HSing with ADHD - curriculum change??

[OhMeOhMy]

Hello,
I am HSing 4 of my kids atm. My second oldest has ADHD and we use means other than drugs to help him. Lately I feel like I am expanding much to much energy on convincing him to work. I know it will never be as simple as do blah to blah on page blah, but it is becoming ridiculous with the amount of time I am spending to get him going (never mind KEEP him going). I am wondering if I need to change what I use with him. Right now he uses a combination of materials, but the overall approach is classical. Although, I would say I am way more relaxed than most other classical HS families seem to be (in my experience). Even so, I am wondering if this is "too much" for him. The only other curriculum I have actually owned was Oak Meadows (I tried it for him in the second grade - he is now in fifth grade) and I found it was not structured enough; honestly I barely looked at it after I saw how laid back it was and I returned it. There has to be some middle ground out there. Any ideas?

[OhMeOhMy]

Forgot to add

While he hates to read (other than comic book style books), he loves math and is quite gifted in that way. So I would (probably??) keep him in the sixth grade R&S he does with his older brother.

[OhMeOhMy]

No one has any advice?

[Ruthla]

I'm not a big fan of coercing kids to do any formal schoolwork, so I'm most definitely the wrong person to ask about curriculums!

Just because OM wasn't structured enough in 2nd grade doesnt' mean it would be a bad fit now- maybe he now needs less structure so he can learn at his own pace?

[tallanvor]

My daughter has ADHD and we have to have structure. Not that we are super strict, but she has to has something. We use an actual math curriculum. We are doing our own thing for history, though. We have a basic set of books that talks about each state and after we read through for a specific state, Autumn picks out things that she wants to look at more in depth. For instance, when reading about Maine, maybe we'd learn more about lighthouses and lobstering. She seems to be doing much better on that than on the actual curriculum we were using last year. Last year was such a struggle trying to find the balance between structured and not too structured. We do, however, use an actual workbook for phonics/grammar and for handwriting, but once she has really gotten the hang of cursive, we will probably drop it. Science we just wing it. But my daughter is younger, so I don't know how much you can wing it. I have just noticed that while my daughter loves to read and can pick up a lot of information that way, she is basically a hands-on learner. Good luck finding something that works for you. Oh, and if we are having a day where it is just really a struggle to get her to do anything, we just skip it. Now, obviously you can't do that too often, but if it's just taking forever to get her to do her math, sometimes we just skip it. Or handwriting, or whatever. I figure one day here and there isn't going to hurt anything.

Crystal

[frogguruami]

We NEED a schedule but I have found that the boys do better when they are able to make their own schedule. So I told them what needed to be accomplished in a week (one unit of math, 5 chapters of reading, etc.) and let them sit down and draft the master schedule. Turns out they knew best. They didn't want to do math everyday so they decided to do it all in one day. (That didn't work well but they now have it split into two days instead of 5). History they wanted to do two days in a row, etc.

We now work on a "block" schedule were we do one main topic each day and very little else. The fewer transitions has helped us.

[lakesuperiormom]

do you mind my asking, what curric. are you using? here are some ideas my mom used with us. (our fam now uses oak meadow,sonlight and enki mixed);
history-if your not anti-tv, we watched documentaries on history...i preferred reading to watching, but me eldest sister didn't enjoy reading.our library has alot of them so that would be an option. do you have any historical places in your area? could your child volunteer at one and learn in that way?

science-again documentaries are a good one. we don't use science texts instead we "live" science and explore it. could you offer him a choice of something science related to research and then have him "present" it to you in his choice of report, journal,using a tape recorder and taping what he has learned, use a camcorder and make a show about local animals in their habitats or whatever.

math-you're sticking with that so no worries there.

english-what are some of your child's likes? this would help on this one.

okay, i'm outta ideas at the moment and i've had my wisdom teeth removed today and my pain killer is waining!