After having a couple of bad home school days this week I decided I needed to evaluate our current curriculum choices. I needed to decide if they were working for me or if I was working for them!! I also decided to list some of the things that are causing high stress in our home.
My first step was to evaluate our curriculum and see it was meeting our goals for our school. I tend to follow the Charlotte Mason method for most of our school work and I get easily frustrated if I try to do "school at home". I looked at the main subjects first... Bible, math, phonics/English, and handwriting. I am happy with our math and phonics/English. I do need a spelling curriculum for my oldest but I haven't found one that I like yet. I have recently started reading the Bible at breakfast with the kids and then I have them copy Bible verses in their Bible notebook for handwriting.
After evaluating our major subjects I decided to focus on what is causing the burnout. Of course the most obvious one is lack of sleep!! I haven't slept through the night in five years!! Lack of direction and self discipline are two more. In a moment of frustration I made up a school schedule yesterday and we followed it today. All the kids decided it was much nicer to see what needed to get done.
Usually when burn out hits I just buy my way out of it. I buy all the "cool" curriculum that promises me that my kids will love it and it's easy on mom!! This time I sat down and really looked at what was lacking and saved us some money!!
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1 comment:
I like that we don't have to work for the curriculum, and be bound by the 'rules'.
When you mentioned Bible reading and writing, one fun goal we are trying to accomplish (Lord willing) by the time she graduates is to handwrite as much as she can of the Bible by dictation. We started in K by dictating a couple of words. She is now in 3rd grade and is writing 3 sentences. We are at Gen. 6. Each year I will add a sentence and eventually she'll be at the place where she can write a lot more at a time.
By doing this it is enforcing spelling, punctuation, handwriting--we'll be starting on cursive soon--and eventually keyboarding skills, tho' for the most part I'll want handwritten.
She has enjoyed going back and seeing how her handwriting has improved from K until now.
The other benefit is the questions she asks when we comes to sections she doesn't quite understand. To be able to help her get a grasp on the Word at this young and tender age is a mandate I don't take lightly. My prayer is that she'll always hunger for Righteousness and Truth only found through Him and the Word.
Didn't mean to write a book!
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