I'm a first time homeschooler and we are in the middle of our third week. Things have gone well and my son is much happier than he was in public school. I've noticed that the incessant whining is gone and many of the nervous habits he developed last year are decreasing. I like the curriculum I picked and my son seems to enjoy most of it too. The first week we went to the fair (which fit in with our reading of Charlotte's Web) and last week we went to the Natural History Museum (which reinforced what we've been learning in science). The problem? It's just not as fun as I believe learning can and should be. We've been using Sonlight for history and literature and, much to my surprise, my son absolutely loves reading time. However, our history reading has fun craft/art projects that we never seem to have time to try. My son's favorite subject is science and we could really go in depth, but there's not enough fun and experimentation. I've been adding more experiments and lapbooking and he likes those, but he really struggles with writing and doesn't like to fill in the little books or papers. Yesterday we were doing cards on endangered animals and I found some tiny pictures online with information under them. I let him pick some to cut and paste onto the cards rather than writing the info and he was much happier. On Fridays, we skip some other subjects and do art and music (and we'd like to add German). I also want to add in some short studies on autumn or holidays for a change of pace. The big issue is phonics, grammar, spelling and writing. As I said, he seems to struggle to write so these are his least favorite. All the curriculum we use has short lessons, so it's more a matter of just getting it done, but it seems to be more "school at home" than I want. I read about a family that tried a form of block scheduling and I wondered if this might be a better option for us. Has anyone tried spending longer on a single subject? My son is only 8, and it seems most people prefer short lessons for younger children. I'm just thinking that we could do less subjects each day for a longer time and add more hands on stuff that relates to subject. Maybe I'm just trying to do too much and I need to slow down and not worry about finishing my curriculum in a year. Can any experienced homeschoolers give me some advice?
There is no rule that says you have to follow your curriculum word for word. If you do history twice a week, do the reading one day and the project the other day, or spread it out read one day do a project the next, then read more on that subject the next and an activity the next and so on... You make the curriculum work for you not you working for the curriculum. Don't have him do so much writing if it bothers him do oral exercises or let him cut and paste things instead of writing, let him write on a dry erase board instead of paper, give him paper and a paint brush (tiny tip) and let him paint the answers. I have also found that some subjects I have to be more creative with than others to make it fun. For grammar I made up a "go fish" kinda game for the parts of speech, make up games to keep it fun, take out the writing part for a while, do it orally, if you want him to write a story for example, let him tell it to you and then you write it down, then let him proofread it. Let him type instead of write if you can, Get a cheap typewriter and let him sit at the table and type out his answers instead of writing them on paper.
We do something similar to what you describe. I started off using Sonlight and found everything so quick. I love taking time to go off on tangents and go in depth in a subject. For subjects like history, science, geography and bible we slow down and dig deep with lots of hands-on activities. Some days we can spend hours on one subject and then not do it for a week. Subjects like language arts and math are more regular. You can see our schedule here.
I think writing and an 8 year old boy is so very normal! Is there anyway to let him type or TRACE? My son doesn't mind tracing as much as he does writing. I can't find the link right now, but my kids learn typing using typepad (google it) , so my son likes to type things a lot....and I do let him. I like lapbooks too - and find the same for my son - he hates all the writing. So I do let him type it. Or I write it for him and he has to trace over, or I write it for him. I feel like, if he's learning, it's not so important to me that he's doing all the writing himself. Yet. This year my son is 8 going on 9, and he's just now sorta "got" the handwriting thing and doesn't complain too much anymore.
everybody's first year is like this. you will find your groove eventually. don't stress about it not "feeling right" just now. Some people feel like they wasted a whole year trying to get it right, but it's really not a waste at all. I'm in my fourth year and I still frequently tweak my program.
We take time off from Calvert to do hands on learning that is centered around what the lessons are teaching. I posted this before but I’ll give you an example. Last year Calvert talked about Egyptians. What we did was prepare an Egyptian feast. We made invites and clothing and prepared food similar to what the Egyptians ate. We were still following the program but we improvised. Another example is when they talked about lakes and ponds. We took a day off and went to the stream and collected samples. Then we took them home and studied them in the microscope. This year they talk about states and capitals. DS learned his in 3rd grade. So I’m not going to spend much time in the books with it. Instead we are going to hit the road. We will be going to NY, to see a play and study the state, NJ, Boston, and possibly Maine this year. We are also going to a crystal mine to dig for gems, when we study rocks and crystals. If you have the extra funds this can really add fun to learning. When you use curriculum sometimes you have to improvise or it just becomes school at home.
