For this busy season of homeschooling several olders with a newborn in tow I’ve mainly been using worksheets to cover the basics. I’m a unit study/lapbooking kind of girl, but while I was sick with the pregnancy and now that funds, time, and (honestly) patience are low we’re doing more worksheet kind of work. Plus, in my insecurity of having my first third grader that will be taking the state mandatory test in the spring it gives me a little more peace of mind to drop my beloved unschooling, delight-driven, unit study ways for a more structured approach. However, the difference is showing in MyOldest. He does not like doing school this way. And let’s me know it. But eventually we’ll go back to our more fun ways when I have a little more creativity (and sleep) stored away in my brain.
As I mentioned in my last post I have a lot of hand-me-down, half-used workbooks. So, when I was pregnant and gearing up for the new school year I went through all of those, what looked like, barely usable workbooks and worksheets, pulling them out one at a time. I made little handwritten half-sheet lesson plans – each labeled Math, Spanish, Language Arts, Reading, and Science with checkboxes next to them because he likes to mark off each thing completed.
With workbooks that I had most of the pages still intact (like the Spanish book) I pulled them out in sections and then separated them by day. I matched up a math sheet and a language arts sheet. I assigned pages to read in his history book 2-6 pages at a time according to topics and sections in his book (covering history and reading in one fell swoop). I have science listed (and this is yesterday’s lesson – so I had him pick out a lapbook for future use – you know, when we get a new print cartridge!) though, so far this fall we’ve only unschooled on this one.
And speaking of unschooling science, geography, current events, and health… I don’t like any science “text books” that I’ve seen yet. They have ranged from goofy to incorrect (yes, I said it). And he has a love for “real” science – experimenting, exploring, biology, “how’s that work?” kind of stuff. As I mentioned before, we watch National Geographic shows (we love their ocean type shows), weekly we watch Adam, Jamie and all the rest of the crew test out myths on Mythbusters and talk about the science behind what they’re doing, and when the money allows we LOVE lapbooking – to date we’ve done volcanoes, the human body (covering germs, healthy habits, and anatomy), dinosaurs, detectives, and several animals (covering habitats [which invariably delves into geography], food chains, body structure, and on and on). Oh, and the experiments – just the other night while he was reading The Dangerous Book for Boys he decided to try the “Make Your Own Battery” experiment. His daddy jumped in and helped. It failed, but as all good scientists know, there is much learning that comes from failure and now he’s armed with ideas of what he can try differently next time, and we won’t even talk about all the health discussions that followed from the pregnancy and birth of TheFinalist!
With the history book - we’ve covered several subjects. He goes away to do his silent reading in a quiet room (in our house that involves him sitting in our walk-in closet behind TWO closed doors – his preferred spot over the loft, go figure!!). He then comes out and summarizes to me what he read. And we talk about it. While he’s telling me I write down verbatim what he says. We talk about ways to organize those thoughts – staying on subject, what naturally follows first in the summary, so on. I ask him for the title “Well, what did we talk about today?” I then sit next to him and read his own words back to him one.word.at.a.time. Yes, I nearly lose my mind at this point. But it’s good for dictation, spelling, focusing, and correcting handwriting. Speaking of handwriting, he has a really hard time writing. Physically. He can not write very small. And we cannot afford (when we have other types of paper on hand already) those fancy writing tablets. So, I outline 2 lines at a time in pen, separated by one line that I color in – the spaces). This is working well for us right now.
With the lessons already laid out, I cover any new concepts with him, and then send him off to do his work on his own. This was more work up front, but less each day. Just what I need with a new baby. He comes back to me with questions and when he’s ready to write. Now, math lately has been the exception – regrouping is giving us much trouble so I’ve been sitting next to him working through them one at a time.
What stumbling blocks has your child come up against (such as our handwriting) and how have you addressed it?
I’m Suzanne Parker. Wife to Matt. Homeschooling mama to 5 kiddos. I'm a woman of many contradictions. You can read why I do all I do 
