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What subjects do you find you never get done?


kristinannie
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I have been HSing for a couple of months and have realized that I have only done 2 lessons of Artistic Pursuits and 4 lessons of RSO Earth and Space. These were two of the curricula that I was most excited about using! My history/geography has turned into a unit study approach though so we do a lot of arts and crafts and science (mostly about animals and weather) in that. Honestly, I bought the supply kit for RSO, but there were some things that weren't included and the first several lessons are serious pains in the butt (making rain gauges, wind gauges, etc). I just can't seem to get to it. I love Artisitic Pursuits, but don't know why it keeps getting pushed aside.

 

I have also only done one lesson of Making Music Praying Twice, although we listen to the music in the car all the time and sing along. I think it is a pain to have to look in the book to find the pages and numbers for the songs. I wish it was set up easier.

 

What do you never get to? Hopefully I am not alone in having this problem!

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Music & art. Last year I got away with not doing every science experiment by having the girls watch the Discover & Do DVD. I bought another one this year, as it corresponds pretty well to the science in MFW.

 

I'm hoping that Latin & typing don't bite the dust - they'll be Rebecca's last subjects.

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music, art,

 

Well, mine used to be Latin until I moved it to first in the day.

 

Definitely art!

[snip]

So basically, anything that requires me getting stuff out and having to clean up afterward. :tongue_smilie:

 

:iagree: I gave up on music a long time ago. We have the Music Masters CDs & the girls like to put them in to listen to them in their free time. My #2 LOVES art, but I haven't been able to get it done consistently since #2 was in K. I've got the materials now & am making it a "when I'm busy, take out the art stuff & do it until I can get to you" project. We'll see how it goes.

 

Prima Latina sat on the shelf for two years before I got to it. We did it right after lunch last year & that worked great. Now, it'll be just 'part of our day.' (HOPEFULLY!)

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Artistic Pursuits. I find it hard for me to jump around from project to project, especially since both my boys are into drawing and painting. Therefore, for the fall I will probably break up art into instruction and relegate appreciation to an "as time allows" basis.

We don't have formal music, but we listen to a lot of classical music since I enjoy it in the house and in the car. But I'd like to do more.

What gets bumped the most would be Science, mostly because it is always the last subject in the day and we get tired. I pretty much have decided to just read, read, read for science and take as many camping trips as we can this fall with Earth Science in mind. I find that when I've got a science lesson planned--That is, book picked out, worksheet planned for and created and coloring picture ready, that I can't seem to get there. I've worn myself out in the planning!

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I used to skip all the extras like Spanish, art, music, labs. Once I started doing a loop schedule it helped IMMENSELY. We still skip stuff occasionally because I just don't feel like doing it or don't have the supplies (working on these two things this next year ;)), but overall the loop schedule fixed most of it.

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We weren't getting to History and Science as much as I wouldd have liked at the beginning of last year, so I followed the suggestion of a WTM member and did ONLY Science and History on Friday. I thought for sure it would throw the rest of our topics off, but actually, because I knew that Friday was reserved for those topics, we could focus more easily on Math, Writing, Latin etc on the other days. I schedule about 2.5 hours or more for History and 3 hours forr Science, both on Friday. This year, my oldest will be doing 30 minutes of Latin in the morning on Friday, but it shouldn't interfere too much with our flow. By putting those two subjects on Friday, it really allowed us to relax and "get into" the topics, without feeling rushed.

 

Art is all all-the-time thing around here, plus hubby is an artist so he brings them to his painting studio often. He has about 15,000 art books so they spend a lot of time going through them and talking about them. I do a lot of crafting with my kids (not enough for their liking, however!) Composer studies will be done once a week this year, using Stories of the Great Composers. They also take piano and music theory outside the home, and younger (and perhaps older, not sure) will start an Music afterschool program run by a homeschool mom for 3 afternoons a week while I work. I may actually be able to slack off on Composer Studies if I feel she's doing enough in that department.

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Art, music, science. Does watching Horrible Histories count as history? I hope so, since that's all the history that's gotten done around here in the last couple of months.:tongue_smilie:

 

We just started poetry memorization again. It's going sporadically.

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  • ... any "new" French in a long time, but the girls do use what they know -- colors, numbers, shapes, body parts, family members, and their "French" names. ;)
  • ... any Composer Study or Artist Study in while, but I did have Mendelssohn playing in the background all quarter and books about Rembrandt lying around. Can someone say passive? :D
  • ... any Handicrafts in a while, but then they did have crafts at their VBSes. Do paper crafts (that end up in the trash) count? This weekend, we'll get to the bean bags, I promise. :lol:
  • ... any Sign Language, but the girls have been using what they do know in natural conversations with people at church. Wonderful!

OTOH, we have been making strong, steady progress in English, Math, Music, Bible, Geography, and Science. Not bad for summer time, I think. :thumbup1:

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It used to be art and science until we switched art to Monday and roped in another family to join us (harder to fudge off that way ;)) and now science gets handed to the children to be done on the 2 days they are allowed some computer time ... after scheduled learning is done :D

 

Spelling is the lesson we still find the very easiest to walk over the top of (sad, because one dc really NEEDS it!).

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Music, art, and science. This past year, I picked "bad for us" history programs, so that didn't get done either. We're going back to SOTW for the upcoming year, so history should get done. I'm still a little worried about science though.

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Art and science! :-) Last year was our first year and I didn't even bother doing art. Figured I'd at it later. We will being starting Artistic Pursuits this fall so we'll see how that goes. As a general rule, anything that requires lots of materials and setup, I tend to avoid. So I mentally have to discipline myself in this case that it's inevitable. Can't really do art without materials and setup. Planning to do it on Fridays.

 

With Science I ran into the same stuff you mentioned. Even with the kit, sometimes the activities/projects can be dreadful to me. (not to my kids of course.) I would suggest, if there are a couple right up front that are a pain, just move past them. Probably not the end of the world if your kids miss those 1 or 2 activities. And they're better off moving forward and doing something as apposed to being stuck and doing nothing right? You just have to tell yourself you're not going to let yourself off that easy every time. :-) Only on those especially annoying projects. :-)

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I love Artisitic Pursuits, but don't know why it keeps getting pushed aside.

 

It keeps getting pushed aside because you have a three year old and a one year old! :grouphug:

 

That could explain why I haven't even looked at Meet The Masters since I bought it a few months ago! I'm glad I'm not the only one.

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Well I confess we never do ANYTHING as well as what I intend or dream up. In fact, maybe only once has something I've done lived up to my dreams. In that sense I don't get the tenet of the thread. We're NOT going to get everything done. The key is to stop every so often, change gears, and make time for something else. It's balance over the years, not over the months or days. I try to use May Term and odd snippets of time like that to hit something I've been neglecting.

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Art and music appreciation--I don't plan for these like I should.

 

Science gets done because we do history 3 days and science 2 days. However, not all the science experiments and projects get done, mostly because I don't like science as much as I like history.

 

Linda

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Though we read a lot in science, we never get around to handouts and projects/labs.

 

For some reason, we read and study art and music consistently. I think I just like reading books. LOL

 

For history, we have just been consistent with reading and mapping. The boys did a lot of hands-on for explorers and Japan. They'll do some for colonial America, Am. Rev, pioneers and Civil War.

 

Oh, botany lapbook should be fun, and I splurged and bought the botany kit from CBD because I'm still busy planning history and honestly didn't want to look around for items. I think this will help a ton.

Edited by nestof3
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We could never get to History, Science, Art. . .anything other than the 3rs for a very long time. Everything else was hit or miss. My best advice is either:

 

drop it and try not to worry about it, if your child is young.

 

or

 

put the hard to get done subjects first in the day. I will never end the day if they haven't finished math or reading, so those always get done, but it's easy to skip or put off the other things. Also, if you schedule on day per week to do a "fun" subject you might be able to accomplish them. ie: Monday is art, Tuesday is Science, Wednesday is music, etc. It frustrates me that most curricula contain more material than you can accomplish one day per week, but sometimes that's all you can get done!

 

Becky

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It depends what "getting them done" means, because if you're talking about a more relaxed way of study, then we get history done by listening to audiobooks, science done just by having DD read some books, and art done by having DD do the Masiello books. I'm becoming more strict in piano practice. For one week, we were really good at our history narrations, but that stopped because I had to focus on those CWPs. We use Apologia and it's a lot of reading for me, which tends to get pushed away for French or Spanish. I haven't even done WWE this week, but we tend to do 3 weeks worth of lessons in 1 week because DD loves those passages. We're quite consistent with math, Latin, languages, and usually WWE.

 

Sometimes I wonder if the kids in PS are doing more than what I am giving to DD. I haven't done FLL in a few weeks.

 

ETA: Is this confession time?

Edited by crazyforlatin
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