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Becoming Independent
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I’m wondering at what age you started having your children start working more independently and what all you gave them to do on their own? My oldest is 9, and as of right now, all she is doing on her own is Math (Teaching Textbooks), ELTL, and 30 minutes of Literature each day. As a group, we do Geography, History, and Science, and of course all the enrichment studies, read a louds, and Bible. I’m wondering if I am missing something for her or if I have her plate pretty full. Anyone mind sharing what a typical schedule looks like for their child(ren) who are working more independently? Thanks so much!
It sounds like your daughter is working more independently than either of mine did at 9. 🙂
Your kids will let you know when they are ready to work independently in various subjects. I would want to keep my children participating in the family studies that you mentioned all the way through middle school, with additional assignments given at appropriate ages.
Those sound pretty good. The next step I would try is having them read some of their history books on their own. (NOT all!) For example, I would continue the family history read aloud but I may let my child read one of the easier/shorter books on the grade level reads, like Minstrel in the Tower for Middle ages. I would still read aloud a longer title like Adam of the Road. Sometimes the best way to get them started is to grab a book from a grade band younger than theirs for SCM history. So if we are reading the grade 4-6 books I may pull a grade 1-3 chapter book from the history list for my 4th grader to read on their own.
My kids start to do independent things in roughly this order:
Copywork
Literature
Scripture reading
History
Science
Math is in between. We do 1 lesson together and then I encourage them to try to work on their own the other days. At first that means do 3 problems and then let’s check them together, then go back to do 3 more. Eventually it works to them doing half the page before checking, then the whole page. But I always check their page daily, even when they are doing the whole page on their own.
Thank you both for your response. She was definitely ready to be more independent and she loves her “planner”. (i print out what she needs to do for the week in checklist format and clip it to a clipboard) 🙂 I just wanted some reassurance that I wasn’t giving her too much or not enough!
@Tristan – I think I will start having her do some independent reading for History. Now, would you do this in addition to her literature assigned reading? Do you have them narrate what they read?I would have it in addition to literature generally. Yes to narrating. We don’t narrate both every day. Usually history is every day we do it and literature is a couple times a week.
@tristan – this will work out perfectly because I’m thinking she can sit and read to her younger brother (7 yrs) who is still not yet reading while I tend to my two youngest. Would you suggest I have him narrate as well?
@tristan – and one more thing…which age do you have them do scripture reading on their own? I definitely want to stick with family devotions every morning, but I’ve been thinking for some time that my oldest might be ready to start reading scripture on her own and having her own devotional time.
If her younger brother will listen without distracting her I would try it, and let him narrate too.
We do family devotions too. Individual scripture reading begins when a child can read independently. 🙂 So early. We have a set of scripture story readers they do first, then they move into the King James Version. And when they first move in to that they read 10 verses a day, not a whole chapter, until they are comfortable with it. 🙂
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