Tell me...How do I make it work for us?

[Eleni]

My kids were hs'd until this school year. My husband felt it was the best option for a few reasons...

1) from 10/2008-1/2010 my mom had Leukemia and it was a very hard, emotionally draining rollercoaster ride of of a time.

2) Jan 2010 I started college

2) two weeks after starting college my mother died.

 

Looking back I am amazed I did not crack. :confused:

 

Anyway...I am in a place where I feel much stronger and whole again. My kids have been in school for several months and educationally, I am ok with it. I have some nitpicky issues. My biggest problem right now is negative peer socialization issues. Nothing HUGE just the typical age segregation issues, relational aggression between girls (which I can't believe happens in 1st grade!)

I asked my kids what they like about school and they said:

A predictable schedule

Lots of math

Homework (seriously????)

and yummy lunch choices.

 

I asked what they liked about homeschooling

The kids are much nicer

More free time

all the field trips

activities that we did

 

So..Im not a math lover...and schedules..I think they want to kill me. :glare:

 

My kids want more academics and a schedule they can live by. Next school year I will have a 5th,4th, and 2 grader.

Can I do this....and HOW????

:bigear:

Edited April 2, 2011 by Eleni

[Starr]

You can do this. I would cross post on the ed board for more specific info.

[Peela]

I think routines and schedules are virtually essential if you are going to do any kind of structured learning. But they are not prisons- a daily routine and schedule can still be thrown out the window on occasion for a spontaneous event- but the schedule and routine are what holds everything together and stops you just lurching from one day to the next in chaos. You can achieve things- and school just gets done day after day with little effort, but there is plenty of time for other things too.

 

School does provide a certain structure and security for kids, especially when home life might be too chaotic for their nervous systems to properly relax.

 

Maths is important- its not my favourite subject either, but the foundational years are important. We always started every day with maths, so that it just got done, and while we were all fresh.

[AK_Mom4]

I'm not much for schedules, but my DD9 LOVES having her assignments written down in a planner each day and checking them off. Her older brother was the same way. We have plenty of flexibility in our day, but she also knows that when she finishes what's written in the planner, she is off to free time. I let my dd9 pretty much set her own schedule and choose what she wants to work on next. Maybe you can do the same thing with your two older ones? That would give you more time to work with the younger one (and still do all the fun stuff!)

 

With kids who WANT to homeschool, you can definitely make this work!

[MamaSheep]

So..Im not a math lover...and schedules..I think they want to kill me. :glare:

 

My kids want more academics and a schedule they can live by. Next school year I will have a 5,4, and 2 grader.

Can I do this....and HOW????

:bigear:

 

That bolded part is SO me. We're using Math U See right now for math. The kids are learning, and Mr. D on the DVD is my hero because he explains things so well that I don't have to try. Yay! I watch the video too so I know how he explained it and what exactly they're supposed to be doing, but then I can just hand them the lesson page, and mark it after they turn it in. I heart MUS. And I've learned a bit from it myself. I wish someone had explained math to me that way when I was a kid, I think I might even have enjoyed it.

 

Anyway, as far as schedules and 'more academics' go, I've found that a 'routine' works better for me than a 'schedule', and workboxes help with getting the academics organized and done. I can never seem to manage to live by a solid schedule. No matter how good my intentions something ALWAYS monkey-wrenches the whole thing (although it might work better now that Mr. Autism is a little older...then again, puberty is setting in big time). I can NOT do certain things at certain times of day with any consistency. I just can't. And then I feel GUILT. Which doesn't help.

 

A routine, on the other hand, I can do. That just means that we do generally the same things in the same order each day. We have breakfast and clean up after it, and then we usually take a small break. On nice days we might go for a walk. Then we have a chunk of school, which usually includes the "skill" kinds of subjects, like handwriting, spelling, reading, writing, and math. For some reason my kids just focus better on that sort of thing in the morning. Then we have a lunch break. Then we do another chunk of school in the afternoon, which is usually either science or history (I've found that both on one day makes us all nutty) and a session of something kind of creative--poetry, music, art, literature, or electronics (one per day of the week so that we (theoretically anyway) hit each one once a week). Friday afternoon is "project day" and library.

 

BUT - I don't "schedule" any of this at any particular time of day. Some days breakfast might be at 7:30. Other days I don't get things pulled together until 9:00. And that's ok because it's a "routine", not a schedule. Some days math takes half an hour, and some days everyone is finished in ten minutes. No problem, we just move on to the next item on the list. Somehow this works for me, whereas a "shedule" throws everything into cranky chaos.

 

Maybe something like that would work for you?

 

P.S. I've also found that it works best to do as much together as we can. All our afternoon work is done together--science, history, and all those creative things. I have an 8th grader and a 3rd grader this year, and I was worried it wouldn't work out, but it's been fine. We read about the subject together, and then ds does a little supplementary reading, and then they each write about the topic at their own level, or do a project or whatever. Some of what we read is boring for ds, and some is over dd's head, but they each get something out of it and it seems to work out just fine.