I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! As I'm gearing up to start back up with school this coming Monday, I find myself feeling dissatisfied with the way our school year has gone so far. Josh is in 3rd grade, Asher is in K, and Corban is 2yo. I never feel like we've gotten as much done in a day as we should, and I'm worried about falling too far behind. It's all a combination of Josh dragging his feet and always complaining of being "distracted", Asher not wanting anything to do with schoolwork whatsoever, and Corban just getting into the middle of everything LOL As a result, the only things actually making any progress are Josh's Math and Language Arts. Other subjects, like History/Geography, French and Science, consistently get pushed to the side. I've been tossing around the idea of dividing up our week so that we're only doing one or two subjects per day, in order to fit in all subjects over the course of a week. Has anyone else scheduled their weeks like this and had it work out ok? Or, any other suggestions are welcome!
We do not do that but I do know families that do similar things and it works out well. Math and LA are probably the only subjects that need to be done everyday. You could then do History one day, Science then next..... Does Josh have a quiet space where he can do his school work? Depending on what curriculum you are using you could probably set him up with some work in a quiet spot while you work with Asher. At his age Johs would be doing a few more subjects than Asher. With Asher I would look for educational games and his interests instead of doing alot of formal schooling. Have him do starfall on the computer or another educational game. That would free up time to work with Josh while Corban naps or something like that. Just remember to take it easy and you do not have to do a lot of formal schooling at these ages as long as you get Math, language arts and probably handwritting in. Hope that helps.
We do math and LA every day. Everything else gets thrown in when we have time. Works well for us. We usually do at least one other subject per day.
I do something a little similar. I count hours per subject instead of x number of times per week. So we may spend 2 hours on one subject and then not do it again for several days. I don't even do reading and math everyday (usually at least 3-4 days of the week though). You can see a link to how I have our schedule set up in my signature. I know what you mean about the 2 year old getting into it. Yesterday my 2 year old decided to make it snow in our school room with torn up tissue paper. Distracting for my boys, but I think learning to concentrate despite distractions is a great skill to have. I do rotating toyboxes with my 2 year old to keep her happy and less distracting -it works most of the time.
I just want to say that I feel your pain!!! I have no answers, but I will be gleaning from this thread! Our house is caos during school time. Everyone wants to be doing something at the same time, and my 2 year old is on a mission to destroy as much of the room as possible while I'm helping someone else.
We, like the other posters, do math, LA, and reading (phonics) every day. We do the other subjects 2days per week. I've tried that a few different ways. It works best for us to do say.. social studies on Mon and Tues, then science Wed and Thurs (Fri is usually review). That gives me a second day to cover something I missed on it's 'first' day, and also gives us a longer block to work on it- which is nice if I'm trying to sort of.. fast forward dd through info I want her famliar with but don't really require indepth knowledge of.. or if there is something that will take extra time (like our science work). And it's easier for me to keep on track since I remember what I told her the day before better than 2 days ago I've never tried to do them all every single day.. I think that would drive me a bit bonkers LOL. dd's attention span is about 15-20mins on any given subject, and then she tends to start talking and loses focus quickly.
I am thinking of doing something different this semester also. I would like to do just 3 subjects per semester, but I think math may be a little difficult to squeeze into 1 semester, so I am thinking about doing 4 subjects each semester. Something like this: January- May or June: math English science elective August to December math history elective and some English--maybe light depending on how well he does for the first part of the year I would also like to do some cool things for electives such as "Outdoor Living" class (kind of a manly home ec). I think we could incorporate things such as survival skills, health issues, and nature studies all in this type of course. I also want to find a community college class he can take to help him with mechanical learning. He wants to be in the military and I hope to help him take classes that can help him with the ASVAB.
If you haven't already, you might want to go to the library and see if they have test-prep books for the ASVAB. Then you can look through that and see if any particular courses or specific topics of study suggest themselves to you, to prepare for it. Obviously, the real test won't be just like the book, but still, topics or courses may suggest themselves to you.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I think I'm feeling more settled about how our upcoming term is going to go, now. We use SOS for Math and Language Arts. So Mon-Wed-Fri he'll do Math, and LA on Tues-Thurs. On the alternate days he'll do "fun math" (math games based on where he is in his SOS lesson) or quiet reading time working towards a book report/project. He'll have French every day (1/2 hour with Rosetta Stone). Mon-Tues will be science, and Wed-Thurs will be Social Studies/History/Geography, focusing on his upcoming Heritage Fair project. Fridays will be our light day.