Helping your tween enjoy school more

[momee]

What helps their day move along?

 

What makes them smile, enjoy learning?

 

She loves to read and is mostly compliant, I'm just looking for ideas to make school, I don't know, more fun?

 

This age isn't easy.

[Peaceful Isle]

One thing, that I did to help my dd10 with school, is that she helped me pick out her curriculum.

I would lay out a few language programs ( yes, I'm a hoarder! ) and then she chose the one that suited her the best...and so on.

It is working for us so far, seeing today is our first day of school :D, but I honestly saw a change in her spirit about school. In a way, she felt like she had some say.

I did this with math, science, language, and spelling. The other subjects were already chosen by me!

I know this way is not for everyone, but it worked for us.

[Hoot]

I let DS13 help decide on his co-op electives and then talked to him about the curriculum choices. I also let him pick his Free Reading books from a list I had already pre-made. The ones that he didn't choose we will either read as read alouds or he will listen to them on audio or they will be saved for future years.

 

I've also consulted him A LOT on scheduling. I was undecided on whether to do a little bit in all subjects everyday or to do longer amounts a few times a week. When I asked for his input he said he would rather do his daily subjects first and then have one long block per week for each of the others.

 

I try not to be rigid about some things. I have one child so I don't have to be so controlling about times and such. If he happens to need more sleep one day, we can always start school later and finish up later. Not a big deal. He's kind of excited about that this year.

 

Board games, movies, outings, cooking, video games etc.! We try to do something fun everyday.

[NanceXToo]

Our curriculum is one of the things that makes school fun for us. We use Oak Meadow which is not a dry or textbookish curriculum. There's a short lesson written directly to the student, with a lot of integration. So whatever they learn about for social studies, spelling and vocab words stem from that, literature is assigned based on that, any writing assignments are based on that (and there's always a choice of creative writing assignments), and there are lots of hands on projects, activities and crafts, and while I do not consider myself a crafty person, we've had fun with these!

 

We also do a decent amount of field trips and outings, we read together books that we both enjoy, we're active with our homeschool group, and so on.

[cmp3400]

The last 6 weeks of last school year I went back to being a participant in their school day instead of just an overseer. We listened to audio books together and then did small projects each day that went a long with what the book was about. That helped some, but I am excited to see what helps others!

[Holly]

My oldest is only 10, but she loves anything social...youth group, co-op, gymnastics, vbs, etc.

 

I recently let her pick out some handicrafts for this coming year...and tried not to cringe at what she picked. (robotics and wood carving weren't what I had in mind) ;)

 

I'm also not going to plan a lot of history activities this year...I want her to come up with some on her own or maybe offer some suggestions when she shows an interest on a topic. I want it to be "child-led" than "mommy-forced" if that makes any sense? :lol:

[dm379]

My dd gets to pick almost everything herself. I give her a few choices in each subject. She also gets to choose the order in which she does things, time she starts, where she does her work and anything else.