Welcome to Justitia STEAM & Classical Academy

As you know from my talking about the curriculum we’ll be using for first grade, we’re planning to homeschool for the 2020-2021 school year. We’re now all set up on paper for that. I’ve filed with Kansas, and in doing that, I needed to (well, we needed to) come up with a name for our homeschool. We came to the name Justitia STEAM & Classical Academy.

Naming Our Homeschool

We chose “Justitia” because our family believes strongly in social justice and equity for all. We chose “STEAM” because we love science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. We chose “classical” because while we’re eclectic we also adhere to the structure of classical schools. We will be studying history in four parts, at the grammar, logic, and rhetoric levels.

While I homeschooled my oldest from 2nd-7th grades and did a good bit of homeschooling prior to last year with our younger three children, having a homeschooled child going into first grade seems more “official.” Part of that, I’m sure is because we have to register with the state this year. Part of it is because Miss 6 attended public kindergarten last year.

About Our Family

We are a family of six. My oldest is going to be a senior in college, and he is majoring in music and minoring in theater and political science. He’s also very involved with his school’s speech and debate team and Model UN. A couple years ago, he studied abroad in Ghana, and it was life-changing for him, as study abroads tend to be.

Our next oldest is 6 1/2 and going into first grade. She is a Girl Scout (and I am her troop leader – I’m hoping to get some posts about leading multi-level Girl Scouts troops up soon), she loves science, and she wants to be an astrophysicist when she grows up. She’s doing a series of Camps at home through both Girl Scouts and our local science museum this summer.

Next is our 4 1/2-year-old fireball. He’s going to do pre-kindergarten this year. I’m looking forward to getting more information up about what we’ll be doing fort hat. He thinks he’s also 6 1/2 and strives to keep up with his big sister. He loves building things, coding (yes, coding), and wants to be a firefighter when he grows up.

Then we have the 3-year-old Ladybug. She’s not about to miss out on the fun things her bigger siblings do, so we’ll be doing some really light preschool stuff and lots of great open-ended play. She loves bugs, animals, and monster trucks. She’s also slightly obsessed with wearing dress up clothes until they wind up shredded and falling off of her!

My husband is a librarian at the local university. He’s also a huge fan of baseball, coffee, and Marvel characters.

I’m a writer and editor. My background is in philosophy, specifically social and political theory and philosophy and 19th & 20th century German philosophy and political history and theory. I’ve written a lot about societal responsibility. I’m also a logician and an ethicist.

There you have it! Now, tell me about your family. Why did you decide to homeschool? What grades are you going to be teaching this year?