C.E.R. stands for Center for Educational Restoration.  It is the creation of Dr. Glenn and Julianne Kimber.  They are good friends whom I love deeply.  At homeschooling conventions, he is one of the speakers I never miss.  When he comes to town for any lecture I can almost always be found in the audience.  My oldest daughter rents a room from the Kimbers while she attends college.

Dr. Kimber is the founder of the original Benjamin Franklin Academy (B.F.A.) which was a private school that supplemented the homeschool.  Currently he is heavily involved in Providence Academy and supplies a complete private school education via video to homeschoolers everywhere.  You might be more familiar with his work if I tell you that he uses Hook Dates.  He is especially popular among LDS Homeschoolers but people from all religions use and enjoy his curriculum.  This is my experience with having his curriculum in my home for over eight years.

I have always enjoyed teaching my children.  The year before I started I spent a great deal of time researching, trying to find what would work best for us.  I made a decision on a curriculum and bought the material.  I lasted less then a month.  I found that I simply quit picking up the instruction guide.  It happened slowly at first and then one day I realized that I wasn’t using that expensive Kindergarten curriculum at all.

I called my sister-in-law.  While I felt like a homeschool pioneer back in 1985, she had been at this adventure even a few years before me.  I asked what she was doing and she directed me to a small private school whose entire focus was to teach the mother and let the mother teach their children.  I loved this!  And for the next several years this was the way I established my homeschool.  Content?  Absolutely.  Children learning?  Yes.  Burnout?  No, because I was in control and if I said, “Play.”  Well...what child would argue with that?

One day a friend called and asked if I would be interested in establishing a Benjamin Franklin Academy in San Diego.  Would I be interested in hearing the founder, Dr. Glenn Kimber, speak?  I replied that while I would be happy to help set up a lecture, I was quite content with what I had been doing over the years.  As soon as I hung up the phone I had this powerful message sweep over me declaring, “This is something you want for your children.”  So I turned around and returned the call and the ball started to roll.

Really, all I did was help Dr. Kimber make the right connections.  Others ended up doing the work in establishing and running the school.  I went through two pregnancies during that time which meant months of bed rest so I watched from the sideline while they grew and the children and youth loved the experience.

For one year before we opened the school Dr. Kimber would visit San Diego and give lectures to the parents and teens.  We met at a beautiful home and every month the crowd was overflowing.  By the time we opened the school we had over 100 students.  I had up to four of my children enrolled at a time over the next few years.

The school met four hours a day for three days per week.  He never allowed homework to be given although the students and parents can pursue any study or homework they wanted.  His idea was to not have the private school infringe on the family school in any way.  The students came for the core curriculum of Math, Science, Language Arts and of course his wonderful History.  It was principle based and while the principles were learned at school, practicing them became the family school’s job to do or not.

Using the C.E.R. Curriculum in My Home

I used his curriculum in my home for a year before the school opened.  I continued to use it for my children over the years even after we left the school after he sold it.  I did not find that it was exactly the same at home as in the private school.  The main difference is that in eight years I could never get through all the material he suggested for one year!  There is only one reason: life happens at home differently then it does for a teacher in a private school. When a instructor gets sick or has something important come up, a substitute is found for the students.  When a student is sick, he simply doesn’t come to class and the class moves on without him.  At home, when ANYTHING important happens the entire family is affected.  Education happens by all means but the curriculum needs to be set aside for a bit.  About 1/3 of the time in our active family.

So the first thing I would do in teaching his curriculum is to recognize that you will probably use two thirds of the material expected for one year.  This means that his three year program will take you four years.  Of course, your family is probably a lot smaller than mine so the difference might not be as dramatic for you.

The second thing that is different in the home from the classroom is the order of the subjects.  Dr. Kimber has the students learn two different histories, religious and world.  He brings the spirit into the classroom with the religious history lecture.  This is a lecture and not a discussion.  Following that are the math, language arts and science topics which are interactive.  Then he pulls the students back together and brings the spirit in with a powerful lecture on world history.

This pattern didn’t work as well at home.  Because I have so many children and they are at all different levels we have group lesson and then we break for private studies and some of those private studies are done in teams.  This pattern has allowed my homeschool to flow smoothly all these years.  The same pattern caused the C.E.R. curriculum to flow just as well.  So I would do the two lectures back to back and then break for the other topics.  I had more spirit that way because when I tried to start together and end together my quicker students resented it.  They would get through whatever they were working on and run off to their other personal projects.  They didn’t want to be interrupted and brought back to the table!

With those two important changes, lessening the quantity of material and changing the order of the subjects, I was ready to follow Dr. Kimber’s program.

We would meet and have opening exercise.  This was often my favorite part.  It included songs, prayer, pledge, finger plays, memorization and religious discussion which really means life discussion in our home.

Then we would move from the living room to the kitchen table and my children would spend 10-20 minutes writing down as many facts as possible about the religious hook date we were studying that week.  They would do this every day.  The first time recalling anything they remember from the past and after that recalling what they had heard in lecture added to that past knowledge.  The little ones would dictate to me and I would type it.  Then I added up the facts per child and at the end of the day they got jellybeans for every couple of facts.  (Always at the end of the school day so that it didn’t interfere with what we were learning.)

Then I would lecture that topic and repeat the process for the world hook date.  After that we broke into teams for the science, language arts and math.  The more knowledgeable ones paired with the younger ones.  I would take my youngest students and teach them reading from the AlphaPhonics book, writing and beginning math.

That was the school day!  And only for three days each week.  For years.  There were a few other important structure.  Until the same hour their friends got out of public school my children were required to spend the rest of the time in some kind of learning.  My older girls usually read.  My boys just took a long time to do the basics.

I labeled some computer games as educational and they could be played on those days but no other.  I had a large library of classic videos and videos of classics as well as early learning videos.  Regular videos were reserved for specific days.  And we often had a tutored class or two, such as piano and sewing.

Dr. Kimber’s promise of his curriculum freeing the mother from stress and burnout was fulfilled with those changes.  His is not a step-by-step program.  Although his I Love America curriculum is exactly that.  The college-prep program consists of guidebooks with enough information that the mother can do it without a lot of study but it isn’t structured so much that it takes away her ability to create and be inspired in her role as teacher.  For me it was a prefect blend.

The Official Site for The Center for Educational Restoration - Dr. Glenn Kimber
Email Group for C.E.R.

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