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Is your homeschool more structured or less structured than when you started?


Compared to when you first started homeschooling, your current homeschool is  

1 member has voted

  1. 1. Compared to when you first started homeschooling, your current homeschool is

    • more structured.
      71
    • less structured.
      37
    • about the same.
      28
    • more structured in some areas and less structured in others.
      40
    • Other
      0


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I started out as a gung-ho by the book Well Trained Minder. We burned out in about 2.5 seconds. It was really, really bad. It took me about 3 years to recover. In that time I tried many, many different curriculum. I switched us up so much that my two oldest girls are way behind.

I had a revelation last year that TWTM way is a great thing, but I had to structure it to fit my family. Since then our homeschooling has been very structured, but in a way that fits my family.

I make sure we do school everyday and even squeeze some in on Saturday morning while dad's at work. I raised my expectations on what I want our school work to look like and have seen some serious improvement in my kids.

A lot of times in the past we'd go one or two weeks with "no formal schooling". We don't do that anymore. We do take a day here or there due to other stuff going on, but it's rare now. I try to make sure we get something done everyday.

I answered more structured in some areas, less in others.

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Much more structured. I started out following an 'unschooling' philosophy (it seems to be the most popular approach here in the UK). After three months I found TWTM, and for the past two years I've just become more and more structured. It's what works best for us and enables us to make the best use of our time (and keeps energetic, overly-bouncy boys out of trouble :tongue_smilie:).

 

Best wishes

 

Cassy

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More-I'd expected to be a really hands on, exploratory, read on the couch homeschooler. Instead, I have a 7 yr old who, the more it looks like "School" the more she likes it-so she has a desk, books, folders, cute little sticker charts, bulletin boards for "good work" and so on. She even got a school uniform for Christmas, which she pulled out to wear to co-op today and show off :). I was thinking Montessori with some Charlotte Mason, and she's happiest with something closer to Abeka. Go figure.

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More structured--partly because we started off HSing in kindergarten (not a lot of structure needed there!), partly because I was still working nearly full time with only P/T childcare, so we were totally going by the seat of our pants. But my mindset and goals have grown more structured over the years as well as I've seen what it takes to keep ME on track, let alone my kids.

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We are just beginning this journey and so haven't much experience.

Last year was K, very simple and not too formal.

This year is 1st and so more structured.

I expect we'll continue to get more structured as my kids get older, at least until we get to the point where they can do more independent work.

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We're moving towards more structure, but only because my children are getting older and there are more of them--I always planned for academics to be more structured as they got older, and the complexities of a growing family require a greater degree of structure all around.

 

That being said, I'm never going to be super structured--just not my style. We need just enough to keep things working smoothly!

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We've become more structured as my son got older. I heard early on that this couldn't be done. If you start out unstructured you'll never get your kids to accept structure is what the veteran homeschoolers told me. I ignored them and followed my instincts, and haven't had a problem. Ds understands that as he gets older and his studies become more serious, his school day needs to be more structured. YMMV.

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I had a revelation last year that TWTM way is a great thing, but I had to structure it to fit my family.

 

I think a lot of people have trouble with this. Even SWB would admit that every family is different, and while she feels some things are necessary you still have to make the method fit your family not the other way around.

Edited by floridamom
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I think a lot of people have trouble with this. Even SWB would admit that every family is different, and while she feels some things are necessary you still have to make the method fit your family not the other way around.

 

:iagree: I always tell people that when I recommend the book.

 

Even though my littles don't have a lot of subjects required of them, we still do phonics and math every day. In my unstructured days we had no organized programs of any kind, let alone formal lessons in basic skills subjects. Structured to me means set standards and a commitment to accomplishing certain tasks. Even if a younger child doesn't have a lot of tasks, it's still structured.

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We became official homeschooling when dd started K. That makes this our 4th year as hs'ers. We really haven't changed the structure much. A few curriculum changes, a few schedule changes as dd has gotten older, but about the same in terms of structure. BTW, I read WTM before she started K, which I follow for the most part.

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I started out trying to do "school at home" when my boys were young...after lots of reading and trial and error, I went to a more unstructured approach when dd was young...now as she is getting older, it is becoming more structured with a lot of interest based learning so still not "school at home" but not as unschool-y as when she was very young.

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About the same. However, it hasn't always been that way. Our journey has had ups and downs. But I was very serious about homeschooling because I was just starting out. I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right. Now, my kids are in high school and we are definitely taking this seriously. Assignments must be done as they are presented. We take very few shortcuts. The major difference between then and now is that I had to keep up with recording everything in the beginning and now I'm with a correspondence school that does it all for us. But we had many times during the past 11 years where we didn't take things seriously and just floated along.

 

We have a set of subjects and a plan for what gets done on each day of the week. I would call that very structured, at least for us.

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I just feel a lot more organized now.

When we first started, I was all over the place.

Now I have a better feel for how long things take, and what our priorities are.

We're very structured - tight 6 hr schedule.

I even have a full year plan - subject by subject - of what we need to get done each week to be able to finish all our work.

Whatever doesn't get done during the week has to be done on the weekends,

so that we don't fall back and have to rush to finish everything at the end of the year.

 

I like the sound of "relaxed homeschooling", but I have no idea how it's done.

Edited by Xilka
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I started out a gung-ho unit study, hands on, living books, no workbooks, no textbooks kind of person. It took a lot of planning and teacher involvement. When I hit 3 kids, I gave that up. Now we are an eclectic workbook, textbook, living book, history cycle homeschooling family. Planning is much more easy and stress free for me. Only occasionally do I feel guilty that my youngest kids aren't getting all the hands on experiential stuff that my olders did. Then I get over it.

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Much more structured. At one time I thought it wouldn't be necessary. That was before I knew I have a kid who will struggle with the most basic academic skills, and who really needs structure and "external motivation" to learn them. That certainly changed everything.

 

Now I bristle when other homeschoolers tell me I should relax...he will get it when he's ready...love of learning...passion...blah blah blah....right. BTDT, woke up, smelled the coffee, came to terms with the reality of the kid I am teaching. Soul-searched, thought hard about what I want to give him, what will help him the most, what I can't in good conscience leave undone, etc. I decided that being able to read, write, do math, and having a good work ethic, high expectations of himself, and proactive work habits were at the top of the list. I realize that the people who tell me to relax do not feel they have any real reason to be concerned about those first three by the time their kid is 18. I wonder, if they did believe they had real reasons to worry about those basic skills, would they still be so relaxed ?

Edited by laundrycrisis
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I started out as a starry-eyed almost unschooler, too. (I always used a math curriculum; know my weakness). I've tightened up quite a bit over the years. I really don't even agree with the idea of unschooling anymore.

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We are much more structured now.

 

I started homeschooling when my oldest daughter (now 23) was 13 years old. We actually pulled her out of our local public school to cyber school her here at home. I didn't know anything about homeschooling, never even heard of it before until we moved to our farm and met a family across the way who homeschooled their children. I decided to start out slowly and try cyber schooling, since it seemed as if I wouldn't have all the work of planning and scheduling on myself. I was very new and nervous and cyber schools seemed like a good choice for our family at the time. Cyber schools were very new back then and their were only one or two of them. The one we picked was not able to handle the number of students they took on, work was never put up and the teachers were constantly quitting or not able to keep up with all the students.

 

We then switched to homeschooling after 6 months of a terrible cyber experience. I had several little ones then and was pregnant and so to make it easier for us I had my daughter do a computer homeschool program (Switched on Schoolhouse). She did well, graduated and went on to college, but I wanted to do more hands on work for my younger children. I wanted to be more involved in what they learned and to actually teach the subjects myself. I wanted them to have a better math and english program then what I felt my daughter recieved through SOS. I felt much more confident in being able to homeschool and no longer felt as if I needed a program to hold my hand like Switched on Schoolhouse.

 

Then we found TWTM and I became very gung ho on teaching the children myself. We use TWTM as our guide, we do not do everything, but we do a large portion and my children are doing great. So we found something we really like and that works for our family :001_smile:

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A relatively small pendulum swing here. Less, then more, now a little less in certain things.

 

But some of this is relative. Those of use who started with littles... I mean, I would hope pre-K and K were less structured for most people as a matter of course.

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Way less structured. We started out with the school room, desks actually purchased from the school district, and the pledge said every day. While our workload is greater it is also more efficient. You might see me doing a reading lesson with one child, then hopping over to read Life of Fred with another. It is amazing how school can get done while one lays on the couch with a sibling playing Legos close by. We are often don't start until after 9, and yet done by early afternoon. Content is greater, structure is less.

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I started out a gung-ho unit study, hands on, living books, no workbooks, no textbooks kind of person. It took a lot of planning and teacher involvement. When I hit 3 kids, I gave that up. Now we are an eclectic workbook, textbook, living book, history cycle homeschooling family. Planning is much more easy and stress free for me. Only occasionally do I feel guilty that my youngest kids aren't getting all the hands on experiential stuff that my olders did. Then I get over it.

 

:lol:This describes me. Exactly. ;)

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Our structure has only increased slightly with each added child. I realized sometime around Ds#1's k year that he NEEDED structure, as in, could not properly function without it. I had always thought our schooling would look a little more organic, but it is not what he needs.

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