My husband David and I have been married for 28 years. We spent the first several years of our marriage serving as missionaries in Eastern Europe. In the late 1990s we moved back to the States, and we now reside in Georgia with our six children.
We have been home-educating for 19 years. I began my homeschool journey using Charlotte Mason’s educational methods, a philosophy which employs the use of whole, “living” books rather than textbooks. As my children have grown I have embraced a Classical philosophy of education, though I am still influenced by Charlotte Mason’s ideas when choosing books for our homeschool.
What does this mean for you, a potential patron of My Audio School? You can be confident that in selecting the material for My Audio School, I have used the same rigor I apply to choosing educational materials for my own children. In fact, My Audio School was originally created for my children. Only after sharing it with friends and witnessing the powerful response which My Audio School generated did I decide to expand the site to what it is today.
When choosing books and supplementary materials for my children, I employ the highest standards. A book must be appropriate for a child’s sensitive conscience. Artwork on the site must be modest. Books should also be challenging intellectually, appropriate for the education of a college-bound child, and interesting enough to captivate a child’s attention so that he can truly learn. With that said, you should approach this like any other book list, screening material and choosing those books which are appropriate for your own child. If you are choosing titles from the high school list, I encourage you to read our page A Word About High School Literature.
My children will probably listen to virtually everything offered on My Audio School at some time during their educational career. Some of them aren’t ready for Homer’s Odyssey yet, but one day they will be. Although I have not listened to every resource on My Audio School, I have gone to pains to try and include only content which meets my own high standards for an excellent, well-rounded, interesting education.
My Other Websites
My school blog, Countercultural School, has loads of recipes for historical feasts and directions for hands on projects that we’ve done. You’ll find my Home Library Builders post series there, which details more about how I choose books and gives links to dozens of titles I like on a wide variety of subjects.
I enjoy speaking for homeschool groups, virtual seminars, and conferences, and have served in the past as a writer for the Georgia Home Educator’s Association , as well as for Mentoring Moments for Christian Women, and I maintain a blog for Christian women at CounterCultural Mom. If you’d like to talk with me about speaking for your group or convention, please contact me at support@myaudioschool.com .
Sincerely,
Molly Evert
Wow, Molly–This site is fantastic! This will be a blessing to so many. Thank you!
Blessings,
Susan Peterson
Just wanted to let you know how much we love My Audio School. The work you have done here is fantastic and the subscription is such a great value.
I have no idea if this is feasible in this format or not, but it would be great if members (maybe for more money?) could create lists of things that they want their kids to listen to – like we could keep a filebox here on line with the links and then the children could go off of that, instead of searching each time.
Molly – I’m curious to know how you use all these. Do you put them onto CDs? Do you have a separate hard drive with MP3 files? I’m trying to figure out the best way to utilize this, and figured with as organized as you are, you probably have a system down. Thanks for all your hard work. Blessings.
Hi Jennifer,
We don’t burn the books to CD anymore, as it took too many CDs per book. Instead, we download everything we use to our computer (Windows Media) and then transfer it to mp3 players. Each of my kids has their own mp3 player with headphones, and we also have 2 sets of speakers and one transmitter for the car stereo. My younger boys prefer listening together using the speakers. My oldest usually listens with headphones.
All the children stream their assigned history readings directly from the My Audio School site by clicking on the individual chapter links, so we don’t download those at all. We also listen to books in the car several days a week on the way to sports practice using a radio transmitter. They like using the speakers at night, listening to books while they are laying in bed. Once we are done with a book we can delete it from the computer and/or the Mp3 player. We can always download it again in the future if we need to!
We use audio content virtually every day in one way or another, and it has really been enjoyable for my boys.