In the cold gray armpit of the year, the homeschooling mother's thoughts turn to next year. Isn't that how it goes? Isn't it? Chorus? Anyone?
Okay, the answer is yes, and we all know it. It's those golden visions of plans unlived that carry us through the daily living of this year's reality-tarnished plans. So on this drippy Saturday morning, with one child at the gym doing air squats and swimming laps, and the others still in bed, because self-discipline is this terribly selective virtue, I find myself alone downstairs at the kitchen table, mulling things and occasionally getting up to reference the study shelves.
One of the nice things about cruising into your tenth year of homeschooling -- actually, one of the nice things about being more than halfway through your tenth year of homeschooling -- is that you don't have to create absolutely everything ex nihilo, as it were. We're on a roll here, a roll which has taken us, for example, through an Old World history course covering Mesopotamia, the ancient Israelites, Egypt, Greece (last year) and Rome (this year). So it's a given that next year in Old World history we'll pick up where the Roman Empire crumbles away. In New World history, things have moved a bit more slowly, so that after two years we're still as far as George Washington's pre-Revolutionary-War young manhood, but that's okay, since we've spread out sideways to look at things like the Seven Years' War, the discoveries of Australia and Hawaii, and the invention of the steam engine. So we'll get through Washington's death by the end of this year, to pick up with early-19th-century America next year. My aim is for the rising 5th grader, at least, to work his way through the contemporary era by the end of sixth grade. Then we can decide what, exactly, grades 7 and 8 should look like in this area (so far this has varied with each child), before we embark on our big Western Civ cycle in 9th.
In math, we've solidified addition and subtraction facts and are adding multiplication and division. Next year will be about solidifying those operations while introducing things like decimals and percents. The idea is to be ready for pre-algebra by grade 7, though whether people will go the Saxon route or the Teaching Textbooks route really depends on . . . lots of things, chiefly the student's ability, or lack thereof, to self-teach Saxon using the book, the instructional DVDs and Khan Academy, which is what the last pre-algebra student in my house did, to excellent effect. Either way, the coming 4th and 5th grade year for my primary kids will be about laying the necessary groundwork for pre-algebra and ultimately algebra readiness (but also about enjoying Life of Fred, which was a total winner this year as a daily read-aloud/mental-math exercise, and which we plan to continue).
For science this year we've done a nature read-aloud (The Living Forest, much enjoyed) plus Mary Daly's Introducing the Periodic Kingdom to Its Heirs, which we have not done as consistently, since our Thursdays, when I have it scheduled, are often abbreviated by outside activities and I tend not to reschedule this one as deliberately as I do any missed history reading, for example. We also watch a heck of a lot of Magic School Bus. Each child has also had independent reading for science: The Way Things Work for the current 4th grader, Thornton Burgess's Seashore Book for Children for the current 3rd grader.
In language arts we've worked on handwriting (always an evolving thing in this house, though it never seems to evolve as far as I'd really like, genetics weighing heavily against us here), so that everyone can write a more or less legible cursive hand, as well as -- when they slow down and try -- quite nice print. This has been, unusually for us, a workbook-heavy year in this area: a workbook for handwriting, a workbook for grammar, a workbook for spelling, which last we've never done before, and I don't think we'll do next year. The run through families of words and their rules has not been un-useful, and it's my aim to finish these books, but next year I'd like to keep only the grammar (CHC's Language of God series) and return to the use of copywork and studied dictation for penmanship, spelling, and the reinforcement of points of grammar introduced by the grammar text. What I want is to encourage both children to spread out in writing, to develop the habit of writing more and longer, more smoothly, and the way to do this without the added angsty burden of coming up with things to say is to copy and write from dictation. In my experience, a child who has done this consistently will transition pretty seamlessly from the stage of "asking me to write is like asking me to milk a turnip" to the stage of "Well, here's my twelve-page history research paper for you to proofread."
So I've been toying with the idea of Spelling Wisdom from Simply Charlotte Mason, though I think I could perfectly well replicate what this program asks for on my own, simply pulling copywork and selections for dictation from our reading, and/or from the selections offered in Laura Berquist's The Harp and the Laurel Wreath, which we've owned for years and consistently underused. I am really thinking I'll save my money for literature.
Incidentally, I like this piece on Charlotte Mason's approach to spelling. I've known the principles for years, but somehow now I can visualize it all better than before.
In the area of reading, both children are ready for yet more independent work. My rising 5th grader has been reading voraciously for years; the trick now is to get him to persevere with a book beyond his initial negative reaction to it ("This book is boring/hard/stupid, etc"). My rising 4th grader is, I am relieved to report, reading fluently and completely on her own, though she still doesn't choose to pick up a book and lose herself in it for fun, the way the others have done. So my aim, increasingly, is to transfer the reading burden from myself and our ritual of reading aloud (though of course I want to keep that ritual as the core of our day) to each child. And my challenge, as I shop the shelves and ponder our course for next year, is to decide what to keep as read-alouds, what to assign to children, which child should read what when, considering that they're close in age and are studying the same thing, at least in history . . . It's the logistics that get me, every time.
Not long ago I sketched out a preliminary book list for history. I still need to add to it and to decide what we'll read together and what each child will read on his/her own. Today I'm leaning towards having them each read Famous Men of the Middle Ages, perhaps on alternate days, while we read historical fiction aloud, book after book -- I have a LOT of good fiction for this period, and I'm really at a loss for how to divvy it up between them. Then we'd do Abraham Lincoln's World as a read-aloud, while they read fiction. Today I'm thinking this, anyway.
We'll continue with MCP Math for independent work in math, and we'll pick up with Life of Fred for read-alouds.
For science . . . hmm . . . the rising 4th grader could pick up The Way Things Work. I must think further about what the rising 5th grader might do independently. I think we'll do Benjamin Wiker's The Mystery of the Periodic Table as a read-aloud. Maybe I'll have them read Introducing the Periodic Kingdom themselves on alternate days . . .
This year for geography they both read Holling C. Holling. The current 4th grader read Tree in the Trail and Minn of the Mississippi, while the current 3rd grader read Paddle-to-the-Sea. She could pick up with the next Holling book for next year, while her brother . . . again, I will have to ponder his reading. We might read some Richard Halliburton, or possibly Kon Tiki, aloud.
I'm always on the prowl for good children's literature for general-literature reading . . . both children got books for Christmas which they haven't yet read, and which I might save to put in their boxes next year if they don't read them this spring. Of course, there's a good bit of crossover in this age group between quality historical fiction and quality fiction-fiction, so I'm not really worried about shortchanging them.
German: I think we'll continue with Duolingo, which I discovered early in this semester and really like for the structured daily practice it provides in understanding, reading, writing (or typing), and speaking German on a basic, beginning level. I like that it's self-teaching, self-paced, and free.
Religion: This year we've read Inos Biffi's Illustrated Catechism, plus Old and New Testament Bible (currently: 1 Samuel and Mark's Gospel), plus Amy Welborn's Book of Heroes. Next year I'm contemplating continuing Bible as a read-aloud, then having the rising 5th grader read the St. Joseph Church History, while the rising 4th grader reads saint biographies on her own. Plus, of course, learning by doing, as always.
What hasn't worked this year: chiefly, giving them little blank books for narration of their various reading. Just hasn't happened. (On the other hand, little books with an illustrated page for each week's lesson have been a huge hit in my First Holy Communion class -- their books are darling!) I am pondering having these children at home do small "Book of Centuries"-type books next year for their history reading. Maybe a "Book of Famous Men," with a page for each reading from Famous Men of the Middle Ages . . . Or we could just do copywork . . . I know one child will want to do illustrations, while the other will rather emphatically not want to do illustrations. Must think more on this subject . . .
Meanwhile, I want to preserve a routine which is working for us now:
1. Independent work as children emerge in the morning and are ready to get started. Workbooks make this easy, since all they have to do is get their materials out of their boxes, find a comfortable place to sit, and get going. Generally work tends to be staggered, with one child up and going before the other, which means that it's easier for me to focus on that child as he or she needs individual help. We can still accomplish the same thing if I've got the copywork for the day written out on the whiteboard. I've phased out my own copywork as both the handwriting and grammar books provide plenty of it, and any more seemed like overkill; next year I'll eliminate the handwriting workbook and the writing/copywork/dictation exercises in the grammar texts in favor of my own, which will just be part of the routine.
2. Read-aloud basket, which right now happens over lunch. I eat first, while they're busy with other things, so that I can read while they eat.
So, next year . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . Wondering what everyone else's thoughts are about next year . . .
24 comments:
Next year, I would like to DO school..,I am so easily distractedly things like laundry, food and leaky toilets that formal work is nonexistent some weeks. Really, I could just call myself an unschooler. They learn things constantly, it isn't my doing.
t's amazing how minimal all this actually is. I put all this thought and planning into what ends up being a tiny kernel of our day, and so much of it I'm not directly involved in -- I'm available if needed, but meanwhile I'm folding laundry, doing dishes, or whatever. That is the nice thing about having the youngest child in the house be 9 -- more and more they can do things independently, and my job is to arrange so that those things flow smoothly.
I remember now that you have never known our daily lives without a toddler in the house. I forget that myself, that the children do not require constant supervision for fear of mortal danger, now that the youngest is five. I had these great plans to be the facilitator and not necessarily hand-hold through their upper elementary years, but either I really stink at this or my expectation was unrealistic. Jo at near the age of Crispina isn't nearly independent! Mostly it seems to be attitude, but there isn't yet a subject she can do successfully all on her own. Perhaps it is my approach, more likely it's done character flaw of mine I have managed to encourage in her. Parenting is tough. I think I will go see if it looks any better on the other side of a glass of wine.
Well, the independence thing happens incrementally, and with some children it just is harder and slower. I suspect that an oldest child might want more hand-holding for longer than a youngest child, because the oldest child isn't trying to keep up with anybody, whereas the youngest child always has been (and takes a smug pleasure in sometimes beating older kids at things). In my own case, I had an oldest child who didn't want me to have anything to do with her learning, long before she was really ready to be quite so independent, so I had to work around that. The next had to be weaned by stages off my having to be right. there. every. minute. Around third grade was when I really started trying, though it was a gradual process.
Anyway, Jo isn't really upper elem. yet -- she's third grade, right? And a much younger third grader than mine. Even my really old 4th grader (he'll be 11, if you can picture that, in July) still needs me for some things, and I am always nearby to answer questions or clarify things. We all have to practice reading directions aloud, because otherwise they're both like, "What? What? What do I do? Not that these printed words could ever tell me or anything . . . " Actually, the 4th grader is worse about that than his younger sister.
Anyway, process. And mine have the example of older siblings working totally independently, which I think does make a huge difference. It probably makes a difference in my level of insistence that really, we get on with it all, too.
Also, this is one reason why we had a kind of workbook-heavy year this year, which isn't our usual style -- the workbooks we used were pretty self-teaching and a decent way to acclimate people to figuring things out on their own.
But yes to the glass of wine. I'm looking at it all through my own glass of wine right now.
And I should add that neither of my younger kids does a subject totally independently. They are in enough of a routine that they can get out their books and run through the daily stuff without a whole lot of hand-holding, but I'm definitely very present and overseeing, even as I'm folding laundry. And when we're starting a new concept -- like division, for example, which we've just been doing, I do sit down with manipulatives and work through problems until I'm confident that the person involved can do the rest of an exercise on his own. When I was teaching, we had a formula that went sort of like this:
1. Introduction of material
2. Guided practice (ie, doing the work with heavy teacher involvement)
3. Independent practice
So that's sort of what I do, though spelling lessons, for example, pretty much do themselves until it's time for a quiz. And reading is just reading.
No, I am very sorry to report that I really cannot imagine the 4th grader as almost 11. Not even the wine is helping with that.
I suspect that my eldest is much like your eldest, with regards to their mothers. Everything is so very much harder with that one. I will have to cull through your blog to remember how you managed to turn out such a marvelous young woman. I fear for mine right now, as it has been a particularly ugly week in our relationship.
I think that must be why February and the prospect of homeschooling seems remarkably bleak today. You are correct, Jo is just a youngish third grader now. I keep expecting to see glimmers of light leading to independent study (which she do desperately wants) so your experience is helpful, in that my expectation may be a bit unreasonable just yet.
I think your plan for your two sounds delightful, by the way. We have ended up on a similar history trajectory by breaking it down into smaller than usual time frames. Our secondary track is different, as it follows our memory work cycle.
I wish I could say I remembered the formula for wonderful teenagers and young adults. Thus far I have been really blessed, but I will tell you now that nine with girls is hell, and that was as true of the wonderful young woman as it is, some days, of her equally wonderful little sister.
The former was nine when we started homeschooling, so that was an especially difficult year in all kinds of ways, being a year of transition in almost every area of our life (transatlantic move, new baby, homeschooling . . . I'm not quite sure now how we all lived through it). All I really remember doing that year is reading aloud a lot. The best thing we did was sign up for science classes at the zoo -- in January, I think, though maybe it was already February. Just this time of year, when everything was awful.
And she was having none of all the wonderful Charlotte Mason things, either, other than the reading aloud. I let her read a lot of what she wanted to read to herself (she lived on a steady diet of those Dear America books for the longest time), and used self-teaching workbooks some, because she could manage that on her own. Our day was a tiny core of formal stuff and a lot of unschooling. To this day that's really still our pattern, though I find I can direct the younger ones more than I could her. The two youngest have never been anything but homeschooled and have always lived according to these kinds of rhythms, so it is much, much easier to go farther in the directions I want to go than it was when we were all breaking new ground.
So hang in there. February is always rough, and nine, or approaching nine, is a rough age. They're already starting to be hormonal, which is hard to swallow but for a lot of girls is absolutely true, and you see it almost more at nine, ten, and eleven than you do in a teenager, who at least has the advantage of some maturity to counterbalance the craziness of her body.
Anyway, again, hang in there!
I should say, too, that if you want to brainstorm about next year, have at it. For example: what would you like to have happen more independently, of the things you want to do when you do school? What kind of rhythm would work with the things that you want to accomplish, so that there's time not only for school but for life's necessary functions (chores, meals, outside stuff, etc)? When are you at your best, in terms of being able to give time and attention? When are the kids at their best in terms of settling down to do something serious for a while?
These are all good questions to ask yourself, in addition to asking yourself *what* you want to do. A wise friend of mine suggests making two lists: 1) the skills you want to build daily, and 2) the broad knowledge/content you want to cover. Rank each list in order of priority, most to least important. The lists can be as long and wish-listy as you like, as long as you can prioritize what's on them. Then choose your top three to six from each list, and challenge yourself to limit each thing to 10-20 minutes a day.
I am more or less quoting directly from conversation , which you may find helpful, even though in many ways it's about something other than what's on your mind right now. But this combox would be a great place to spin out some ideas and think realistically about how to implement them.
Your kids are great, and I know you're doing a good job with them. I can well imagine that they'd pull learning out of thin air. But I also know what some of those kinds of clashes are like, as well as just the challenge of balancing school and life, so if we can think together about workarounds . . . again, let's have at it!
"quoting directing from *this* conversation," I meant to write. Words get lost in the link-building.
"Quoting directLY." Gah. Some things look clearer from the far side of a glass of wine. Other things, not so much.
We can blame autocorrect if you like.
I certainly do need to brainstorm and I like the idea Jen put forth. She was one of the speakers at last summer's Denvet Catholic homeschool conference.
When next I have the time, you will certainly be hearing some musing!
Great!
And I'd forgotten about that conference, and the fact that you'd have seen/met a lot of my online friends from 4Real! Jen is gifted at seeing possibilities fall into place and become doable, and I've learned a lot from her, even though I don't do a pure Charlotte Mason approach as she does.
Uh oh, who says they know me? Mary M, for sure, who is fabulous in person.
I don't think anyone said they knew you (except maybe MaryM), but several people had gone to Charles's session, as I recall.
I'm sure MaryM is fabulous in person -- as are you. We sure do miss you guys.
How funny. Charles wasn't delighted with how his presentation turned out (content and organization-wise, entirely his own doing) but was glad to do it nonetheless.
You are missed, but regularly invoked: "B & J really liked this book, here's Redwall."
Oh, I remember people raving about Charles's session. I don't remember much else about this very long thread about a conference I didn't go to, but I do remember that (and I remember thinking, Dangit, I knew I should have gone!). I think people are really starved in the area of sacred music -- by and large so many people still aren't hearing it at church, so though they *know* that there's this tradition out there, they don't know what it is, what it sounds like, where to start with reclaiming it in a total vacuum . . .
Anyway, I can't remember why I was even reading the thread about this conference, since I hadn't gone to it -- maybe because it was huge and long and I wondered what was up with that -- but somebody happened to mention this great music session with this guy named Nolen, and I went, "I KNOW that guy! And his fabulous family! (Thank you, thank you, everyone. The line for autographs forms at the door . . . )"
You are welcome, Sally, any time you want to hop a plane west. This year's conference is the second weekend of July, I believe. No idea who the speakers are, but maybe MaryM can shed light on that subject.
I still need to brainstorm. I seem to be lacking blocks of time in which to do it, though. Right now I have three more minutes until I drag the not-shod children out the door to church.
Well, throw some stuff out there when you get the chance. I'll be in and out this weekend -- we have much American Heritage Girlness going on on Saturday, but maybe someone else will join this conversation and be helpful in my intermittent absences . . .
Would it help to know that part of my lack of time to brainstorm is due to the fact that I am the troop coordinator for our brand new AHG troop? We're oh, maybe 3 meetings in and are still getting the hang of things. If there isn't time for a glass of wine and ruminating over homeschool plans, then I MUST be overcommitted somewhere...
However, I happen to have time right now. Reading aloud together has gone completely by the wayside around here. We listen to lots and lots of audio books in the van, which encompasses history and literature. Everyone likes audio books, so that's what we go with. I like doing history that way. Combined with our timeline & history sentence memory work, and trips to the library where mom has things on hold appropriate to our time period, it seems to work for us. EC would fail every standard preschool test (colors, shapes, letters, etc) but could tell you more than most adults know about the Middle Ages (he's a fun little monkey at dinner parties, I tell you).
So I started with what's working. What's not working is me sitting with EC and teaching him his letters. 5 years old and it's rather sad. I can't blame his vision anymore. So we really need to schedule in some 5 year old boy school-y time.
The girls do everything together. Everything. That doesn't seem to be good for either of them. How and where can I separate them without going nuts? Jo loves writing, SG loves math. They both like cursive, English grammar, Latin, spelling. They both need the subjects they don't care for.
The independence doesn't happen with Jo because she simply refuses to follow directions. Is there a curriculum for that? ;)
Ah, AHG (or "Aaaahhhhhggggg," as we call it around here . . . ). I'm not troop coordinator, but boy, do I know what you mean. The good thing about it, though, is that if you're doing all that badgework, then you're covering a lot of curriculum areas! And would your girls be interested in participating in the Pen Pals program? My girly has a pen pal in Belgium whom she loves writing to, but I've just realized that she needs an AHG pen pal (or two) if she wants the nifty patch for her vest. Letter-writing is also a great exercise for the child reluctant to write . . .
Re your what's working/what's not: really, what you describe all sounds pretty good. Audiobooks of course are great, and we've leaned on them a lot in the past when we've had to be on the go. Memory work is great. Library is great.
For the things that seem not to be working:
1. What about letting EC play on Starfall.com (if you don't already)? That was my standard "keep the littles busy while the bigs need me" device for years, and they both learned a lot of phonics/early reading that way. Now Starfall has a paid subscription feature which we used for a while, and it was fun -- a lot of math things, a lot of folk song things -- but the main "learn to read" features are still free as far as I know.
Fun alphabet books, like Animalia, are great, too. The hard thing about younger kids like him (and I have at least one like that), is that they get so invested in the grown-up things the older kids are doing, and then the nuts and bolts of basic learning seem babyish. I had one child who outright REFUSED to do reading lessons -- he would say, "I don't do that. I don't learn to read," in the way a vegetarian would say, "I don't eat steak tartare."
One thing that really worked for him was to wait until after he was 6 to try ANYTHING. Just one year's maturity made a huge difference. Now he's a voracious reader, and he will (unwillingly) do other things competently.
But in the meantime, anything that would present basic concepts attractively and amusingly and not "babyishly" was a lifesaver.
2. I don't know that it would necessarily be a problem that the girls both do all the same things. They're close in age, and I would bet that SG is pretty determined to do whatever her sister does and more. Meanwhile, oldest children often hang back, because they're the ones breaking the new ground, and they don't have someone to keep up with. I wouldn't necessarily worry about that, particularly if they're covering pretty much every broad subject area regularly.
I'd probably be more focused on getting math into the non-mathy kid than worrying about writing with the younger child at this stage. My own approach with this has been to use
*math read-alouds (we really really love Life of Fred, and both kids do this together). I wouldn't do *just* Fred, despite the author's claim that it's a complete math program. But it is a good resource for the child who loves story, rather than idea.
*math apps and other "game" resources on the computer for facts practice
*short lessons in actual skills (MCP is very basic, and we do 20 minutes, max -- often more like 10, especially if someone is really in a resistance mode). I park the child at the table and set a timer. Sometimes knowing that there's a definite end to the work, and that it's not far away, motivates the reluctant person to work more quickly and with less fuss. And I have really preferred simple and basic over more conceptual approaches -- we tried MEP math last year, for example, and I wanted to love it, but in the end it was a huge frustration for everyone.
to be continued . . .
Continued:
3. Girls, oldest girls, and direction following. Ah. What a book I could write . . .
I think -- without knowing what the actual dynamics are like at your house -- that I'd deal with this by giving a lot of scope for choosing how and when things get done. My oldest would not have followed an assignment sheet handed to her. If I asked her to do A, she would go and do Q. But if I laid out A, B, C, and Q before her, and said, you can do this in any order you choose, as long as it all gets done, that defused a good bit of head-butting between us.
If it came down to her refusing outright to do something, like math, for example, then I would have to say, "Look, you have to do this, but you only have to do this much right now." And I'm much better at this with my youngest than I was with my oldest! Otherwise I'd try to "stealth" it in, with games, read-alouds, and so on, so that *some* of the dreaded subject got addressed daily.
So much of what you describe as working really is working, and is meaty. I think -- without being intimately acquainted with the rhythms of your daily life and the workings of your household -- that just a few tweaks might bring some things into focus:
1. Find a "peg" in your day when you can do some reading together, if only to address math topics, via something like Fred, which is zany and entertaining, so we all look forward to it. I find lunch to be the best "peg" for this, since it's when I can count on all of us sitting down at the same time. I just eat quickly beforehand and gather my books, and then I can read while they eat. If you have trouble gathering them to do any sitdown written work, having them transition to that for a little while right after lunch, when they're already settled, might be a good move.
2. Use "strewing" -- put out books and resources you'd like them to gravitate towards, and limit other entertainments at home. I find this works especially well for our coverage of science, for example, which tends to get the short end of the stick, but that's more than made up for by the kids' constant perusal of our huge collection of National Geographics.
A good bit of the day when you're home could be free play/reading for the older girls while you work with EC -- sometimes the best thing for a child who refuses to follow your directions is to let her make her own directions, within limits (no tv, maybe no computer, or only computer for a limited time and only a limited choice of computer options, etc.)
to be continued . . .
When my oldest was that age -- well, actually, we were living in a crummy apartment and doing the best we could, but once I'd figured out that "directive" was not an approach that was going to work for us, I concentrated on making our home environment as learning-rich as I could, so that what there was to do was to engage with books, art supplies, imaginative-play resources, and so on. The content of our learning happened through read-alouds/audiobooks; I didn't worry so much about quantifying it, or getting any particular output from the kids. I could determine what went into their heads, but then I gave them a lot of scope for processing it in their own ways, and just took notes about what they did.
3. Keeping a log was really revelatory, and for years that was what I did instead of making lesson plans. When I paid attention to what the kids were doing, in order to have something to write down, I could see that they really were learning and processing. And I really tried to find ways for that child to learn things she hated without realizing that she was learning-- math games, playing Monopoly (which was how my #2 learned to add and subtract), Geo-Bee for geography . . . It was also amazing what my then-5/6-year-old picked up by playing with his 9/10-year-old sister all the time. He was one of those little kids whom people would try to "test," I guess because he seemed smart -- "What's this letter? What color is this? How many fingers am I holding up?" -- and he would never appear to know the answer. But he taught himself to read (at 6) by checking the same weighty military book out of the library over and over and figuring out what the words said, and now he's in college biology, so in retrospect I'm less worried about whether or not he learned preschool concepts on track . . .
I don't know if I'm addressing your concerns usefully or not, but this is a start at brainstorming, anyway.
I will look into the PenPal program, I know it exists but haven't reviewed it yet. Jo in particular would be thrilled to communicate with R via the post. I'll say yes for her, and if there are other girls in your troop looking for pen pals, I'm sure there are more in ours that would be glad to.
EC really likes Starfall, we should do more of that, but I've never let him just sit and do it. The girls won't just leave him alone when he's doing it, they want to do it, too. They don't get computer time, so EC is getting a privilege they don't. That's troublesome enough that EC just doesn't get to do it. JA loves Khan Academy so perhaps that can be her thing on the computer (after finishing her pencil-paper math, whatever that is for the day). Wonder what to carrot-stick SG with? She's really my most amiable little person when it comes to formal work. Most days, anyway.
We like Life of Fred, too. Got it from the library and SG finished A, B and C in no time flat. They are both really good about picking up the things I leave strewn about. If I think ahead and have the library pull the science and history, then they will eventually read through them. They each read for 1-2 hours a day, with little prompting from me.
Oh my goodness, you are describing my poor Jo when mentioning how Epiphany "did tests." Exactly the same. I am so grateful we are now in a state where I don't have to give her standardized tests, because I am certain she would fail them deliberately.
Games for math. This might be a good thing. We play lots of games, but SG gets mad because JA beats her when it comes to speed games. JA gets mad when I beat her at speed games. We are all a bunch of really sore losers. I don't know how to challenge each of them without beating the pants off them by winning. Huh. Have to think about that one some more. Maybe computer is the answer. Challenge the computer and get mad at IT, not your sibling.
Must go inspect the boats EC is making out of Legos. Does Architecture/LEGO count as preschool? :)
That all sounds really good, actually. The amount of reading they're doing would by itself *be* a curriculum, regardless of content. You're still in the stage when overall the goal is to learn how to pursue knowledge without realizing that this is a form of work -- organization of information can mostly come later (as in, making sure history is chronological. I do follow this chronological plan with my kids, but I really don't obsess too much about their knowing what happened when, or about covering every minute detail of a given period).
Granting the girls some computer time for selected sites or apps can be a good idea -- again, the pursuit of knowledge that doesn't feel like work. Khan is great fun. We also like several math-facts apps for the Macbook, and I'm looking for more all the time. There are also programs like IXL, which cost something for a subscription but are game-like and fun to do.
So you might consider giving each child a computer-time slot (and I will admit that this can get hard to manage, because somehow people are NEVER at the end of the activity at the end of their allotted time, and it all becomes very messy very quickly), with the caveat that that is THAT child's time slot, and other people should be doing other things. Mess with other people's computer time, lose your own. And if people want to do Starfall, you might say that they can do it after they've done something else that you want them to do, say in math.
I know families who don't use screen time at all for their kids, and I can see that their reasons are very good ones, but honestly, that ship has long since sailed in my house. So we integrate screen time into our day as a useful tool for what might otherwise feel like drudgery.
And yes, we have sore losers around here, too. Fortunately I'm not that good at many games, so they can legitimately beat me. I also tend to help everyone liberally as needed -- I'm my own team, but I'm also on other people's. That tends to help cut down on the sore-loserness, which in any event is now mostly limited to the 9-year-old girl. The boys are both Monopoly whizzes and either one of them can mop the board with me any day.
Scrabble is good, too, especially if you keep score, which we don't always. The game itself is good of course for spelling and vocabulary (and I totally help people, because it takes a long time to master the conventions of the game), but also for addition and basic multiplication (double and triple scores).
Chess is good for strategizing, which is using the mathy part of the brain as well. We've been doing chess in AHG (and I've routinely been whipped by a second-grader who ends up playing with me).
But this is another place where the computer is good, because as you point out, you are competing against it in most games, or against yourself.
And re preschool, I saw this article on Facebook today, and though I haven't had time to read it, it might speak to some of your concerns.
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