Feeling overwhelmed

[LauraClark]

I see these "feeling overwhelmed" topics pop up periodically and haven't really ever paid much attention to them. Up to this point in our homeschool journey I have been pretty confident (with periods of uncertainty that resolve themselves). But, this year it's my turn to type up one of these topics: with my 7th grade I am feeling increasingly anxious that I am messing this up.  Highschool is just around the corner. I am feeling like there are major holes and that I just don't have time to work one on one with him for everything.  He's pretty independent, but he doesn't know what he doesn't know, ykwim? He is a slow worker, so I know that's part of the problem, but he's smart and compliant and any issues that we're having I think have to be rooted with me. But, I also have other kids that I'm trying to do school with too. School takes him from 8:30-4 most days and some of the output is, frankly, not good.  He knows the material if I sit down with him, but his output (tests, papers, math homework) is just not at the point I think it should be. I just feel like the year is rushing forward and I can't get my feet under me to stop and help him understand anything -it's always "on to the next thing" and we just leave the poorly done assignments in the dust behind us. Any veterans want to chime in with ideas or encouragement? And thanks in advance for reading yet another one of these topics!

Here's a typical M-Th weekly schedule (we try to use Friday as our catch up and to do a couple of more fun things):

LA
-Reading good books. I require 30 min a day, but he often reads more than that. Reading is a subject I'm not worried about. I also purchased a Progeny Press guide for one of the books we're doing this year. I thought it might be good to work through one of those.
-Spelling. Takes about 15 min and we're doing Dictation Day by Day. No complaints here - this seems to be working well. I may stop doing it next year since he's a pretty good speller.
-Grammar: 15-20 min/day in theory. Analytical Grammar.  We just finished year 2 of the 3 year cycle.  We'll be doing the reinforcements once every 3/4 weeks. I plan to fill our grammar time with Figuratively Speaking - it will get us talking about some of these terms and reading some short stories and poetry, which we haven't done much of up to this point. 
-Writing: my nemesis... He loves to write, in theory. We're doing the old Writing Strands level 6. He does pretty good with that.  I've also started this week reading through Essay Voyage (MCT) with him because the essays that he's done in other subjects have been pretty bad. I don't plan to assign any of the writing from the book, just read through it together. I'm aiming for about 20 min of WS a day. However, he usually waits until the day before a WS paper is due and then spends all day doing it.

Math: Saxon 8/7. I go over things that he got wrong the previous day and the new lesson for 10-15 min and then assign the evens. I think it's a good system. His scores aren't great, but it's mostly minor mistakes. I think we're going in a fine direction with this.

Logic: We're reading through part of World Religions and Cults together. He reads a chapter a week and we discuss. No output required. It's a little advanced for him...I'm thinking about putting it aside until high school and doing a more traditional logic course.  He is just really interested in other religions, so I thought it would be fun to do together, but it is a lot of extra reading each week.

Science: We're doing Berean Builders, a chapter every 2 weeks as recommended. I make him take notes and assign him a test at the end of the chapter. We're starting to get into the habit of taking notes and seeing why it's important.

Language: We're doing greek 2 days a week for 15 min and Latin 2 days a week for 15 min. It's slow progress, but that's fine with me. I think he enjoys it and it doesn't take much time. My high school plan is to have him use his greek knowledge to translate for his Bible study. I don't have thoughts on using Latin for high school - it may just be a good base for studying a modern language.

History: We're doing a geography year - a new country every 2 weeks. This is another area I'm struggling with. I want him to research the country on his own (our library is terrible so it's mostly online research) for several days and write a paper. (We're also labeling a map, writing some general information about each country we study (major religion, leader's name, currency, etc), looking up recipes from the country (and cooking them with a friend), and playing a game from the area.) This has potential to be such a fun experience, but the 45 min of daily research is yielding very little in notes and his papers are not good. Online resources are hard to find and many of them have ads which is very distracting to him. I've been trying to sit with him during the research part of this but, again, 4 other kids...

Piano: 30 min of practice. This may be the last year that I "make" him do piano - I think he would like to not be required to practice every day. 

What can I cut out? Is this too much? Not enough? Is this going to figure itself out like all of our past problems have?  

[caffeineandbooks]

I don't have any advice, more some commiseration that I'm in a similar boat.  Your plan looks reasonable to me - but like you, I'm finding the tricky thing is not just the 7th grade work, but juggling that alongside everyone else's.  And I only have three!  Things that are helping me are being sure to check each subject each day (avoids unpleasant surprises on Thursday night!), making sure he eats well (rapid growth = brain fog) and limiting activities to after 3pm - even "school" activities like the book club and logic group.

For comparison, if it helps, my 7th grader's plan is similar to yours.  Morning time, an hour of math (independent), Writing With Skill 2, Science in the Atomic Age, modern world history (SOTW plus K12), Art of Argument (with friends), Keep Going With Latin, monthly book club, reading list, sport.  I'm willing to stretch science over more than a whole year if needed, and Art of Arg will take the whole year even though it could be done faster.  Spelling and grammar were a bridge too far and we're not doing any.

Looking forward to hearing what advice some more senior boardies have for you, because I could use it too 🙂

[LauraClark]

@caffeineandbooks thank you for the commiseration. It does help to know I'm not alone. And helpful to know you're not doing spelling or grammar-maybe those are things I can remove too.

[8filltheheart]

I think 8:30-4 is too long of a day for a 7th grade boy.  Everything you have looks fine individually, but all together it is a lot.  I would personally drop logic and Latin (if Greek is your higher priority.)  Maybe finding a geography spine might be helpful.  Maybe something like Usborne's geography .  In just skimming the site, it looks like it offers suggested links.  That might be a place to start and then let him expand out from there.   Or maybe something like this geography book (looks like you can get used cheap).  Maybe something like that combined with a Thinking Tree Journals. 

In terms of writing, I wouldn't have him writing essays if he isn't a strong writer.  I'd have him focus more on factual report style writing.  You could have him create a booklet on each country with goals for specific days.   Most 7th grade boys aren't known for being highly motivated academic writers.  🙂  You could make it more interesting by having him pretend to be a traveler keeping a diary or a news reporter reporting events, etc.  Pick out specific things you want him to learn more about and have him research more about those things for bigger writing assignments (religion, architecture, terrain, biography of an individual, etc.)

Edited September 30, 2023 by 8filltheheart

[Lori D.]

Agreeing that it is too long for that age.

Alternate a few subjects, so not every subject is done 5x/week, and the days where 1 subject done, you skip the alternating subject. Examples:
- Geography 3x/week and Grammar or Figuratively Speaking 2x/week
- History and Science, each 2x/week and the 5th day, for one or both finish off a section, or do the writing for one of them, or do bigger projects / activities / field trips / hands-on / documentary or video for one or both subjects

Do a few subjects as "units" -- especially to get in topics of interest to DS
- Logic as a 12-week unit, and then 2 other 12-week "elective" units of something HE would really like to do -- electronic kits, baking, wood-working, learning survival skills, writing comic strips, robotics, or... ??? 

Ideas for what to cut:
- Foreign Language -- drop one
(even though you're not spending tons of time per day on this subject, learning languages take a lot of brain power, and you'll get more return on your 15 min/day by focusing on just one language; since you have a plan for Greek and none for Latin, you could consider dropping Latin)

- Grammar
looks like you are already cutting back since you're finishing the cycle for this year

Ideas for what to adapt:

- Geography
Rather than formal paragraphs, how about a "passport travel journal". He just jots down bullet points. Or 1 sentence observations. Or personal reactions ("Mt. Everest -- tallest mountain in the world!! I'd love to see the view from the top!"). Just a few informal notes on things he found interesting about the country. Add the marked map to the "journal". Sometimes sketch something of interest about the country if he would like that -- like, "kangaroos and koalas live only in Australia" -- sketch a koala and a kangaroo. Also, what about getting a country flags of the world sticker book, and that can be the passport "stamp" he adds to the page (or 2 pages) about the country?

- Writing
Totally agree with @8filltheheart's great suggestions. Since you're already having him regularly do note-taking for Science, and writing about Geography. If you really need/want a writing program, only do ONE -- EITHER Writing Strands OR MCT Essay Voyage. But frankly, I am in the same camp as @8filltheheart here, and would drop any formal writing programs this year and let writing be fun and interesting to DS with the kinds of projects 8 suggested, or other writing that DS would like. Piling on 2 dry, formal writing programs on top of already required weekly writing for other subjects sounds like there's a good likelihood that it will kill that love of writing that you said he has. 😉 JMO!

Edited September 30, 2023 by Lori D.

[SilverMoon]

Too many little things, even the most worthwhile, have wreaked havoc on our daily schedules. If it can't somehow fit in one of the bigger boxes of the core subjects or a specific elective, I've gotten quite ruthless at cutting it out. Something about not letting perfect be the enemy of good should go here but I forget the quote. 🙃

My neurotypical kids were ready to drop spelling by 5th-6th grade and just review rules as needed in their writing. I aimed to have grammar wrapped up by or during 8th. This can also start moving to just review at needed in their writing. 

Logic/world religions: If he enjoys this why not just slow it down? Smaller bites. Make it fit in your schedule instead of making the schedule bend for it. Treat it as an elective course. Fwiw when I added Art of Argument for mine we didn't have room for another elective course so I made it squeeze into their writing block. It's obviously not writing but it did improve their writing. 

I'd also pick one language and do daily bites. It's just more effective to do one really well than to graze multiple, in any subject. 

Geography: Your description made me wish for more clearly defined fences. 🙃 My particular boys (7th and 10th) would be overwhelmed with something that open ended and would need so much hand holding they'd grow to strongly dislike it.  Maybe a list of specific items to find for each country? Or provide a stash of spines instead of such wide open research? My 7th grader is also doing world geography this year. He has several DK encyclopedias and various around the world books (poetry, creation myths, architecture, etc) that I scheduled out for him so he's only reading in a couple each day. He didn't care for the Crash Course geography videos, but Geography Now on YouTube is working well. A big chunk of his assigned literature in English is from around the world as well. 

[Ting Tang]

On 9/29/2023 at 2:06 PM, LauraClark said:

I see these "feeling overwhelmed" topics pop up periodically and haven't really ever paid much attention to them. Up to this point in our homeschool journey I have been pretty confident (with periods of uncertainty that resolve themselves). But, this year it's my turn to type up one of these topics: with my 7th grade I am feeling increasingly anxious that I am messing this up.  Highschool is just around the corner. I am feeling like there are major holes and that I just don't have time to work one on one with him for everything.  He's pretty independent, but he doesn't know what he doesn't know, ykwim? He is a slow worker, so I know that's part of the problem, but he's smart and compliant and any issues that we're having I think have to be rooted with me. But, I also have other kids that I'm trying to do school with too. School takes him from 8:30-4 most days and some of the output is, frankly, not good.  He knows the material if I sit down with him, but his output (tests, papers, math homework) is just not at the point I think it should be. I just feel like the year is rushing forward and I can't get my feet under me to stop and help him understand anything -it's always "on to the next thing" and we just leave the poorly done assignments in the dust behind us. Any veterans want to chime in with ideas or encouragement? And thanks in advance for reading yet another one of these topics!

Here's a typical M-Th weekly schedule (we try to use Friday as our catch up and to do a couple of more fun things):

LA
-Reading good books. I require 30 min a day, but he often reads more than that. Reading is a subject I'm not worried about. I also purchased a Progeny Press guide for one of the books we're doing this year. I thought it might be good to work through one of those.
-Spelling. Takes about 15 min and we're doing Dictation Day by Day. No complaints here - this seems to be working well. I may stop doing it next year since he's a pretty good speller.
-Grammar: 15-20 min/day in theory. Analytical Grammar.  We just finished year 2 of the 3 year cycle.  We'll be doing the reinforcements once every 3/4 weeks. I plan to fill our grammar time with Figuratively Speaking - it will get us talking about some of these terms and reading some short stories and poetry, which we haven't done much of up to this point. 
-Writing: my nemesis... He loves to write, in theory. We're doing the old Writing Strands level 6. He does pretty good with that.  I've also started this week reading through Essay Voyage (MCT) with him because the essays that he's done in other subjects have been pretty bad. I don't plan to assign any of the writing from the book, just read through it together. I'm aiming for about 20 min of WS a day. However, he usually waits until the day before a WS paper is due and then spends all day doing it.

Math: Saxon 8/7. I go over things that he got wrong the previous day and the new lesson for 10-15 min and then assign the evens. I think it's a good system. His scores aren't great, but it's mostly minor mistakes. I think we're going in a fine direction with this.

Logic: We're reading through part of World Religions and Cults together. He reads a chapter a week and we discuss. No output required. It's a little advanced for him...I'm thinking about putting it aside until high school and doing a more traditional logic course.  He is just really interested in other religions, so I thought it would be fun to do together, but it is a lot of extra reading each week.

Science: We're doing Berean Builders, a chapter every 2 weeks as recommended. I make him take notes and assign him a test at the end of the chapter. We're starting to get into the habit of taking notes and seeing why it's important.

Language: We're doing greek 2 days a week for 15 min and Latin 2 days a week for 15 min. It's slow progress, but that's fine with me. I think he enjoys it and it doesn't take much time. My high school plan is to have him use his greek knowledge to translate for his Bible study. I don't have thoughts on using Latin for high school - it may just be a good base for studying a modern language.

History: We're doing a geography year - a new country every 2 weeks. This is another area I'm struggling with. I want him to research the country on his own (our library is terrible so it's mostly online research) for several days and write a paper. (We're also labeling a map, writing some general information about each country we study (major religion, leader's name, currency, etc), looking up recipes from the country (and cooking them with a friend), and playing a game from the area.) This has potential to be such a fun experience, but the 45 min of daily research is yielding very little in notes and his papers are not good. Online resources are hard to find and many of them have ads which is very distracting to him. I've been trying to sit with him during the research part of this but, again, 4 other kids...

Piano: 30 min of practice. This may be the last year that I "make" him do piano - I think he would like to not be required to practice every day. 

What can I cut out? Is this too much? Not enough? Is this going to figure itself out like all of our past problems have?  

I have a 6th grader, and I understand… writing is the hardest subject for me to teach, so I’m thinking of outsourcing our feedback. I am looking at Write at Home for an 8 week class or Outschool. I’ve been worried we are not doing enough on our end. I have three other learners, and it’s just hard to be everything to everyone. I do think having someone else handle writing feedback will help. Maybe this is an option for you? 45 minutes of geography research does seem like a lot as does your school day. Doing two languages could be tricky? 

[Shoeless]

On 9/29/2023 at 2:06 PM, LauraClark said:

I see these "feeling overwhelmed" topics pop up periodically and haven't really ever paid much attention to them. Up to this point in our homeschool journey I have been pretty confident (with periods of uncertainty that resolve themselves). But, this year it's my turn to type up one of these topics: with my 7th grade I am feeling increasingly anxious that I am messing this up.  Highschool is just around the corner. I am feeling like there are major holes and that I just don't have time to work one on one with him for everything.  He's pretty independent, but he doesn't know what he doesn't know, ykwim? He is a slow worker, so I know that's part of the problem, but he's smart and compliant and any issues that we're having I think have to be rooted with me. But, I also have other kids that I'm trying to do school with too. School takes him from 8:30-4 most days and some of the output is, frankly, not good.  He knows the material if I sit down with him, but his output (tests, papers, math homework) is just not at the point I think it should be. I just feel like the year is rushing forward and I can't get my feet under me to stop and help him understand anything -it's always "on to the next thing" and we just leave the poorly done assignments in the dust behind us. Any veterans want to chime in with ideas or encouragement? And thanks in advance for reading yet another one of these topics!

Here's a typical M-Th weekly schedule (we try to use Friday as our catch up and to do a couple of more fun things):

LA
-Reading good books. I require 30 min a day, but he often reads more than that. Reading is a subject I'm not worried about. I also purchased a Progeny Press guide for one of the books we're doing this year. I thought it might be good to work through one of those.
-Spelling. Takes about 15 min and we're doing Dictation Day by Day. No complaints here - this seems to be working well. I may stop doing it next year since he's a pretty good speller.
-Grammar: 15-20 min/day in theory. Analytical Grammar.  We just finished year 2 of the 3 year cycle.  We'll be doing the reinforcements once every 3/4 weeks. I plan to fill our grammar time with Figuratively Speaking - it will get us talking about some of these terms and reading some short stories and poetry, which we haven't done much of up to this point. 
-Writing: my nemesis... He loves to write, in theory. We're doing the old Writing Strands level 6. He does pretty good with that.  I've also started this week reading through Essay Voyage (MCT) with him because the essays that he's done in other subjects have been pretty bad. I don't plan to assign any of the writing from the book, just read through it together. I'm aiming for about 20 min of WS a day. However, he usually waits until the day before a WS paper is due and then spends all day doing it.

Math: Saxon 8/7. I go over things that he got wrong the previous day and the new lesson for 10-15 min and then assign the evens. I think it's a good system. His scores aren't great, but it's mostly minor mistakes. I think we're going in a fine direction with this.

Logic: We're reading through part of World Religions and Cults together. He reads a chapter a week and we discuss. No output required. It's a little advanced for him...I'm thinking about putting it aside until high school and doing a more traditional logic course.  He is just really interested in other religions, so I thought it would be fun to do together, but it is a lot of extra reading each week.

Science: We're doing Berean Builders, a chapter every 2 weeks as recommended. I make him take notes and assign him a test at the end of the chapter. We're starting to get into the habit of taking notes and seeing why it's important.

Language: We're doing greek 2 days a week for 15 min and Latin 2 days a week for 15 min. It's slow progress, but that's fine with me. I think he enjoys it and it doesn't take much time. My high school plan is to have him use his greek knowledge to translate for his Bible study. I don't have thoughts on using Latin for high school - it may just be a good base for studying a modern language.

History: We're doing a geography year - a new country every 2 weeks. This is another area I'm struggling with. I want him to research the country on his own (our library is terrible so it's mostly online research) for several days and write a paper. (We're also labeling a map, writing some general information about each country we study (major religion, leader's name, currency, etc), looking up recipes from the country (and cooking them with a friend), and playing a game from the area.) This has potential to be such a fun experience, but the 45 min of daily research is yielding very little in notes and his papers are not good. Online resources are hard to find and many of them have ads which is very distracting to him. I've been trying to sit with him during the research part of this but, again, 4 other kids...

Piano: 30 min of practice. This may be the last year that I "make" him do piano - I think he would like to not be required to practice every day. 

What can I cut out? Is this too much? Not enough? Is this going to figure itself out like all of our past problems have?  

What I would drop: spelling, reading through MCT Essay Voyage, either Greek or Latin (which does he like better? I'd be inclined to drop Latin since you don't have a plan to continue in high school), and logic/world religions since it's over his head and taking up a lot of time. You already have a writing program with Writing Strands, so MCT is doubling up, even if you don't do the assignments. If he really wants to read about world religions, I'd incorporate that as part of his geography and get books closer to his level. 

We used MCT grammar and poetry in 7th. I stopped using the writing portion once we got to the Essay level because I thought it was so painfully dull. I'd focus more on improving the quality of what he's currently writing vs charging forward into essay writing. 

I'm torn on piano. If you don't plan to make him continue for much longer, then you might as well drop it entirely now. But...I also know that if you nudge them through the murky middle school years, sometimes they find a new love for music in high school and keep going. 

[8filltheheart]

I'm in the minority. My 7th graders still need spelling.

[Shoeless]

2 minutes ago, 8filltheheart said:

I'm in the minority. My 7th graders still need spelling.

Mine was a natural speller, so I dropped spelling very early on, like 4th-ish grade, and gave him a dictionary. 🤷‍♀️

[SilverMoon]

My current 7th grader definitely still needs spelling. He's dysgraphic though and it's likely going to high school with him. The older kids were doing well enough and just done with it. 🤷‍♀️ 

[LauraClark]

You guys, this is so helpful!  That was a very long post and I appreciate you all taking the time to read it and offer suggestions.

One of the issues is I'm expecting things without giving clear directions - Geography was pretty opened ended (which I thought he would like, but I think it was too wide open). Yesterday I worked on making more defined things to research each day including where to find the information (books, specific sites - I found a couple without a ton of ads) (I forgot to mention @8filltheheart that I do have a Geography book - one that @Lori D. had recommended - there are just some things that it doesn't include, like current information [written in the 90's]).  So I'm going to be having him make a book for each country rather than write a paper - it will have clearly defined areas (like History, Arts, Food and Etiquette), with much less writing than a paper. I made an example for him, and he thought it would be a good change.

I asked him about Latin and he wants to keep it. 🤷‍♀️ I also asked him about putting the religions book to the side until high school but he wants to continue.  @SilverMoon good reminder to make the curriculum work for us. I'll start breaking the religions book into bite sized reading each day, for starters, and not try to do a chapter a week. I was aiming for discussion of the chapter on Thursdays, but there is no reason to not just discuss it when we're done - whether it takes a week or two or three.

I still need to think through writing.  Up until this point I have really liked Writing Strands.  But, looking ahead to high school makes me wonder if this curriculum will prepare him for high school writing. I'll be looking at that today. One thing that I think will help is making sure he's doing the daily assignments in Writing Strands rather than trying to complete the paper by a given date - again, bite sized pieces.  I guess I was hoping that he could figure out how to break things into bite sized pieces himself, but maybe 7th grade is too early to expect that.

Maybe I can alternate spelling with figurately speaking. I really don't think he needs spelling every day (dh wanted to keep spelling this year if we can) - my next child, however, may need spelling up through 12th...  We're starting figuratively speaking this week, so I'll see how it goes.

And I'll think more on piano. I really hate to have him give it up because it was so good for me, but I know he's a different person...

Thanks again, everyone (including those I didn't mention by name). I'll be rereading the suggestions many more times.