Reading Simply Classical was, in a way, like reading the Gospel for the first time. Suddenly, I had hope. Someone had been where I was and had succeeded. I cried. I was relieved beyond measure. This could be done! Thankfully, Memoria Press took the spark of Cheryl Swope’s extraordinary teaching experience with her own special-needs children and created the Simply Classical Curriculum.

Our son is 14. He has low-functioning autism, is non-verbal, has auditory processing disorder, muscle spasms, sensory integration disorder, and sleep disorder. Your book and curriculum have been an answer to prayer.

“Thank you for striving to help us grow as parents and educators and for desiring not just the best education for our children’s minds, but for their hearts as well. So many expect too little, and of the wrong things, but you help us to remember to dwell on the lofty things.”

I had never dreamed that I could teach my special needs children a Classical Education. I Thank the Lord I found you and your book. Thank you!!

I feel like I found somebody who understands my life! I absolutely LOVE this book. If you think you are out of hope ... get this book!

The author of this book put heart and soul and real experience into this beautifully written explanation that every child deserves a quality classical education, whether they have learning disabilities or are advanced learners. She totally has lived life with balancing quality education, loving her children, and fighting the mundane, which is where so many of us want to quit. It is hard to homeschool a child with learning disabilities, but if we focus on the BEST and the QUALITY, then what they remember and are touched by is the BEST and QUALITY. She reminds us that all things are possible. Each of us can homeschool excellently even when it is in the car going between therapy appointments for our children. Finally someone understands the complexity of classical education + learning disabilities.

This is an excellent, readable guide to the author's experience and research in implementing the classical model of education in the lives of her children. What differentiates this from the rest is her background--the author is not simply relating personal anecdotes, but is grounded in a good deal of study and contact with different philosophies of educational theory and practice. The demonstration she makes for the power of the classical educational model is an encouraging one. This ancient method befits the excellent formation of human beings of any ability, yet is accessible enough that teachers and parents alike could begin.

Right from the start, the book had an encouraging tone. It was full of practical suggestions for modifying a classical education for a child with special needs. Cheryl points the reader to other resources throughout the book and in a list at the end for additional help with different situations. I'm looking forward to looking up some of the curriculum choices she recommended for teaching Latin and writing skills. This will be my go-to guide as I implement a classical education for my child!

Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child by Cheryl Swope is a rare find in today's homeschool world. As comfortable as a coffee shop chat with a friend, yet with a richness and depth of feeling that leaves the reader both inspired and energized, Simply Classical provides engaging first-person narrative as well as practical hands-on application. The author skillfully weaves a picture of the joyful abundance and painful quandaries that often make up a homeschool family's existence. Sitting down with Ms. Swope's story, one is drawn into the drama of an adoption, the subsequent discovery of severe learning disabilities in her children, followed by her family's quest to build a homeschool based on the classical model of learning.

Forceful without being strident, Ms. Swope deftly makes the case for a classical Christian education that nurtures mind, body and soul with the good, the true, and the beautiful. Every "subject" for a quality classical education is addressed in this guide, and yet the reader is not left with the sense that this is the "only way to do x, y or z." Rather, Simply Classical inspires confidence, not fear, excitement, not dread, and provides a scaffolding for the individual homeschool to build upon. No top-down approach here, which forces a rigid, bulky model better suited to an industrial education environment. Instead, this book is an organic approach to homeschooling in a classical manner. Each family is different, with needs, quirks, schedules and personalities that are unique to it, and Simply Classical empowers the home educator and her family to joyfully explore new territory in learning while staying true to the spirit of classical Christian education.

Because of the challenges the author faced when endeavoring to meet the needs of her learning disabled students while still providing a rigorous, nurturing, and beautiful education for her children, Ms. Swope approaches the question of "how" with a scope much more broad than most homeschool manuals. She presents alternative methods of teaching and learning which she and her children learned mainly through trial and error, graciously acknowledges the people and ideas who helped her most, and often sheepishly laments the fact that her background in institutional education proved to be more of a hindrance than a help in teaching her own children. The vignettes and anecdotes of Michael and Michelle, the author's children, are beautifully rendered portraits of true-to-life young people with interests, foibles and challenges, and it is through their story that the picture of a mother's heart emerges: yearning for a rich existence for her children despite circumstances and naysayers who did not believe they were capable of such.

Finally, throughout the book, the author's faith in the sufficiency of Christ shines brightly, and the reader is drawn to understand the wonderful gift and awesome responsibility given to parents to guide their children and raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With grace, patience, and humility, Ms. Swope shows that a simple, childlike faith in the Lord and a love for neighbor is worth far more than what math program one chooses, or whether a child learns to read at four or fourteen. A classical homeschool, indeed any homeschool, would be richly blessed by adding Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child to its shelves.

I was considering Classical Education for my children when I purchased this book, and was utterly convinced upon completing it. Mrs. Swope is totally relatable, yet thoroughly informative on the reasons and methods of Classical Education. I am now giving my three children (one with special needs) the education I could have only dreamt of for myself, at home. The recommended curricula and books are outstanding. How awesome is it that you can educate your children in the way all the great minds in history learned! (So totally different from our public school system!) My children have benefited from my reading Simply Classical. They love to start their schoolwork each day. Highly recommend this book!

have three mildly to moderately special needs boys ages 5, 12, and 13. This upcoming year with all three of them in school has been looming over my head in an overwhelming manner. This book has helped change my outlook from near despair to hopefulness.

There are many ideas for incorporating schooling into all those times when doctor and therapy appointments interrupt the day, which has always been a stumbling point for me. There are also ideas of how to incorporate the therapy homework with school work in such practical and easy ways that make it seem both possible and amazing that I had never thought of them of them before (the best ideas always seem to be like that). The examples from her children, who face vastly greater challenges than my own, and yet have had access to this great store of Classical education are so inspirational.

The points that she makes about looking beyond the purely practical nature of a subject that tends toward limiting the education of a special needs student to only things deemed to be life skills toward what will strengthen the mind and expand the horizons of that child are something I have never encountered in any educational literature before--especially in things targeted to special needs students. Yet, it feels so right.

This book articulates the things that I have always wanted for my children, and blazes a trail toward those goals.

Thank you so much! This is a great help!

I really appreciate your thoughts. Thank you for taking the time. I could talk about my daughter for hours!

Thank you very much! I've shared this with my husband. We will look into doing all of this. Spot on about my 4th grader. Thank you so much. 🙂

This plan is amazing! Thank you! I'm so excited. Your instructions are very helpful. Really appreciate your guidance on how to stack the lessons. Thanks so much.