Home School Post

*Non-homeschoolers, feel free to talk amongst yourselves, here. * ;-)


For the last several weeks I’ve been trying to get us back on track. I haven’t been happy with the way that school and our life in general has been going for the last several months. It felt like I just “lost it” somewhere along the way and just never could get everything back within my slippery grasp again. I guess with Race being “home” (he isn’t really, but at least he is in the states right now, and the bullets flying at him are only fake ones) I began to realize how uptight I get when he is away. I don’t even see it in myself when it’s happening, but I guess the combination of underlying concern that I have for Race along with the constant running pace to keep on top of things here makes me a little…….TENSE.
So, for the past few months, I’ve been slowly relaxing my grip on the wheel, slowing down and gazing around at the scenery a bit. And I haven’t been liking what I’ve been seeing.

In short: High school has been kicking my butt.

School for the older 2 had become little more than a checklist of textbook assignments. And while I love the different curricula that we are using, we just weren’t making the most of it. The love of learning was gone. The interest, the curiosity………….gone.
Jackson had become undisciplined in his academics and was routinely bored and looking for an escape route. The kids still had all of their activities, and I was usually completely frazzled and tired at the end of each day. To top it all off the household chores were all left to me and I had allowed this to be the case.

This is not what home schooling should look like.

So, while Race is “home”, I took a breather and decided to reanalyze my strategy and then regroup my army.

I took a look again at the method of home schooling that drew me in to this crazy world of home schooling to begin with:Charlotte Mason . I began reading her books again, only this time, Book Six (kind of the high school age) really caught my interest.
I really BELIEVE in this method. It really resonates with me. And if Charlotte Mason were alive, and living in VA, you can bet my 3 kids would be attending her school!

But alas, she isn’t and she doesn’t and so, the kids…aren’t. So I started to scan the internet. But as I joined email groups and perused message boards, I was left feeling that most of those using this method for high school had settled for something much less than what I believe Ms. Mason would have recognized as a whole education.

SO I pulled out my tried and true “go-to” book for home schooling The Well Trained Mind. I love the classical method as it is presented here. But , alas, I am no academic. And while I loved, Loved, LOVED this when the kids were younger, I was really struggling trying to accomplish this in our home with grades 10,8,and 5 all at once. I was just falling woefully short.
But the more I studied, the more I realized that these 2 methods actually dovetail beautifully together. They are , in fact very similar in many ways. They are both meant to educate the “whole” child and to encourage the child to learn to focus so that he/she becomes disciplined to learn for themselves. And as an EFFECT……… learning itself, becomes enjoyable. Learning becomes a task worthy of one’s time and effort.

SO I set about to make a master schedule. Perhaps re-inventing the wheel at times, but, hey- my family needed a little different wheel!

My curricula and my end goals ….my SPINE comes from TWTM, but many of my methods are now drawn from Charlotte Masons work, along with getting back to Journaling, Shakespeare, art and music study. And you know what???
IT’S WORKING!!!!!!!!!!

The older kids have their schedules for the week. On Sundays I make out their lists. Every subject , along with the chapters to be completed, any assignments, and written work. And for the most part they regulate their own work each day. On Fridays, we discuss the readings for the week and all written assignments. This is where the Socratic dialogue comes into play as well. ;-) Discuss, discuss, discuss. This is my favorite day of the week with the older two. This has really given them a renewed focus.
With the older two knowing what to do and staying on task, I am freed me up to work with Jackson. We have our list too. Jackson is dyslexic, so there is still a considerable amount of reading that he cannot do on his own. But he is working above grade level in almost every other subject, so we don’t let this hold us back.

It’s really been going great and I have seen such a renewed interest in each of the kids. Their own ideas are flowing forth from them again and they are EXCITED about learning.
Now, the REAL key to this new system is what we will call……. The Daily list. I will try to explain this a little bit better.
To keep everyone on task, they each have an additional list in their notebooks. And before anyone has free time, all the things on the list must be completed.

The Daily list looks like this:

Shower
Make bed
Room picked up and laundry put into place
School finished for the day
School books put away
Choose 1 chore from the kitchen list , complete it and cross it off
And:
Austin: Dirty dishes in dishwasher
Savannah: put away clean dishes.
Jackson: take out kitchen trash

The kitchen list referred to above is a list of things that I would like to have done each week. Things like cleaning their bathrooms, cleaning out the car, doing their laundry, etc. I printed it out and placed it in a page protector . It is posted on the kitchen with a marker. Each day they pick one, do it, cross it off and initial it.

This has been working really well. I think the beauty of it is that it places the responsibility back to the children, and helps everyone see a clear-cut goal each day. It also helps each person to be able to look back on the day and realize all that has been accomplished. Of course some have taken to the list faster than others, but I have found that with constant encouragement, each of them is “getting it”. The kicker is, that without exception, the Daily list MUST BE DONE before anything else can take place. That means baseball, martial arts, running around outside…….whatever. And if for some reason the older 2 don’t have their work ready on Friday then that means you have to work through the weekend until it’s finished. Not to be seen as a punishment at all, just a direct consequence of taking your free time during the week.


So. We’ve turned a corner here, and it actually feels really good. I’m thinking that we may not screw them up completely after all, and maybe……………….just MAYBE………..we might make this whole thing work!