Homeschooling II

Younger dd (age 9.5, 4th grade) meanwhile has begun the work that she can do without my direct involvement. Each year there is more and more of this kind of work on her schedule! For Language Arts she is working through the Explode the Code series and completes a Daily Gram page 3x/wk. Each day I give her a list of words to spell from Sequential Spelling, Bk 1 and we do a lesson together 3x/wk from Simply Grammar. This year she is not using any formal handwriting program as I feel her penmanship is quite good already and she does enough each day anyway.

There's a lot of back and forth between the 4 of us as they do their work, ask questions, need guidance, get up and go use the computer for something, get a drink, I fix a treat (something baked usually), someone takes a break and plays with the dog, the phone rings, an argument or misunderstanding arises and feelings and relationships need to be attended to... etc. etc. It's pretty loose. Our goal is to be done by lunchtime or shortly thereafter. At home we often needed to be running off to the rink after lunch so there was that natural endtime. Here we just work until we're done, sometimes it is mid-afternoon, especially on those days when we've gotten off to a slow start.

Math is one of the subjects where younger dd still needs a lot of mama-involvement. I've settled on the Singapore Math series for K-7. Years ago when ds was young he used Miquon Math workbooks and both he and older dd have also used the Key to Curriculum series. These both worked fine for ds but not so great for older dd, so a few years ago I looked around for something else and found Singapore. She used that for several years and now has moved on to the Teaching Textbooks series with no trouble.

So anyway, usually I spend a few minutes going over the day's lesson with younger dd (we can go pretty fast through it since there's only one student in the classroom and if she gets the day's concept she can go right to the workbook). Then she works on the workbook pages for the day. Some days this goes quickly, some days it can drag on for what seems like hours! When she was younger (not so much this year) and was struggling with her math I would find it helped her to give her an incentive like "if you can do half of the problem without my help and you get them all right then you don't have to do the rest of them". Or she'd need to go outside and run around when she got wiggly from sitting still for so long. Or, I'd let her sit in my lap while she did her work, that often helped her calm down and focus.

Partway through the morning ds appears briefly, having completed his two math lessons for the day, his Spanish work and his science lesson. (When there is an experiment or demonstration he does this in the kitchen so we see him then... actually at home he does all his work in the kitchen with us so we see more of him than we are seeing here in SB where he's chosen to do the bulk of his work in his bedroom). Ds began using the Apologia series with their 7th grade text. This year he is doing the Chemistry course.

When he appears it's as he's on his way down to the basement to practice guitar. And/or have a Pop Tart or some other such thing. We set up the basement here in SB as a multi-purpose area -- one room has in it the guitar and amp, a treadmill, and a weight bench and weights. The other room has a TV & DVD player, puzzles, and games. We got some funky, all-different-colored, low seats and a low table that's perfect for puzzle-doing, game playing, and snacking. It's a fun room and I especially like the fact that movie-watching can go on away from the main living area. ( We don't have TV reception here but have been enjoying DVDs.)

More later...