Notable Homeschoolers - SLO Classical Academy
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Welcome to Down Home, San Luis Obispo Classical Academy’s blog! We are a classical school offering several options to make our education work for families with infants through high schoolers. Our signature hybrid program, which is part-time classroom and part-time home instruction, provides an engaging education for preschool through middle school (with full time options available). We also have a university model high school. This blog is meant to support and encourage on the home front because, in so many ways, the heart of what happens at SLO Classical Academy happens down home.

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Notable Homeschoolers

Happy President’s Day! There are no classes on campus today or tomorrow as we celebrate our nation's presidents. So rather than Monday Mix-ins, we have a fun list to share with you of famous people who were homeschooled… including several presidents! Share this with your kids and let them know that they are definitely in good company.  (The following list is re-posted with permission from Bridgeway Academy.)

Presidents

• John Adams
• John Quincy Adams
• Grover Cleveland
• James Garfield
• William Henry Harrison
• Andrew Jackson
• Thomas Jefferson
• Abraham Lincoln
• James Madison
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Theodore Roosevelt
• John Tyler
• George Washington
• Woodrow Wilson

 

Constitutional Convention Delegates

Richard Basseti – Governor of DE
William Blount – U.S. Senator
George Clymer – U.S. Representative
William Few – U.S. Senator
Benjamin Franklin
William Houston – Lawyer
William S. Johnson
William Livingston – Governor of NJ
James Madison – 4th U.S. President
George Mason – Justice of VA
John Francis Mercer – U.S. Rep.
Charles Pickney III – Governor of SC
John Rutledge – Chief Justice
Richard D. Spaight – Governor of NC
George Washington
John Witherspoon
George Wythe – Justice of VA

 

Statesmen

• Konrad Adenauer
• Henry Fountain Ashurst
• William Jennings Bryan
• Winston Churchill
• Henry Clay
• Pierre du Pont
• Benjamin Franklin
• Alexander Hamilton
• Patrick Henry
• William Penn
• Daniel Webster

 

Military Leaders

Alexander the Great – Greek Ruler
John Barry – Senior Navy Officer
Stonewall Jackson – Civil War General
John Paul Jones – Father of the American Navy
Robert E. Lee – Civil War General
Douglas MacArthur – U.S. General
George Patton – U.S. General
Matthew Perry – naval officer who opened up trade with Japan
John Pershing – U.S. General
David Dixon Porter – Civil War Admiral

 

U.S. Supreme Court Judges

• John Jay
• John Marshall
• John Rutledge
• Sandra Day O’Connor

 

Scientists

• George Washington Carver
• Pierre Curie
• Albert Einstein
• Michael Faraday – electrochemist
• Oliver Heaviside – physicist and electromagnetism researcher
• T.H. Huxley
• Blaise Pascal
• Booker T. Washington
• Erik Demaine – Popular Science Mag: One of the Most Brilliant Scientists in America

 

Artists

• William Blake
• John Singleton Copley
• Claude Monet
• Grandma Moses
• Charles Peale
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Andrew Wyeth
• Jamie Wyeth

 

Religious Leaders

• Joan of Arc
• William Carey
• Jonathan Edwards
• Philipp Melancthon
• Dwight L. Moody
• John Newton
• John Owen
• Hudson Taylor
John & Charles Wesley
Brigham Young

 

Inventors

Alexander Graham Bell – invented the telephone
John Moses Browning – firearms inventor and designer
Peter Cooper – invented skyscraper, built first U.S. commercial locomotive
Thomas Edison – invented the stock ticker, mimeograph, phonograph, and perfected the electric light bulb
Benjamin Franklin – invented the lightning rod
Elias Howe – invented sewing machine
William Lear – airplane creator
Cyrus McCormick – invented grain reaper
Guglielmo Marconi – developed radio
Eli Whitney – invented the cotton gin
Sir Frank Whittle – invented turbo jet engine
Orville and Wilbur Wright – built the first successful airplane

 

Composers

• Irving Berlin
• Anton Bruckner
• Noel Coward
• Felix Mendelssohn
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Francis Poulenc
• John Philip Sousa

 

Writers

• Hans Christian Anderson
• Margaret Atwood
• Pearl S. Buck
• William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Willa Cather
• Agatha Christie
• Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
• Charles Dickens
• Robert Frost – Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Alex Haley
• Brett Harte
• L. Ron Hubbard
• C.S. Lewis
• Amy Lowell
• Gabriela Mistral
• Sean O’Casey
• Christopher Paolini – author of #1 NY Times bestseller, Eragon
• Isabel Paterson
• Beatrix Potter – author of the beloved Peter Rabbit Tales
• Carl Sandburg
• George Bernard Shaw
• Mattie J. T. Stepanek – 11-year-old author of Heartsongs
• Mercy Warren
• Phillis Wheatley
• Walt Whitman
• Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

Educators

Amos Bronson Alcott – innovative teacher, father of Louisa May Alcott
Catharine Beecher – co-founder of the Hartford Female Seminary
Jill Ker Conway – first woman president of Smith College
Timothy Dwight – President of Yale University
William Samuel Johnson – President of Columbia College
Horace Mann – “Father of the American Common School”
Charlotte Mason – Founder of Charlotte Mason College of Education
Fred Terman – President of Stanford University
Frank Vandiver – President of Texas A&M University
Booker T. Washington – Founder of Tuskegee Institute
John Witherspoon – President of Princeton University

 

Performing Artists

Louis Armstrong – king of jazz
Charlie Chaplin – actor
Whoopi Goldberg – actress
Hanson – sibling singing group
Jennifer Love Hewitt – actress
Yehudi Menuhin – child prodigy violinist
Moffatts – Canadian version of Hanson
Frankie Muniz – child actor
LeAnne Rimes – teen-prodigy country music singer
Barlow Girl – Alyssa, Rebecca, and Lauren Contemporary Christian Music
Jonas Brothers – Kevin, Joe, and Nick Performers
Jacob Clemente – Broadway Actor

 

Business Entrepreneurs

Andrew Carnegie – wealthy steel industrialist
Amadeo Giannini – Bank of America’s founder
Horace Greeley – New York Tribune founder
Soichiro Honda – creator of the Honda automobile company
Peter Kindersley – book illustrator and publisher
• Ray Kroc – founder of McDonald’s fast food restaurant chain
Jimmy Lai – newspaper publisher; founder of Giordano International
Dr. Orison Swett Marden – founder, Success magazine
Adolph Ochs – New York Times founder
Joseph Pulitzer – newspaper publisher; established Pulitzer Prize
Colonel Harland Sanders – started Kentucky Fried Chicken
Dave Thomas – founder of the Wendy’s restaurant chain
Mariah Witcher – founder of Mariahs Famous Cookies
Daniel Mills – founder of Salem Ridge Press

 

Others

Abigail Adams – Wife of John Adams; mother of John Quincy Adams
Ansel Adams – Photographer
Susan B. Anthony – reformer and women’s rights leader
John James Audubon – ornithologist and artist
Clara Barton – Started the Red Cross
Elizabeth Blackwell – first woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree
John Burroughs – Naturalist
George Rogers Clark – Explorer
Davy Crockett – frontiersman
Eric Hoffer – social philosopher
Sam Houston – lawyer; first president of the Republic of Texas
Charles Evans Hughes – jurist; Chief Justice
Mary D. Leakey – fossil hunter; wife of Richard Leakey
Tamara McKinney – World Cup Skier
Harriet Martineau – first woman sociologist
Margaret Mead – cultural anthropologist
John Stuart Mill – Free-market Economist
Charles Louis Montesquieu – Philosopher
John Muir – naturalist
Florence Nightingale – Nurse
Thomas Paine – political writer during the American Revolution
Bill Ridell – Newspaperman
Will Rogers – Humorist
Bertrand Russell – Logician
Jim Ryan – World Runner
Albert Schweitzer – Physician
Sir Ernest Shackleton – Explorer
Herbert Spencer – philosopher, sociologist
Gloria Steinem – founder and long-time editor of Ms. magazine
Jason Taylor – plays in the National Football League
Mary Walker – Civil War physician; recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor
Lester Frank Ward – “Father of American Sociology”
Martha Washington – wife of George Washington
Frances E. C. Willard – educator, temperance leader, and suffragist
Frank Lloyd Wright – Architect
Elijah ben Solomon Zalman – Jewish scholar
Balaram Stack – Award winning Surfer
Lia Del Priore – Award Winning Gymnast
Taylor Gladstone – Ballerina

 

Famous Homeschool Parents

Will Smith – singer, actor
Michael Card – singer, songwriter
Mike Farris – lawyer and co-founder of Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)
Robert Frost – Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
Christopher Klicka – attorney and Senior Counsel of Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)
Len Munsil – attorney and President of The Center for Arizona Policy (CAP)
Paul Overstreet – musician, songwriter
Kelly Preston – actress, wife of John Travolta
Mike Smith – lawyer and co-founder of Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)
John Travolta – actor, pilot
Lisa Whelchel – former actress, “The Facts of Life”, now a pastor’s wife and author
Darrell Waltrip – NASCAR Racer

 
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