At-Home Blues

[Wind-in-my-hair]

We took a break from our schooling for awhile. We had been doing light work all summer, but just felt that we needed to focus on manners and social skills for awhile. Also, I have been doing this for a year and I just don't feel confident.

 

We decided to sign up DC for piano lessons, and he is such an ideal student in that context. We are awesome parents when it comes to holding him accountable to his practice schedule, and encouraging him, and fostering his respect for his teacher. To me, it made me feel relief that my son was being taught by someone else, and that made me feel guilty! 

 

I am really bummed. I just feel down, I have to admit. I am bummed that my 6 yo seems to be doing fine, thriving even, with our lessons on hiatus and the piano lessons going smoothly. I feel guilty too for not towing the line, but at the same time, this break really allowed him to develop a better, should I say, personality. He has been so mature, much more compliant and helpful, more expressive and attuned to detail, when our focus has been off academics. I almost am reluctant to shift back, and not sure how I am going to make the transition. 

 

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

 

 

not sure how I am going to make the transition.

 

Slowly. :)

 

It does them good to have a break to let things sink in, but someone around here coined the term "tidal schooling" for good reason. There are times to cruise and times to hit the books.

 

 

To me, it made me feel relief that my son was being taught by someone else, and that made me feel guilty!

 

Ugh. Don't feel guilty over something like this. I'll bet everyone enjoys the relief of someone else teaching the kids something if they're doing a good job!

[73349]

Might it be that it's not time off from academics, but maturity that's at work here? My own 6YO has grown up so much lately that I suspect it's the age.

[mamaraby]

Ugh. Don't feel guilty over something like this. I'll bet everyone enjoys the relief of someone else teaching the kids something if they're doing a good job!

This.

 

I happily drop my kids off at homeschool gym and classes at the nature center. I don't hang around while the classes take place. They say drop off and I take them at their word. Their teachers are great and I'm more than willing to let them do the teaching. It's a nice break for me. :0)

 

Just because you homeschool doesn't mean you have to do it all. No need to feel guilty. You found a great teacher to teach your son piano lessons - that's fantastic!

[PeterPan]

I went back through your 100+ posts, trying to understand where you're coming from here.  I don't hang on K-8 much, so I'm not as familiar with you.  :)   I don't know if this is welcome or not, but I wanted to toss out some thoughts.  

 

You've struggled with things newbies always struggle with.  It sounds like you're making progress in his reading.  I agree the "reading is easy, you're behind if they're not reading by x age" thing really does some people a disservice.  My dd didn't begin reading until almost 6 AT ALL, would never sound out anything, and she's a BRILLIANT reader now, super fast, off the charts.  (lots of testing, always high scores)  

 

I was curious about something.  What is your background?  See, in some of your posts you sound very uncomfortable and unsure, and then in some of them you pop through with this info that reflects some sort of keen interest or career or whatever.  So I was curious what your background is.  :)

 

Also, you made a passing comment about having become attention deficit in high school.  Do you mean that *literally* or metaphorically?  I'm just asking, because if you are ADHD it would provide an important clue to your struggles.

 

I agree with the others that there's a lot of bloom that occurs at this age.  It's a GOOD sign that he's so healthy and happy when you're off school work!  It means your family dynamic is whole and satisfying to him.  It means he has an environment he finds stimulating and appropriate.  It would be concerning if he spent the whole time off saying he was bored, kwim?  My kids do, and there are reasons for that, lol.  So the trick then is to begin to slowly add things back in without destroying the sort of homeschool homeostasis, the equilibrium you've got going.  

 

You made this comment some time back:  "Would it be better to have him in school, and then spend real, quality time with him as a parent, rather than impose my will on him all day until he is so tired that he lapses into buffoonery and runs to his tribe?"

 

I was wondering if you've yet found the middle ground on that?  There IS a way to work together and find peace that has *structure* but is also *cooperative* between you two.  I think those two words would describe what I do with my dd.  My dd has adhd btw.  We need a lot of structure in our house, but we also have a lot of give and take, discussion, working together to decide how to approach things.  You can find a balance there.  It doesn't have to be all top-down, your will imposed on him.

 

If you yourself are ADHD, it dramatically increases the likelihood some or all of your kids will be.  It can add to impulsivity or anxiety with curriculum choices.  It can affect your need for novelty or your own boredom.  It can affect your own ability to create structure.

 

You've mentioned other children (an infant? now a toddler?).  I'd encourage you to fill out your sig.  :)  Sometimes when I get overwhelmed or feel like a failure, it's not so much that the job IS overwhelming as that I haven't been able to break it into parts.  Even something as simple as filling out your sig can help you with that.  Daily checklists, a daily plan, even just a routine you write down so you can see it can help.  1st grade is really an extension of K5, so you may not be doing as badly as you think.  :)

 

You have a LOT of good ideas and vision for your kids.  If you open up on what's going on, we can try to help you problem solve.  Fresh eyes and all that.  :)   And if you do have adhd or other SN going on and don't feel comfortable talking about it here, come hang at LC.  :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Wind-in-my-hair]

 

I was curious about something.  What is your background?  See, in some of your posts you sound very uncomfortable and unsure, and then in some of them you pop through with this info that reflects some sort of keen interest or career or whatever.  So I was curious what your background is.   :)

 

 

 

I have an eclectic education and not a whole lot of career experience. The passion you sense comes from my excitement to learn things I always yearned to learn when I was younger. I am learning so much as I go. I want homeschool to feel like whole-family enrichment. My vision comes from my awareness that I did not have to be a good student to be good at something like a career, or motherhood, but that education is itself a desirable pursuit. This totally clashed with the culture I grew up in and was schooled in, which put huge emphasis on college prep, and it turned me off.

 

With this as my background, to unschool my kids was my original vision, so that they would love learning and be good at their jobs someday, too. Then I read The Well Trained Mind and realized that adults could teach their kids soooo much more than they had learned in their school days, timeless and important, scholarly skills, while still reaping the benefits of having the kids home where they see how the "real world" works. This is all very rosy and of course I wanted to dive right into a new, more structured schooling style. And then I got to know this group and realized what a huge world it was and how many ways I could go with educating my children under the "classical" umbrella. To me, classical means learning for the sake of self-enrichment, even though I notice that many in this group are very keen on college prep and academically competitive. That isn't me.

 

I am going through a phase where I am starting to want to tailor my approach to what I believe will help us most. 

[PeterPan]

Yes, much of the books I read when I first researched homeschooling were the Moores (Better Late Than Early), Better Than School, etc.  My dh felt like that kind of idealism wouldn't get good results with all kids and didn't account for sin nature, natural laziness, etc.  However I agree with you that the two balance out each other.  If you go too top-down (WTM), you can inadvertently can squash, ignore, or keep them too busy for their own pursuits and drive.  

 

Sometimes they have perfectly valid ideas and interests that just don't happen to fit with SWB's four year plan.  For instance my dd spent last year reading about the Holocaust.  Not on the four year plan and it's not Great Books like the voices say you should be reading by high school.  Oh well.  ;)  Like you, we're not attempting to be competitive.  She is who she is and we're letting her become who she is.  I view my role as *facilitating* that.  Sometimes I do a little more, sometimes a little less.  It's a mix that works for us.

 

So although there *are* the uber-competitive voices on the boards, there are also other kinds of people.  I'd encourage you to find your mix there that works for you.  It doesn't have to be ALL top-down *or* all child-led.  It can be a mix.  I just read a post by LanaTron where she made the comment that she was a classical unschooler.  :)

[CardinalAlt]

I'm somewhere in the middle, too, I think. I outsource most of the extracurriculars, happily, and DD loves those times with other kids and experts in those areas. History and science are largely interest-led, with me feeding the interest at the library, with read-alouds, videos, field trips, suggesting and negotiating how she'll share her learning if it doesn't happen spontaneously (some kind of output, project or response). The 3Rs stuff is pretty top down, though I try my best to use and tweak materials to fit her interests, skill level, etc. I try to keep all of it reasonable enough in quantity that she has time and energy left for play, free reading, and projects of her own choosing. That's much less mama-directed stuff that I started the year thinking we'd do, but it really is the right amount for us right now and for my overall goals for her and our family culture. I do try to find small ways to give her choice, and try to remind her that what she considers boring practice helps her do stuff she considers more fun, like writing letters to Winter the dolphin and learning about science. But mostly it's just reminding her that this is our routine, let's get it done.

[Wind-in-my-hair]

I find myself reaching for a more relaxed approach to the three R's. I began homeschooling with the attitude that I would adopt a Waldorf-inspired approach, but when I read WTM I got nervous that my son would be illiterate if I did not emphasize reading skills. Now, I believe I am going to relax on the reading skills again, and just do the things that I know will encourage reading. One thing I like to do is point to a sentence or phrase and mispronounce all the vowels. My son will correct me, with a sigh and a chuckle. He knows its a game. I want my reading instruction to look more like a whole-language program, but the phonics will be there. More rhymes and games are necessary, and analysis of a poem or nursery rhyme will be the start of most our lessons. I am adopting a philosophy that places more importance on character and emotional maturation. I do not believe that everything has to be taught in the early years in order to solidify, but I do think that the early years are an ideal time to enjoy learning together, before the child's own interests overcome the parent's ability to teach (as is already beginning to happen to us with piano!). 

[wintermom]

I think we all go through changes as we figure out how and what to teach our children. Our children are learning and developing as we are learning how to teach them. It takes a while to find a balance that seems to work, and then when we find a great balance something always happens that changes things.

 

We're all "works in progress," children and teachers alike. We're changing, growing, developing, getting tired, finding new energy, getting sick, getting healthy again. We may go through years of high structure, and then a few years of less structure; years of teaching everything to our young children, and years of "farming out" lots of subjects to outside teachers/coaches/instructors.

 

Don't panic that you don't seem to have the next 10 years mapped out perfectly. No one does (even if they plan for it). Something ALWAYS changes, and that's alright. Be like a flexible bamboo plant that is strong and has endurance to survive outside pressures, and yet can be flexible enough adjust to changes. 

 

 

[ElizabethB]

My phonics concentration game:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html

 

Mona McNee's Cat Phonics, ideas for fun games about 3/4 down the page:

 

http://www.catphonics.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/contents.htm

 

My instructions for teaching a beginning student, with ideas for making it fun:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/newstudents.html

 

Also, doing their book work on the white board and letting them pick the color of marker makes it more fun. I would make sure that in making it fun you are not introducing anything that would cause more work and problems down the road. I have been a volunteer literacy tutor for 20 years and have remediated hundreds of students who have guessing habits from sight words and incomplete phonics instruction. Anything that leads to trying to read words as wholes or reading words that have not yet been taught phonetically can cause problems.

 

It takes so much more time to untrain guessing habits than to teach right from the start. I actually have remediated homeless inner city minority children faster than middle class children because they had no bad habits to unlearn.

[FO4UR]

I find myself reaching for a more relaxed approach to the three R's. I began homeschooling with the attitude that I would adopt a Waldorf-inspired approach, but when I read WTM I got nervous that my son would be illiterate if I did not emphasize reading skills. Now, I believe I am going to relax on the reading skills again, and just do the things that I know will encourage reading. One thing I like to do is point to a sentence or phrase and mispronounce all the vowels. My son will correct me, with a sigh and a chuckle. He knows its a game. I want my reading instruction to look more like a whole-language program, but the phonics will be there. More rhymes and games are necessary, and analysis of a poem or nursery rhyme will be the start of most our lessons. I am adopting a philosophy that places more importance on character and emotional maturation. I do not believe that everything has to be taught in the early years in order to solidify, but I do think that the early years are an ideal time to enjoy learning together, before the child's own interests overcome the parent's ability to teach (as is already beginning to happen to us with piano!). 

 

 

Have you read any Charlotte Mason?  You might find her philosophy your niche..or it might inspire some balance with Classical.  Book 6, Philosophy of Education...start with that book.

 

 

For now, at age 6, do a 15min reading lesson and send him off to play. Do a 15min handwriting lesson and then send him off to play. Do a 15min math lesson and then send him off to play.  Read aloud often, and enjoy your time with him.  End these (few) lessons before his interest wanes.

[Wind-in-my-hair]

Charlotte Mason and Webster's Speller are two resources I am adding to my tool belt. Thank you.