I know it’s not the start of a new school year, but with all this talk about new beginnings and resolutions and such, I couldn’t help but reevaluate what we are doing with our homeschooling.
This is only my second year homeschooling, so I am still very much in the phase of finding what works for us. Reevaluation on a regular basis is a definitely a good idea.
When I first started homeschooling in fall of 2005, the boys had been in public school since kindergarten. They were accustomed to school and I, having decided to homeschool only two weeks before school was to start, had not looked into the different methods of homeschooling.
Naturally, we started out doing “school at home.” The boys were moving along at lightning fast speed and we were halfway through our year’s curriculum within a couple of months. Then we burned out. Burned out bad.
Then we took two months off, but we had a hard time getting back into the swing of things after that. I was not happy with that arrangement, even though we did finish the year strong and complete everything in the curriculum I had submitted to the state.
So, I started looking into different homeschooling methods. I really liked the idea of unschooling. It seemed to make sense and I thought it would work well for us. I still felt like we needed a math curriculum, though. We also ended up buying “Learning Language Arts through Literature,” too, which I thought would be a practical way to learn language arts skills.
For the rest of our subjects, I decided to try an unschooling approach. We also tackled the math and language arts in a child-led way, letting them do it when they wanted to, instead of at a scheduled time.
Looking back at this school year so far, I can honestly say that unschooling does not work well for us. The boys need more structure and, frankly, so do I.
I am not happy with how little we have accomplished so far this year, except in math and language arts – the two subject areas that we had a curriculum for.
This is not a condemnation of unschooling. It just isn’t working well for us at this time. Maybe it is the way that we are doing it. I don’t know, but for the rest of this school year, we are going to follow a more structured approach.
I started a new lesson planner and wrote out what we are going to do this week. I will reevaluate this weekend to see if it is working out.
We will still do life-learning. How can we not? We are living life.
One of the highlights this year was when Big E breezed through his math assignment one day and exclaimed excitedly, “That was so easy because you taught me how to do that when we were at [the farm stand]!”
The kids obviously benefit from everyday life learning. We just need a little more structure in our day. The kids tend to function better and be more productive and so do I. That’s okay, though, because one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is that we can stop and change direction when something is not working for us.
I agree! We’re still finding balance, too, but I have definitely noticed the benefit of having some kind of structure. It doesn’t just help with school, but with the whole day.
I wish you the best in 2007! Here’s to homeschooling!
that is right!
I am in the same re-examining boat as you this week in particular. The curriculum I purchased for this year is excellent but is not meeting our needs very well, so I will tweek it to end the school year while doing some research and lots of praying about where I got off track.
Life is good … homeschooling is great, even in the tough times.
Glad to see you keeping at it rather than jumping ship when it got a little wavy.
Kristina
A wonderful supplemental program for homeschoolers is Your Baby Can Read! The program is made up of 5 interactive DVDs and Sliding Word Cards and was designed for children 3 months to 5 years. The DVDs introduce written words at the same time a child is naturally learning to speak. The program has taught many children to read with little effort. You can check it out at http://www.teachyourbaby.com. There are videos of children who have used the program and many parent testimonials.
i also felt like i could have done more this year. it’s always good to evaluate and make new goals. i’ve been doing that too.
I am most interested in your thoughts on the Learning Language Arts through Literature curriculum.
I really like LLATL, Susan. The kids do, too. It puts the grammar and other language arts skills in context, so they can see why they need to know it – to read and write!
Last year, we used workbooks and I always had to deal with them complaining that it was boring and the famous “Why do we need to learn this?”
I like that it has book studies, too, with discussion questions, so I can check in that they are comprehending what they are reading.
I also like that all of the language arts and reading skills are in one complete system.