Homeschooling blues - Page 2

[craft_media_hero]

I can identify. dd went to psk and it kinda smooshed things for her too. We took it really easy last year and this year she is much more positive.

Lots of hands on and outside work really helped us.

[lmonter]

Sounds like you got tons of suggestions that may work for you, so yay!

As for Sonlight... odds are, you can find 80-90% of the books at your local library, even more so if they do ILL or have a county-wide system or something. It's a lot of 2 pages this day of this book (say, an encyclopedia), a chapter of this book today, and so on. Lots of little bursts of info, switching it up fairly quickly so the kiddos can't get bored too quickly. Ambleside Online and their schedule/recommendations may also suit your fancy. And fwiw, I've gotten all my Sonlight goodies used, and have no qualms about doing it this way again. I don't get access to their special forums, but meh. Life goes on.

Geography. This lovely mama has a great site/blog that I keep finding new and fun little ideas and such through. Just click on her geography link and have at it. Once I have enough wall space freed up in our eventual homeschool room here, I have some laminated maps from Costco going up so my 6yo can map things out from our books or relatives traveling or whatever.

I totally agree that 3 hours straight may have been a bit overwhelming for a kiddo. I can sometimes get 45 minutes straight out of my 6yo (7yo this week - and that's with Sonlight books where it's only a little bit of this and a little bit of that), but we have noticed his attention span has gotten better and better in the last month alone. He and I end up doing a lot of quiet-type school at night after his siblings are in bed. He loves the one-on-one time, I can concentrate on the read-alouds rather than someone climbing up the curtain, and he's somewhat mellowed out after a busy day. I have more hands-on stuff during the day when I can give them all coloring sheets to keep them semi-sitting and almost quiet while I do other reading or whatnot, or give them all a plate of beans to play with and so on.

Every once in a while I compare him and his progress to children described on here or our neighbor (who is two months younger than my 6/7yo, and in 2nd grade!), but them reign myself in with the fact that I know my child's maturity level (um, not the highest for his age, it happens), and I get to best cater to/address that with homeschooling him. So what, he doesn't read chapter books. But he knows how to assemble the Squeezo and crank the cider press.

I may need to do the journal/scrapbook thing with my kiddo - I bet he'd love it. They all love hamming it up for photos as it is, and love flipping through photos as well.... Hmmm... I smell another project for my house...

[Lunaria]

Things have been going so much better. We've been taking it real easy, doing math and starfall and sight words. Then throughout the day we read good books and go outside to explore and bake and such Tomorrow we're going on a 'field trip' to a pumkin patch and apple orchard! We both are having so much fun with this.

^^Thank you for the suggestion to try the library for Sonlight books! I didn't think of that(today was library day as a matter of fact). I'll see what I can find next week. We were doing Ambleside's schedule for year 1. That is what got us into trouble Although she loves reading and quite often will be content to have us read chapter books to her, she was lost with the extensive vocabulary in the Ambleside books. She hated hated hated copywork, and was pretty lost with narration. We're still working on narration but we've stopped writing for now and will pick it up again when she is ready to make a fresh start of it. And we'll keep it simple to start. I'm going to check out the geography blog you mentioned. It's nice to have ideas that I don't have to come up with! Sometimes I feel a lack of creativity:P

It is hard not to compare...but like your son, my daughter is not the most mature for her age. Which is fine with me, I don't want her to 'grow up' before her time. She is learning things that can't be learned in the classroom and she is spending most of her day playing, imagining and drawing. Her passions And she is learning to love learning again, which is something of high value to us. Thank you lovely ladies for helping me keep at this and to learn to relax and enjoy learning along with my daughter!

Jenny

PS. I think when the time comes to homeschool my son, we might try doing most of the learning in the evening! It's a great idea to be flexible like that, especially since he is a night owl(unlike my 6am morning girl). One more thing to add to my growing box of 'tools.'

[lmonter]

Oh geez, I still would've been on AO year 0. I'm doing Sonlight K with my oldest (holy cow, he'll be 7yo tomorrow!) - AO 1 or Sonlight 1 would've been too much for him, unless I handpicked a few stories here or there. Heck, he still loves the P3/4 P4/5 books I track down at the library, as do his younger siblings. Right now I'm still all about making/keeping it fun. Which is why my oldest is getting a slew of Boxcar Children books for his birthday, and we're also reading an abridged version of Treasure Island and so on right now.

[raelize]

i really like the book open the door, let's explore, and open the door, let's explore more. they are great geography beginning books. by geography i mean, you make different types of maps and discuss distributoin patterns, learn about spatial distribution, etc. you also get to take fun field trips (that are basically free) and learn about different places in your community and neighborhood.

also for science- janice van cleave is my favorite and she has a series of books for little kids called let's play and find out about (bugs, rocks, water, etc) they have lots of little science experiments that last about 10-15 minutes and involve crafty activities.

[Lunaria]

lmonter-I'm glad to know we're not the only ones overwhelmed by the AO reading list! I hope in a year or two...or more these wonderful books will hold interest for her.

rachel_eva, thank you for the geography and science ideas! They sound just right for us


Jenny

[raelize]

the books i mentioned are great, for example, you will take a walk around your neighborhood noticing where the roads intersect, where houses are, where signs are, mailboxes, etc. then you will fraw a map of your neighborhood and talk about why everything is placed where it is, the spatial distribution of the neighborhood. it is basically the same type of exercise for all the other field trips.

i am also a charlotte mason leaner, and i try to make the janice van cleave books more charlotte mason-y by picking out literature to go with the subject. so, we;ll read about butterflys and make a butterlfy life cycle. dd doesn't realize we're actually "doing science" but we are.

also- as a scientist, the MOST important thing to understand is the scientific method which is:
1. make and observation (there are leaves floating in the water)
2. ask a question about the observation (why do the leaves float instead of sink?)
3. develop a hypothesis (the leaves float because they are flat)
4. test the hypothesis(find different shaped objects (flat, round, square, etc) and see which one floats in th kitchen sink)
4. make an observation about your test (the flat stuff didn't sink)
5. make a conclusion (the leaves don't float because they are flat)

all of this can be done all the time with lots of different things and situations and the child Never knows it is science. but learning this method is very impotratnt and will make them great analytical thinkers for whatever they study.