{"id":600,"date":"2008-01-09T18:07:38","date_gmt":"2008-01-10T01:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/x.jimanddoni.com\/?p=600"},"modified":"2008-01-09T18:07:38","modified_gmt":"2008-01-10T01:07:38","slug":"home-school-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/?p=600","title":{"rendered":"Home School Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Been waiting for me to complain??? LOL.?? I love home schooling – I do <\/em>I do I do….BUT sometimes it is HARD WORK!?? The pressure is on now that we have entered the new year.?? I am not half way through by any means since I am schooling year round, but I have found lots of areas where I wish I would have done things differently.?? Poor Tanner!?? I am experimenting on him.?? Ty will have it easier anyway.?? While it really has been a joy and I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything, following are some of my frustrations:<\/p>\n

(1) In the first grade, reading, writing, and arithmetic are your majors.?? I wish I would remember this EVERY day.?? There seems so much to get done that sometimes I want to scrap it all and concentrate on just these three.?? I am really trying to make them my main focus but “stuff” just comes up.<\/p>\n

(2) I don’t necessarily regret that I didn’t do a package curriculum BUT I do think it would have been the MUCH easier route.?? The problem with guiding Tanner’s education without packaged curriculum is it gets difficult to ascertain where he “should” be in the various subjects.<\/p>\n

(3) I am doing unit studies for history and science but have had to learn the hard way that in the first grade, learning to read and write around these units is not really what is best for Tanner.?? When he is older, I think it will be but right now it’s too hard to have a simple writing assignment around “The Tabernacle of Ancient Israel”.?? Every day it gets hard to simplify these topics for the sake of creating a reading\/writing exercise around them.?? I have had to break out the writing portion from the unit exercise but I don’t have curriculum for that (nor do I want it).?? That means I have to guide that with my imagination and it’s hard to figure out what Tanner should be capable of right now.?? I am now really summarizing the history or science lesson and not requiring much (if any) exercise time on it other than an experiment here and there or a craft.?? He is still learning interesting historical\/scientific facts but I have just realized that he needs to spell three and four letter words well before he has to write about “tabernacles” :).?? His writing skills at this point are mainly three letter words and some four. Example:?? The pig sat on the cat and the dog ran.<\/p>\n

(4) Because Tanner is great at memorization, I fear his reading is very sight dependent.?? His phonic skills need work!?? I have been using Explode the Code and I really like it but feel we should be farther in phonics than Tanner is.?? He does the workbook really well but it doesn’t seem to be meshing with our reading exercises yet.?? When he has to spell something he gets himself so confused trying to figure out what letter sound he is on.?? This makes me wish I would have done blend flashcards much earlier on.?? I want him to a have a firm handle on phonics and he would rather learn the word than sound it out.?? I am trying to get him to sound out the words he struggles with.?? He tends to forget the rules easily and then gets frustrated.??<\/p>\n

(5)?? Somewhere along the line he started forgetting letter names because (due to phonics), he refers to everything by sound!???? Last night I about went crazy trying to get him to repeat back first the letter name than the sound.?? He does KNOW the letter names but under pressure, he forgets.?? When I am teaching him spelling, I need him to say letter names because sometimes the sound he hears is not how it is spelled.<\/p>\n

(6)?? Speaking of spelling, I read that spelling comes through the natural process of writing.?? I believed that and decided not to have spelling tests early on.?? I regret this choice.?? I do agree that when Tanner is a better writer, spelling will just be part of the writing process and we can keep a spelling notebook.?? The point that I overlooked though was this…you can’t write if you can’t spell.?? If he doesn’t have weekly practice on word lists, he is very limited in what he wants to write.?? He has been writing sentences every week so it isn’t that he hasn’t been required to spell but the “learn it by doing method” isn’t working out well.?? Spelling has become a stumbling block.?? I didn’t choose a spelling curriculum so this week I had to decide what to do.?? I finally decided to take the 220 word Dolch list along with the 95 noun Dolch list (most used words in English) and divide them into lists of 10 words plus 3 bonus words for every week through the remainder of school.?? I am kicking myself because if I would have started in Sept he would have only had to spell 8 a week!?? Again….poor Tanner.?? Today we had our first spelling work and he could spell on his own 7 of the 13 words and got the letters correct in most of the remaining six but ordered them wrong.?? Not too bad I guess.?? We’ll see how he does by Friday after practice.?? And there is the question of whether or not this 300 odd list is appropriate for a first grader??? I don’t know but it made sense to me.?? (This week’s word list that I chose trying to keep simple words for week one are:?? I, a, the, you, he, bell, ball, box, boy, bird, and three more that I am forgetting right now).<\/p>\n

(7)?? Math – overall math has been uneventful.?? He doesn’t have his addition and subtraction through 10 memorized but he is pretty good at counting up and down and we haven’t really struggled too much so I haven’t concerned myself with it.?? I am liking Singapore math but because there is NO drill and kill exercises in it, they don’t have the chance to get math facts down which means I should have concentrated on flash cards more than I have.?? I am having Tanner memorize so much right now though I hate to add another thing.?? As a result, I added a supplemental math curriculum today that teaches math “tricks”.?? He likes tips (like hungry bug 9) and catches on to them well.?? If we learn a trick for each number set, memorizing should be easier.?? I am just afraid that even though he is doing fine now, Singapore may jump up a notch and require a more firm foundation in these facts than he actually has so I now realize I better get ahead of it.<\/p>\n

(8)?? Pressure\/Discouragement – I seriously can’t take Tanner’s pressure issues.?? The second he is afraid he can’t do something or he gets anything wrong, he starts whimpering or banging his head or giving me the “I can’t do it” speech…and then all of the sudden – he CAN’T!?? Things he has known all along suddenly fly out of his head and he can’t answer the most basic of questions.?? I am praying for patience in this area but it makes me C??R A Z Y when he gives up over one silly error and then won’t try!!!!!!???? I don’t even know what to do with him when he does this.?? I end up getting angry which makes him more upset and unfocused.?? It becomes a vicious cycle.?? I am trying to just “time us out” when this happens.?? This is probably my biggest battle with teaching.?? Working my way around our combined personality types.??<\/p>\n

(9)?? How much is too much or too little??? Tanner and I school for 2 and a half to 3 hours a day.?? Sometimes I feel we need more time but since these hours are all DIRECT instruction – I am with him 90% of the time, I don’t see how either of us could manage more than that without a serious brain drain at the moment.?? Breaking it up isn’t an option because I would get NOTHING done that way.?? And WOW has homeschooling impacted my day!!!!!!?? I have to be super organized to get everything in “life” done.?? None of us are early risers so we don’t start school until 10:00 or 11:00 and that doesn’t help matters but our schedule is not likely to change anytime soon so it is what it is.<\/p>\n

I am keeping record of this so that when I start Ty in the First Grade and get frustrated, I can read back and not feel so crazy realizing I have been through this before :).<\/p>\n

After all this griping…. here is what is going good!<\/p>\n

(1)?? I love the time with Tanner everyday.<\/p>\n

(2)?? I love Bible time and am so glad I get to teach my child scripture this way each day.<\/p>\n

(3)?? Tanner is doing great on his memory verses and memorizing the Westminster Shorter Catechism!<\/p>\n

(4)?? Even though he needs to improve his PHONETIC reading skills, I think he is reading pretty decently for early first grade.?? And better yet – HE LIKES IT!??<\/p>\n

I am just praying that I will have wisdom and will get him through this year WELL.?? His failures are really mama’s failures and I don’t want to let him down or make him do things the hard way because I was stupid.?? Hopefully this will all come together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Been waiting for me to complain??? LOL.?? I love home schooling – I do I do I do….BUT sometimes it is HARD WORK!?? The pressure is on now that we have entered the new year.?? I am not half way through by any means since I am schooling year round, but I have found lots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mamas-diaries"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}