Help me please - Character, curricula or??

[NatashainDFW]

So I am trying to get back into some sort of routine now that baby boy is 6 weeks old but I am failing miserably. Part of the issue is DS7 dawdles so I get quickly burnt out redirecting him back to his work. Here is what we are doing right now:

 

MM3

BA 3A

Galore Park Junior English 1

WWE 1 (only doing half the assignments for each week)

Homemade handwriting to help with memorization of his bible verses for TeamKID at church

SOTW 1 with mapwork, notebooking pages and the color sheets {2 times a week}

CKE Biology (just starting this) {2 times a week}

plus he is working through a study of John 1-10

Reading Little House in the Big Woods and completing a lapbook to go along

 

I know this is a lot of handwriting but the more I assign it seems the better he is getting at writing legibly and he doesn't seem to mind writing.

 

Here is the issue - this can take him 8 hours on any given day because he plays with his pencil, his paper, his fingers..... He is extremely bright and could very well be moved up in math (passed the pretest for TT5) and language arts but I can't afford to go up in language arts curricula and I want him to have the practice of basic skills that MM provides. Please give me some ideas here. I need him on a schedule because his little sister (4) wants me to teach her to read, do math and learn to write her letters and I have been putting this off for months. On top of that DS6weeks is nursing on demand and he demands a lot lol. Our only outside the house commitments are scouts and teamKID on Wednesdays and church on Sunday. We don't have time to go do anything else because DS7 dawdles all day. So tell me do I make curricula changes (with zero money), do SOMETHING to get through to DS7 (and if so please tell me what) or ???????

[5LittleMonkeys]

Do you start the day with physical activity for him? Does he get any exercise throughout the day? Have you tried setting a timer? How about incentives?

 

My little guy works best when he's gotten some exercise first thing before schoolwork, and it seems he is more motivated to get done when he knows he only has a certain amount of time that he has to devote to something. If I tell him we are going to work on math until the lesson is finished it takes him forever, but if I tell him that we are only going to do math for 20 minutes and ask him if he thinks he can get the whole lesson done in that time he works much more quickly. Offering to do something he loves upon completing all his work helps too.

[NatashainDFW]

He is so reluctant to get hot. He has only started fighting going out to play since we moved in with the inlaws who think kids should sit in front of a tv all day. I am going to start pushing outdoor time for him right after breakfast and medication time.

[Corraleno]

Are you sitting with him while he works? How long does the baby nap? Can you set aside 2 hrs at some point in the day when you can focus just on him and help him get his work done quickly & efficiently? Two hours should be plenty for a 7 yo.

 

Can you do MM & BA on alternate days, and drop some of the busy work, like the SOTW coloring and the Little House lapbook? I'd drop formal science, too, and let him just read library books and watch documentaries on subjects that he chooses. Pare down to basics, schedule time to sit right there and do it with him, and then let him read and play and watch documentaries while you work with your 4 yo and tend to the baby.

 

Jackie

[NatashainDFW]

See the lapbook was something he chose and he only does BA on Fridays and I don't assign the color pages I just print out two and he colors one sometime during the week. His sister colors the other. I have no control over the tv so documentaries are not an option which is part of why I chose CKE that and the library has nothing but junk. I am not assigning a lot of work each day he just takes forever to do it.

[NatashainDFW]

I am wondering if it just bores him but if so what do I do from here. He tends to dawdle on math and language arts

[serendipitous journey]

Okay, here's my thought: I'd focus on the dawdling primarily. Tell yourself that the curricula are the vehical for character formation rather than the other way 'round. Also, if you cannot afford more challenging or interesting materials, perhaps you could let the child know (if you haven't) that this is the best you can provide right now, and you need his help to work together and make good use of the things you do have. I am not suggesting a guilt trip at all -- but, rather, encourage him and then praise him for helping your family by making good use of his materials.

 

0. hugs! It is so hard with a tiny one & a preschooler, too. And in the in-laws house. I'm on the outs with my own MIL right now ... Be kind to yourself.

 

1. Don't assign a Dawdling-Prone Subject unless you can supervise (more or less) and be around for, say, 10 minutes. Keep the work SHORT. If you must leave and cannot supervise, then tell the child he can step away from the work and do something else; OR let him know how much you expect to be done when you get back from, say, changing the baby's diaper.

 

1a. say again: keep assignments SHORT. Break them up into 10-ish minute chunks at least until his focus is better.

 

2. Enact consequences. Sometimes I save the not-done portions for "homework"; sometimes I let him know that if he completes a certain amount of work accurately and in a timely manner -- some portion of a standard assignment --, he can stop there; but if it takes him longer, he'll have to do the full assignment. Rarely, he gets a time out. I do explain to him why it's important to learn to work hard -- so you can get those parts DONE and move on to fun stuff.

 

2b. as soon as you notice a dawdle, have the child run around. If not outside, then do 5 jumping jacks, or toss a ball toward some goal (or roll it inside) a few times, or race his sister down the hall, or something.

 

2c. Enact praising. Be so effusive in your praise of his hard work; brag on his good work to everybody; when he works well, THANK HIM for his careful/hard work. Give lots of hugs.

 

3. Try to give the child work in chunks that can be finished within 10 minutes or less if he works hard. Then set a timer for about 15 minutes or so, and let him know that when he finishes his work accurately & well he gets to play for the rest of the time. You can save a preferred activity or computer game time for this -- TV is hard for such a short time; if you need to use TV as a reward, perhaps you could save all his "extra minutes" for the day and apply them to a TV experience at the end of the day. Or maybe TV is not a good motivator b/c the inlaws make it available so easily ... Worst case: 1 M&M per extra minute. Just kidding! (or maybe not ...)

 

4. Do the most dawdling-prone stuff first each day. Or maybe first after a brief fun item, if that works better.

 

5. If he is bored in math, that is not good. For each MM assignment, assign him 1/4 - 1/2 of the problems, and let him know if gets 80% or so correct he can skip the rest (NEVER go above 90% correct as your standard -- you are trying to teach the child to accept a challenge, not to be a perfectionist).

 

5b. Similarly for language arts. Take a day's assignment in Galore Park and cross out 1/4 to 1/2 of it -- I use diagonal pencil lines for this in case I need to erase them later -- and have him do the remainder. If he is making too many mistakes that are careless, assign the crossed-out bits perhaps. If he is making actual errors, stop the work and have him do the crossed-out bits the next day. You don't need him to move through LA at a particular pace right now, you just need him moving forward-ish and learning to work hard.

 

6. When you have a bit more energy, perhaps look at the MEP math to beef things up. Or try it now. MEP takes about 45 min/day as written: you don't need to all of it every day. You could just cycle through the problems as they come up, stop when you must and pick up the next day.

 

7. Don't assign the language arts for handwriting practice; just use handwriting for that. Do as much as you can orally, and for the handwriting, sit down with the child for 5 - 10 minutes a day and help him make every letter if necessary. see 7b for how to do this ...

 

7a. interesting, free language arts: KISS grammar; 8FilltheHeart's writing program (posts 33 and 34, I think). Just an idea; KISS can be confusing, though, at first.

 

7b. While you have a baby, pick just one Critical Item at a time. For us last spring it was handwriting. In math & spelling we just puttered along with a minimum, everything else got done as possibie, but I sat down with Button for 5-10 minutes each day and helped him write every little letter until he could do a nice job. If my tot fussed, I set him in the crib for those 5 - 10 minutes. Now I probably wouldn't do that with such a tiny baby as yours; but with one that small, perhaps you can just wait until the first nap of the day, or hand off to an in-law or a husband, and then immediately sit down and crank out whatever the Critical Item is. If you work on anything for 10 focused minutes a day you will make substantial progress over a month or so. If you do this, just let your older child know what the plan is so he's prepared.

 

8. If he doesn't like running around outside, will the inlaws let him do an obstacle course 'round the living room? do three loops under & around the dining room table? just asking ... or put on some music and dance for a song to shake off the doldrums.

 

9. Have you considered a rotating schedule? Just come up with an order of subjects, and rotate through them. If you get two done on a day, pick up the third the next day. You can schedule some things more frequently in your list, and have one or two things you do first each day -- but for the rest, just cycle through them.

 

10. Do you have access to educational DVDs via a library or something like that? Perhaps you could manage to make much of the TV time educational? I know it's hard with in-laws, though.

 

and more <hugs>. hope some of these ideas help. I also want to thank you for this conversation/thread you've started, and the opportunity it has given me to reflect a bit on what is actually going well (our dawdling is almost entirely gone!!! I hadn't noticed!) and what needs improvement (I should do MEP with Button -- he really likes it -- and praise him more for all the things he gets right) So thank you, and blessings.

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

My advice, add in more breaks. My 8 yr old needs lots of breaks to keep her mind on school....sounds silly, more breaks to get school done faster , but it works. I also make sure to pair a writing intensive subject with a reading intensive subject. We usually do 2 to 3 subjects then a 15 min break. She also knows that dawdling during school time means less break time, and knowing she just has 2 things to do before another break makes her work faster. With all we do and all the breaks we still are finished no later then 1pm at the latest.

[woolybear]

I second the idea of incentives. Perhaps small rewards for each subject done in a timely manner (a sticker, an m and m?) and then a bigger reward at the end of the school day. That could change up. You and he could come up with a list of ideas--time at the park, you playing a game with him, adding up how many stickers (or whatever he got) and calculating how much tv time he gets based on that. For instance: each sticker could be worth 5 minutes. Incentives worked really well here and once the behavior was solidly changed, I no longer needed to use the incentives.

[Mommy to monkeys]

We deal with dawdling. . .daily, but there is NO way I could really address it while living with my in laws. . .or having any kind of company for that matter. I've actually tried to explain this to family. . .but I digress.

 

First of all, I think that you're doing AWESOME for getting anything done in that situation. If your situation is going to be somewhat temporary, I would scale back to focus on the habit of attention with your child. Then I'd make sure I'm doing math, copywork, and LOTS of reading. =)

[...................]

He's 7.

 

I would just cut out all the extra busywork with SOTW and just read and discuss. I would do just Bill Nye and Netflix documentaries for Science. I would do only one math program.

 

 

[NatashainDFW]

He and I talked about him earning video game time for working hard. I am going to set time limits for the subjects he dawdles in and see how that goes along with more breaks and some outside activity