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Becky Le
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| Posted: Aug 27 2009 at 11:45am | IP Logged
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My middle child just turned 5 years old at the beginning of this month. She was anxious to start school but now, 4 days into it, she hates it.  I know it's an adjustment process, she did attend preschool, but in my gut I know it is more than that.
We are using MODG K curriculum which is very gentle and she can do the work easily. She is very, very smart but also tends to be negative and demanding which we work hard to not reinforce. She is also struggling with fine motor skills. On the plus side she is curious and some subjects she just adores.
Should I set the curriculum aside take more of an unschooling approach with her and let her lead the way? Any ideas for helping her to develop a more positive outlook? Thanks!
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Becky, loving wife to Chris and mom to Stephen (11/99), Elizabeth (04/01), Catherine (08/04), Natalie & Samantha (10/07)
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ladybugs
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Your just turned 5 year old sounds like my oldest child. She's now 12 and can do seat work but when she was little - there was no way....we read TONS and did lots of outings to satisfy her curiousity. Just from experience, I would recommend an unschooling approach with this little one....
My 12 year old, as we speak, is working on Saxon 76 Math....and is in the process of writing an awesome essay on Ancient Greece....who wudda thought?
Hope that helps!
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Maria P
My etsy store - all proceeds go to help my fencing daughters!
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Waverley
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I have a child who struggles with fine motor skills as well. I think what happened in the beginning was that I included fine motor work in "school" and, as a result, he didn't like school because he associated it with his frustrations around fine motor skills.
What worked well for us was removing fine motor work from school until his skills improved. For example, when working on letters I didn't make him write the letters, same with numbers and copy work. He still learned a ton but in a way that didn't make him frustrated.
That's not to say that we didn't work work, work on fine motor skills. We just worked on those skills in a way that didn't seem like work or school. There are many resources for using play to improve fine motor skills. A few activities my ds loved were picking up items with children's chopsticks and dropping the items in tins or empty egg cartons, pouring with different sized containers, drawing in shaving cream, and playing with Legos and marbles.
Good luck to you!!
ETA: I'm still trying to find out how to instill a positive outlook in one of my dc so I have no advice for you there. 
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Waverley
wife to Dh for 19 years, dd (16), dd (11), dd (8), ds (6), dd (4), dd (9-13-1996)
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Cay Gibson
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| Posted: Aug 27 2009 at 2:34pm | IP Logged
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Becky Le wrote:
| Should I set the curriculum aside take more of an unschooling approach with her and let her lead the way? |
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My gut reaction is...Yes! And break out the board games. Nothing wrong w/ a little seat work either. My children have learned very good work ethics because of diligent seat work.
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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
wife to Mark '86
mom to 5
Cajun Cottage Under the Oaks
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teachingmyown
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What does she want to do instead? She is so little, I would just follow her lead. 
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In Christ,
Molly
wife to Court & mom to ds '91, dd '96, ds '97, dds '99, '01, '03, '06, and dss '07 and 01/20/11
Remembering Today
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Tami
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| Posted: Aug 27 2009 at 4:32pm | IP Logged
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She's a young 5, too. Really. I would hold off, and work instead on the personality/behavior things, and her general interests. You can always start up formal K next year.
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God bless,
Tami
When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become. (Nouwen)
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Mackfam
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I'm here saying...let her play!!!!
Let them PLAY threads
Overwhelmed with Preschool
Just beginning. Help? Preschool Advice?
They just want to PLAY!
What do you do every day with the Littles
She's just barely 5. I'd bake with her, sweep with her, color with her, go outside and nature walk with her, and snuggle and read with her, and then see what else she wants to do. If she wants to sit down occasionally and do some seatwork - fine. Along the way, gently but firmly begin to lay the rails with some good habit training.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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Nedra in So. CA
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n/a
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Sarah
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Becky,
I started my oldest two at young age 5 because I thought I had to. Later as they reached 4th grade I moved them both back a grade with the state since I realized they would go to college at a very young age. Also, they had some baseball cutoffs that made them not be able to play with their friends of the same age. Irrelevent here.
Anyway, I wish I would have known it was okay to ease into Kindergarten. My advice is to play, bake, explore, hide fine motor in other little household things. Color. Read together. Observe nature. Have fun. There are many years ahead for hitting hard core academics.
I did not like MODG for my kindergarteners. If was a poor match for us. Sometimes it takes courage to throw out something.
This year I am starting my just turned 6 daughter in kindergarten. She is eager and ready. Last year she played and colored and drew and played some more.
Its okay to ease in. . .
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Six boys ages 16, 14, 11, 7, 5, 2 and one girl age 9
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ekbell
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As a matter of principle and survival I do not insist on kindergarten lessons (the survival has to do with having older and younger children-fighting over kindergarten would be another straw on the camel's back).
I work with what my child enjoys, and I've been willing to drastically reduce or even drop 'lessons'. It worked with my first two.
With my oldest I dropped all frustrating fine motor demands until grade *two* without any ill results (she was slightly delayed in her fine motor skills). I noticed that she found ways to practice fine motor control during play without any couching from me and that she was much happier that way. Once she was able to cut out a pattern and draw a line where she wanted it, she quite quickly developed a good deal of interest and skill with various handicrafts (and at age eleven has quite a nice handwriting style).
I've found that self-correcting activities go a long way with a child who hates possibly giving the wrong answer. It can also be worth spending a bit of time narrowing down choices so that the child can (in my second dd's case silently) choose between the right answer and the obviously, obviously wrong one for a bit.
One technique that worked well to break the 'I'm not answering in case I'm wrong' barrier was reading the question, asking the child if she thought <obviously wrong answer> was correct. Generally I would get giggles or a no! and then we'd work out the correct answer. Very verbal modelling also tends to go over well, as long as I don't overdo it (mommy gets silly).
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LucyP
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Hmmmm, well our son started "school" to some degree a couple of weeks after he was 5 - because it is the law in England that he had to be in fulltime education by the term after the end of the term in which he reached 5. But we did a very gentle year (in my opinion) - art, cooking, working around the house, nature walks etc just are part of life here from the first moment a child can do something, so gentle for us did consist of maths, phonics, projects he was interested in etc for about an hour a day most days. But no formal curriculum, of doing work set by a stranger at set times on set days for certain amounts of time. This year, when he is almost 6, we will start requiring a little more consistency and perseverance. During that first year we had lots of time when we would take a break for a week or two, then come back, do something different, go back over stuff. And what he struggled and struggled with at the beginning he could just somehow miraculously do a bit later. So if you can be more informal, I would be.
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ShawnaB
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Here are some belief that I have personally let go of in recent years:
1. In order to receive a quality education, children need to begin formal instruction early.
2. If my child does not start said scope and sequence early, he/she will be "behind."
Neither of these beliefs are true, although our culture would certainly have us believe it.
However, giving up "formal" instruction does NOT mean that we are unintentional! Nor does it mean that we have no plan or structure. It just means that we intentionally do other things with our little ones...as many have suggested here.
Perhaps the most important of all "educational" goals for little ones is that they are led to love God and obey and be respectful to their parents. After that, the curriculum should consist of plenty of life-skills learning (meaningful work, chores and self-care), and exploration (nature, play, art, good books etc.)
The academic development will flow naturally from this foundation, in good time.
It sounds like you are a wise momma to shift gears when things are not working!
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Shawna, wife of Jacob, mom to Abraham 8 Amelia 5 and Jillian & Jonathan age 3 years http://www.psalm121family.com
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SeaStar
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| Posted: Sept 01 2009 at 9:16pm | IP Logged
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My dd just turned five a week ago...
She is so *not ready* for any formal learning...
I am just letting her do as much/little as she wants. For example, she doesn't really want to write a work sheet of letter B's, but she loves making letters out of playdough, so we do that.
She wants to sit and pluck corn kernels off a dried cob with tweezers for half an hour... OK. That is fine motorskill work.
I think we will wind up doing two years of "kindergarden" with her.
I think she will be just fine. I love the "Edward Unready" books... she is Edward!
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
SQUILT Music Appreciation
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Puffin Hen
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Lots of agreement with the above, Becky, about starting where YOUR daughter is; but by way of an idea...
Thinking about learning being a discipline, nurturing good habits, etc, my son and I recently started to have a very short "table time" just 2-3 times a week when we do a prayer, a rhyme, a little Right Start maths (just the bits that seem "Right" for him at this stage), and maybe a bit of an activity book or child's magazine. All this in just 15-20 mins, mind. At the beginning of the session we light a special candle (in a lantern out of reach.) While the candle is lit (which he loves) he has to stay at the table, and at the end he gets to blow the candle out (under close supervision of course.) Kind of like circle time - but at the table! This is proving to be a hit so far. There are no academic targets here, we are just aiming for compliance and cooperation and the nurturing of the habit. But, after just three weeks his basic skills are coincidentally improving too!
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helene
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I really like these ideas. I have started some table time with my five year old this year. I haven't selected any "readers" or any particular curriculum.....we just do some flashcards that he enjoys and build as much as possible on them without any pressure. He may do a couple workbook pages which are WAY within his grasp. I think laying down the tracks for future habits (as mentioned above) at this age is key. I was beginning to feel like I wasn't doing enough or being formal enough, but this thread is helping me to see what is really needed....and what is not. The last thing I want to do is snuff out the desire for learning before leaving the gate!
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mariB
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We are big on unschooling in the early years, although I never called it that all those years ago.
I have a son who is 16 now who when 5 (an August baby), just played and we read to him. He did not start school until 7 and still it was child lead.
I thought he would never be interested in formal learning. Boy, was I wrong. We just bumped him up from 9th to 11th grade this year. He was doing all of the subjects that my 11th grader was doing last year but in 9th.
Who would have thought??!!
What do we do with our 6 year old little girl? Nature walks, read a lot to her and play with number games, lots of outdoor play and art.
On today's agenda we will carve a pumpkin and work on sewing a costume for her.
If we do reading, it is done in 5 minutes, if she wants to. We are on lesson 23 in Teach Your Child to REad in 100 Easy Lessons. We follow that very loosely. If the five minutes mean just reviewing the sounds she knows, then thats fine and we stop there.
Writing- she writes her letters and numbers on our dry erase board. She just started doing this. There is no way at 5 she could have started writing. I started out by having her trace letters and numbers I had written with a yellow highlighter.
She is an August baby, so 5 was so young to start formal learning.
Actually, we are really so much looser with everyone that we are schooling at home!
You know what? If I didn't see that she was eager to do any formal learning then I would wait until HER cue. That way the child develops a LOVE for learning!
By the way, we have the MODG kindergarten syllabus and it never worked for us. It was still too "schooly". There are such wonderful ideas in it that we grabbed a few things from it but did not follow the daily plan.
Hope this helps a little. Believe me, it was hard in the beginning for me to take the child's lead, but it is so worth it in the end!
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marib-Mother to 22ds,21ds,18ds,15dd,11dd and wife to an amazing man for 23 years
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allegiance_mom
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I am doing Serendipity with my 5 yo son this year. At least, I have the stuff available. He loves to be read to, so getting through picture books is not a problem. He does not like to color in his coloring books (Flower Fiaries and Great Adventure Kids Bible). So I offer, and he usually declines. He likes to do art that involves blank paper and making a mess!
He is not ready to read, so we are holding off on phonics until January. We do Saxon Math, but he is getting tired of the daily calendar work in the meeting book. So today, I skipped it. He already knows it's October. How many more times can I ask him? But he loves the manipulatives with Saxon.
We also have a letter of the week, and bake something starting with that letter. G was gingerbread cookies, and H this week is honey bee cookies.
I would definitely lay off the hard and heavy curric at this age. Check out the Serendipity blog and get some picture book ideas, your library probably has some of them.
Good luck! Have fun!
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Allegiance Mom in NY
Wife 17 years
Mom to two boys, 14 and 8, and one pre-born babe in Heaven (Jan 2010)
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4Real Forums : Nurturing the Years of Wonder
Topic: Help! My 5 year old HATES homeschool.
