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christannb
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| Posted: Oct 11 2012 at 2:43pm | IP Logged
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Hi Everyone,
I have been reading and absorbing all the wisdom from this list for a few months now but have never posted before. So by way of intro I am a first time homeschooler in Alabama, following materamabilis for my ds7 and dd5. They both attended a small private catholic school last year. I am having problems with my second grade curriculum.
Truth is my DS is bored - for two reasons I think. The first is that he is used to the busywork approach and he liked it. alot. I think it is how he gauges his own progress. He keeps asking me" where are my worksheets?" so I thought I'll just supplement with a few and see what happens. Well, I have gotten WAY sidetracked in trying to find and print worksheets to complement what we were doing - especially in science and history. (not to mention I am now out of printer ink!)
Second, I keep finding that the things I am trying he has already done - in science, history, math, and religion. I find that I was not as well aware of the details of the material he covered in class last year as I thought I was.(sigh.) So my questions for this wise group are these:
Does anyone have advice for transitioning from traditional school setting to CM approach - what did you try that worked, that didn't work, how long does it take, etc. DO you think I should just buy some workbooks and then gradually wean him from it?
AND - How do you assess where to start in the curriculum. I am very hesitant to jump ahead because we might miss something. Review is very appropriate to do, but we have been in school since august and I kind of hoped we'd be past the review stage and the boredom in something!
Thanks everyone in advance for your advice and comments.
-Christie
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JennGM
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| Posted: Oct 11 2012 at 10:20pm | IP Logged
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christannb wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I have been reading and absorbing all the wisdom from this list for a few months now but have never posted before. So by way of intro I am a first time homeschooler in Alabama, following materamabilis for my ds7 and dd5. They both attended a small private catholic school last year. I am having problems with my second grade curriculum. |
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Hi Christie! I'm glad you posted. I'm going to offer some thoughts. I'm not coming from your background, so they might not completely on target, but perhaps something will be helpful.
christannb wrote:
| Truth is my DS is bored - for two reasons I think. The first is that he is used to the busywork approach and he liked it. alot. I think it is how he gauges his own progress. He keeps asking me" where are my worksheets?" so I thought I'll just supplement with a few and see what happens. Well, I have gotten WAY sidetracked in trying to find and print worksheets to complement what we were doing - especially in science and history. (not to mention I am now out of printer ink!) |
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Okay, first of all, there is nothing WRONG with worksheets. But if you are using a CM approach, they aren't an integral part. Can they be used? Sure, but not as a supplement or replacement to the reading and narration. If he's wanting to do them after you finish your planned, it should be for his enjoyment. When my son has wanted to use workbooks or worksheets, I let him, but I don't grade them. It's more for his enjoyment.
It sounds like he's been learning in a way where it's more measured and "filling the bucket". He wants feedback and tangibles to see and measure his progress. And by your description, each subject has been broken down and served in small pieces.
This is different than the CM approach where you are presenting a wide variety of ideas, a huge banquet (as Jen always quotes), and helping to ignite a fire and help the child make his own connections.
It will take a while to change the habits of education. I don't know if I would call it Bored than he is waiting for more direction instead of being driven on his own. That could be his personality, and not necessarily from his previous experience.
I would continue your plans. I would also provide rich reading materials -- good picture books, chapter books. They don't all have to be subject related to what you are learning. Strew a variety. If you know what gets him excited, check out some books related to that subject.
Besides strewing, make sure Nature Study is a key part of your plan. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but just that time reserved at least once a week. It REALLY is key in our house. We have a short walk and then sit on a blanket and draw and/or paint in our journals. I find it just ignites so much, and I see all the connections being made. But it also relaxes us!
I mention Nature Study in particular, but all the areas/subjects will give that variety and richness and lots of food for thought.
And then give time for Masterly Inactivity. While he is thinking he is bored, he needs that down time to "process" and connect all he is doing. It doesn't mean he has to just sit and do nothing, but create or buffer time that you have nothing scheduled. Don't fill it with electronics, but time for creativity, including outside play. There have been good threads on Masterly Inactivity that I'll try to come back and link them.
christannb wrote:
| Second, I keep finding that the things I am trying he has already done - in science, history, math, and religion. I find that I was not as well aware of the details of the material he covered in class last year as I thought I was.(sigh.) |
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What are you using to plan your year? Are you following Mater Amabilis straight for his age, or did you adjust it? Did you create your plan thinking he hadn't covered these areas or it just happens that the plan you chose overlaps from last year?
christannb wrote:
So my questions for this wise group are these:
Does anyone have advice for transitioning from traditional school setting to CM approach - what did you try that worked, that didn't work, how long does it take, etc. DO you think I should just buy some workbooks and then gradually wean him from it?
AND - How do you assess where to start in the curriculum. I am very hesitant to jump ahead because we might miss something. Review is very appropriate to do, but we have been in school since august and I kind of hoped we'd be past the review stage and the boredom in something!
Thanks everyone in advance for your advice and comments.
-Christie |
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I have tried to answer a bit above your first question. But don't worry about review--just dive in! You won't be missing anything! He's only in 2nd grade, for one thing. Secondly, there will be repetition, overlapping, enrichment, going deeper from year to year.
But there will also be gaps, in whatever approach. It just happens, and while we prepare as much as possible, it won't ever be perfect or gapless.
If you're worried about math, the math programs always review and repeat. Other subjects, it's okay if he's already learned or not learned. It will either be a revisit and a deeper experience or a new encounter.
It's a different approach for you. You're a guide and less of a teacher. There's less measuring and check boxes. It's not a free-for-all. It is a disciplined approach that creates good habits and ignites a child to love of learning.
It's late and I can't express my thoughts more...
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to  & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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JennGM
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| Posted: Oct 12 2012 at 11:00am | IP Logged
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I was thinking further on this. Some of the delightful moments I have been privy to witness is to see my sons really enjoy the reading and then read further on their own. They start to recognize authors and illustrators and artists.
They look up items they find in field guides. Rocks, birds, plants are distinguished from each other and they learn their names (reminds me of Adam in the Bible). My oldest is rock collecting and stamp collecting...
The stories we read are remembered and applied to real life -- playing Poohsticks, fishing like in Swallows and Amazons, exploring and making clubs like Gone away, having adventures like in Narnia....Recreating Jason and the Golden Fleece with Playmobil, building ships and planes and castles with Legos....
So I'm rambling, but I was reminded that Mater Amabilis has a great book list for stories and also further history reading. Those books and authors are fabulous. Go on a few casual field trips to help the history come alive. With the 150th anniversary of the Civil War we have been visiting a few places. My boys in their imagination hear the canons and start firing their "guns".
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to & ds1 '03 & ds2 '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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SallyT
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| Posted: Oct 12 2012 at 12:43pm | IP Logged
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It does take time for a child who's been in school to transition to another mode of learning -- and to believe that what he's now doing is as "real" as what he was doing in school. This is normal. It was certainly my experience with my then-9-year-old, now 18, when we began homeschooling.
Some thoughts: Back off on the idea of formal school altogether for a while. I don't mean that you should abandon learning, but frame it as "read-aloud time," and just basically do that. The rest of the day can be open-ended, with books, art supplies, and imaginative play things available, and screen time limited; now is a great time for field trips and experiential kinds of learning (science museums, living-history things, etc).
Choose books from the MA list that speak to your child's interests and inclinations, regardless of whether they're in his level or not, and focus on *enjoying* them, rather than "learning from them" or trying consciously to get something out of them. The beginning of a CM education, or any literature-based education (speaking as a non-CM purist who has used a lot of MA over the years), is the love of books, and the recognition of books as teachers. So you might see your primary role right now as that of "connector" -- the person who facilitates your child's connection with good books.
Otherwise, ditto everything Jenn says. But I really do believe -- as I was reluctant to believe in the beginning -- that children who have been in school truly need time to de-school, ie de-program from that very passive, quantitatively-based way of learning to something which is more active, engaged, imaginative, and rooted in good literature and life experiences.
Other thoughts:
Don't worry about moving ahead in MA if that suits your son. You really don't miss anything that you won't encounter again later, or that isn't just what got chosen for a given level (ie, my 8yo isn't doing Europe for geography this year, as I think her level prescribes, because we have all these Holling C. Holling books, and that's what she wanted to read. It's not like we'll never study anything about Europe again . . . ).
Pick a moment in history that appeals to you both, for example, and jump in. He will, in the course of his education, study the whole sweep of history from the earliest times to the present; what your aim should be right now is to ignite his interest. Ditto any other subject. We tend to have a bunch of books going for history, science/nature, and other topics, during our read-aloud time, so we cover quite a lot of ground without its really feeling as though we're laboring away at all these subjects.
As Jenn says ,many subjects, especially math, repeat and repeat and repeat every year. The first part of most math curricula is almost inevitably a review of the previous year's material, so that may account for some of the feeling of repetition that you're experiencing. While it's tempting to fast-forward through or skip the review, I've learned not to do that too much -- we' don't belabor what comes easily, but it's very helpful to cover that ground, as it sets the child up for the next set of concepts. Religion curricula tend to repeat a good bit, too, especially in first and second grade, when they're gearing up for First Communion (at least, this is what I observe in my FHC classes -- they come to me having covered some key things in my second-grade program, but then we do them again, in more depth and breadth). It almost always takes most children more than one "pass" at things really to learn them, and much of elementary education seems to be set up on a spiral model for that reason -- to remember what you've learned and carry it forward.
If you want to wean off worksheets for math, you might consider spending some time with Life of Fred as a read-aloud/mental math experience. We use this in our read-aloud time; we started at the very beginning this year, even with a 4th and a 3rd grader, and the kids have loved them. They're very quirky math stories which teach a number of concepts in each chapter. Most chapters in the first four books, for example, cover some addition facts, some skip-counting, some time-telling, sets, patterns and sequences, groundwork for multiplication, algebraic concepts, and more, all in the course of a goofy little ongoing story about a 5-year-old math genuis who teaches at an imaginary university. Each chapter ends with a "Your Turn to Play" practice section which you can do as written work, but which we do as mental math. Later in our school day, the kids do do workbook math, but if you're de-schooling, you could just do Fred for fun for a while, then add a written curriculum in later.
Just some thoughts, anyway. Mostly, though, I just want to reiterate: it takes time to transition from school to homeschool. It takes time for a child who's been in school to re-acclimate to a new model of learning, to accept and trust Mom and her books as teachers, and to learn how to learn proactively when he's been used to being taught and kept busy all day long. It is very worth slogging through that transition, difficult though it is. The thing my 18-year-old, now a college sophomore, is most grateful for in her home education is that she learned how to be self-directed and self-motivated, and that she has acquired the skill of active learning. It was an occasionally painful process in the beginning (and later), but it did really pay off.
Hang in there!
Sally
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: starting out
