My 8 year old son is homeschooling for the first time this year. He liked school until last year in PS when he had "the yelling teacher" and several classmates who teased him every day. I brought him home and generally things have been going well. Our big issue is his bad attitude. He complains about getting out of bed, he tells me he hates school, he cries about having to do math and dawdles endlessly. It's annoying because he constantly talks about how much he likes our literature, history, spelling and science programs and begs to do them. He even asked if we could continue our literature/history through the summer (Sonlight). OK, so math and grammar aren't his favorite subjects but he still needs to do them and my patience with the constant whining, crying, complaining and dawdling is wearing thin. I've tried rewarding for good attitudes, letting him choose the order of work, and talking to him about why he needs to do some subjects that aren't as fun, but I'm not making an impression. He does NOT want to go back to PS. Any ideas?
Perhaps you can tweek the way you teach the subjects that he doesn't quite like? Make those more 'fun' for him? I'm sorry, I'm not much help...however, I have an 8 year old and he tends to have an attitude as well, so I can somewhat relate. I really think part of it is the age. Hang in there!
I 'third' this post -- 8 year old boys can have BAD attitudes!! What curriculum are you using for these 2 subjects? Maybe he just needs a different curriculum or even just a different time of day to do them. I know my DS does not do well when he has to to school past 2-3 in the afternoon, even if it was his fault for begging to wait until after lunch to do his work! LOL
Glad to know it is not just me! My 8-year old son balks at math--sighs, slumps over the table, & dawdles. I've stopped sitting in the room with him when he is completing a worksheet because if I am there he finds a million things to complain about. When I leave him, he finishes his work in record time in order to move on to something else. I've stopped making him "do math" daily. Instead, there are days when math is playing Yahtzee, money games, dominoes or something else that he enjoys.
I know math is very important, but no one said it had to be in a workbook! Board games are great for learning math skills, as are computer games and even living life! Yesterday we measured the depth of the snow around our yard and he had to figure out why it was deeper in some places than other, then he measured the diameter of the snowman segments, then later when we made cookies he measured out all of the ingredients himself. No book learnin' that day, but plenty of knowledge of gained. Have you tried any computer games? Or even try doing just 1 page a day and add a fun activity that's related to the concepts being studied?
Maybe he isn't getting the math. Or he is overwhelmed with what seems to him to be a lot of questions. I too have a son who is 8 in a couple of months. He is a chair slumper. lol And sometimes I just have had all I can take and ask him to leave the room until he is ready to work. And it works. I have also had him do his work on a whiteboard when he is having a hard time. For some reason it seems to make it more enjoyable for him. But even knowing you aren't alone in your frustration may help
Try Verbal Math (www.mathlesson.com) and back off from the workbook. The first several pages of VM are available for free for both lessons, give it a whirl...
8 year old boy and attitude? Um, yeah Sounds familiar. I send my guy to his room until he can leave his attitude behind. If he takes awhile I let him know that for each minute he takes it costs him precious Wii time. I would watch to see if you think the math program may be too easy or too hard. It is okay to speed up or slow down if you feel he needs it. Also, he may do better having school later on if he is one who likes to sleep in. We usually don't start school until 10 or 11.
Maybe I do just need to find a way to make it more fun. He hates to write so now I let him do spelling by building the words on the refrigerator with magnetic letters. He went from whining about spelling to enjoying it. I just looked up some games and activities to make math more fun and I think I'll try some of them.
I was also going to suggest using a white dry-erase board.... for some reason it makes all the difference to my son! LOL You could just write some problems on it and let him work them out like that. Or even let him write the problems, too.
I'm in Pecangrove's court...BUMP the workbook and try games. My daughter (who also hated math) loved the games we played from the book Games for Math by Peggy Kaye. Because she was one of those learners that wanted everything to be "fun," it was a bit of a challenge to motivate her. The Peggy Kaye books really turned the key!
I second everyone on this thread who mentioned making math fun, play some math games or find the math element in things he really likes and focus on them. (eg. If he like collection cards and bought one pack a week for $2 how long would it take him to get 100 cards and how much would it cost him?) Whatever he's into there should be some kind of math element if you dig deep enough.
