes to the movement of his body.
These are qualities that I wanted him to possess but I certainly did not know how to teach him. I knew that one day he would need to find a job, that he would need to be able to sit still and listen to a professor lecture, that he would need to digest written information efficiently. Of course I don’t want my son to have a boring job, sitting at a desk all day long, shuffling papers and doing something he doesn’t enjoy. But, in this present economy, I want to prepare him for the worst so that he is able, in any situation, to provide for himself and his family if he chooses to have one. I am confident that he is being taught skills that will serve him well in his adult life.
Justus is still a very happy, bouncy, energetic boy! He just knows that there is a time and a place to be those things! He gets to run and jump and play on his breaks. As proof that he really is enjoying ACE, his sister came to me and said, “Momma, when do I get to do PACEs like Justus?” It seems to me that if he was hating every minute of using this program, his sister would understand that and would not want to touch those PACEs with a 10-foot pole.
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