Faithful, Diligent, Lifestyle Learners

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The homeschooling style of Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt can be summed up in four words.

Faithful, Diligent, Lifestyle Learners

Today I invite you to learn what that looked like through the words of two of their children — their older son Theodore Jr., who grew up to be President of the United States, and their younger daughter Corinne. His words are taken from Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt and hers from My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt.

Faithful

Theodore Roosevelt Sr. led his children in morning prayers. Mittie led them in evening prayers. Theodore Sr. volunteered to help the poor. His children volunteered, too.

My father was greatly interested in the societies to prevent cruelty to children and cruelty to animals. On Sundays he had a mission class. On his way to it he used to drop us children at our Sunday-school in Dr. Adams’s Presbyterian Church on Madison Square; I remember hearing my aunt, my mother’s sister, saying that when he walked along with us children he always reminded her of Greatheart in Bunyan. Under the spur of his example I taught a mission class myself for three years before going to college and for all four years that I was in college. — President Theodore Roosevelt

I remember that he always gave up one day of every week (and he was a very busy merchant and then banker) to the personal visiting of the poor in their homes. — Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

Diligent

Theodore Roosevelt Sr. was diligent in work, in service, and in having a grand time.

My father always excelled in improving every spare half-hour or three-quarters of an hour, whether for work or enjoyment. — President Theodore Roosevelt

My father could dance all night with the same delightful vim that he could turn to his business or his philanthropy in the daytime, and he enjoyed our pleasures as he enjoyed his own. — Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

Lifestyle Learners

While diligent to provide the academic training they believed was important for their children, Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt also gave their children the opportunity to learn in Creation, to pursue their own interests, and to spend time with carefully selected companions of all ages.

Learning in Creation

[My father] taught us all, when very young, to ride and to swim and to climb trees. I remember the careful way in which he would show us dead limbs and warn us about watching out for them, and then, having taught us and having warned us, he gave us full liberty to try our wings and fall by the wayside should they prove inadequate for our adventures. . . . the woods and lanes . . .  were safe haunts for happy childhood, and we were given much liberty, and, . . . we roamed at will, leading or riding our pony, playing endless games, or making believe we were Indians—always responsive to some story of Theodore’s which seemed to cast a glamour around our environment. My brother always felt in later years, and carried the feeling into practice with his own children, that liberty in the summer-time, for a certain period at least, stimulated greatly the imagination of a child. To rove unhampered, to people the surroundings with one’s own creations, to watch the habits of the feathered or furry creatures, and insensibly to react to the beauty of wood and wind and water—all this leaves an indelible impression on the malleable nature of a young child, and we . . .  were allowed this wonderful freedom to assimilate what nature had to give. — Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

Pursing Their Own Interests

. . . with two of my cousins, [I] promptly started what we ambitiously called the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.” The collections were at first kept in my room, until a rebellion on the part of the chambermaid received the approval of the higher authorities of the household and the collection was moved up to a kind of bookcase in the back hall upstairs. It was the ordinary small boy’s collection of curios, quite incongruous and entirely valueless except from the standpoint of the boy himself. My father and mother encouraged me warmly in this, as they always did in anything that could give me wholesome pleasure or help to develop me. — President Theodore Roosevelt

Spending Time with All Ages

We young children, according to Southern customs, were allowed to mingle more with our elders than was the case with many New York children. I am a great believer in such mingling, and some of the happiest friendships of our later lives were formed with the chosen companions of our parents, but many things were done for us individually as well. When we were between thirteen and sixteen I remember the delightful little Friday-evening dances which my mother and father organized for us in 57th Street, and in which they took actual part themselves. — Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

One of the best ways I know to avoid homeschool burnout is to let go of the world’s expectations about what a “proper education” is and to learn to make homeschooling something you are rather than something you do.

“You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul . . . You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up.
Deuteronomy 11:18-19

Free Webinar: How Was Theodore Roosevelt Homeschooled?

Please join me Thursday, October 26 at 2:00 p.m. for a free webinar to learn how Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt homeschooled a future president. Sign up here.

The third in our video series about how Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt homeschooled a future president is titled “Lifestyle Learners.” Check it out here.

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