reorganizing my educational philosophy thoughts

This past week or so I have been doing alot of thinking on which direction I want our studies to take this year. I have decided that we are going to try and have a literature led learning for this term and see how it all works out. I am going to use what we normally would use, literature, but I am going to "saturate" us in it. I'll use some spine books for factual background but they will be just that, background. For the core part of our studies for world history and american history we will be reading historical fiction, picture books and original source documents. Science will be the same. Language arts will be with Julie Bogart's literature subscription, The Arrow. Documentation will be drawings, narrations, experiments etc. This is where I have a harder time though. Josh is not one who enjoys the written process but I want him to learn that this is part of the communication of ideas, oral along with written. He has been talking much in the recent past about becoming a marine biologist. I have shared with him that in this career field there is much writing for articles and research. Math too is very important to this field of science so he needs all these things to be well prepared. Hopefully this will spur him on with a better attitude in these particular areas of our studies.

I am also hearing more and more about the Thomas Jefferson Education philosophy from various places. I am interested in getting the book written on this topic by Oliver DeMille of George Wythe College. They say that it is very easy to blend Charlotte Mason theories with this philosophy so I am intrigued to learn more. Hopefully I'll be able to order the book soon to take a look at this.