Working alone, together or with mum?

[ajjkt]

I am trying to work out how to organize our day and want some suggestions. I have a DS7 and DD6 that I work with, and a DD3 and baby that are underfoot. DS7 and DD6 work best when I'm working with them. I need to have some time that they work independantly so that I can do an individual activity with just one of them, or to see to the 3yo or baby.

 

There are some subjects I combine: Shurley Grammar, flashcard SWR phonograms, SSL, WW3000. The kids listen to each other read aloud. We've ordered Plaid Dad's new memory book and that will be done together. They each summarize a story book daily that we snuggle on the couch to read. We do RS4K or Noeo (alternating) for science, and SOTW together.

 

We have been using MUS as our spine for maths which works very well for my DS but not so well for DD so I think we'll add in RightStart (B and C respectively) but I hear this is very teacher intensive. I feel that the MUS is over and done in under 15 minutes each day, and that due to the level we are working at that its reduced to drilling facts before we can move on to achieve mastery.

 

They do SWR seperately and I can't combine b/c they are on different lists. They do 10 minutes copybook work for handwriting, and write a dictated sentence or two.

 

They do a reading comprehension exercise such as Mc-Calls or one of the EPS books such as Making Connections. These are partly independant and partly done with me, depending on the difficulty and the book.

 

At the moment it maths and English takes around 2 hours depending on how well they concentrate, but I'm expecting that to increase with adding in memory work and changing to adding in RightStart. I don't count history and science in our school work time as they love doing those and see it as a fun activity. We like to do a lot of our reading out loud stuff in bed before we get up. I still haven't worked out if we're better off doing the together stuff first or last.

 

Sorry for the long post.

[rafiki]

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[Cindyg]

Our school day is organized into "independent work" and "together" work. Now, my son is older than your children; but I think we started this system when he was around 8.

 

I make a printed lesson plan that is pretty detailed. The independent work is actually color-coded on the lesson plan. He knows what videos he's to watch, what pages he's to read, and what worksheets he's to complete. Then, there's a portion of the day that we do together.

 

A key to this working is that I pull out the worksheets once a week and file them by day. So all of Monday's worksheets are in one stack, all Tuesday's are in a different stack, etc. I generally write right on the worksheet what pages he's to read in his textbook before doing each worksheet.

 

Of course, I'm around for the entire day, so if he doesn't know how to proceed, I'm right there. But the truth of the matter is -- there is a good portion of the day that he can do independently (though he might not feel like it!)

 

Hope that gives you some ideas.