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feeling overwhelmed with CM
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You’ve gotten great replies already. First, I agree that it’s very teacher intensive and overwhelming for me too.
I just had a couple of other thoughts, one is that 3-4 hours isn’t as bad as school until 4pm in the afternoon, so I think it’s okay that it’s taking that long, unless you work out of the home in the afternoon, or some other reason why school can’t take that long.
I also couldn’t tell if you do geography and history every day? We only do geography once a week, and history twice a week usually, maybe you could scale back on those. Does she have to learn ASL right now?
I have 6 children, and most of my older ones around your daughter’s grade/age are done in 2 hours, but I have another daughter that struggles with a math disorder and gets really distracted by noise, and she always takes at least 3, sometimes 4.
I also don’t know if this would help, but if dawdling is an issue, I added another lesson if I found them playing/talking with siblings, etc. That only took a few days and they worked much better independently. I know the ones that can’t handle distraction, and they go to their rooms to work then find me when needed.
I also can’t listen to narration if I’m doing laundry, or other things, I don’t feel it’s fair to them either, so for narrations I try to give them my full attention.
I do family subjects while they are eating, at breakfast and lunch, that way we get quite a lot done while they are there anyway for their meal. They also are quieter when food is in their mouth:)
I definitely agree with the poster that said split the math, or whatever it is that they are struggling to focus with. My daughter likes to hang upside down off the couch for a while then come back to math:) Or she does something easier like copywork, then comes back to it, and that really helps her get done quicker than usual.
If we get math and reading done, it was a great day!
I hope you figure out what works best for your family, and what your husband prefers as well, I think you are on the right track.
I wanted to share what has ended up working for us. First I tried having DD do her work at the kitchen table and I had (relatively) quiet activities set up for the younger ones in the living room. This did not work well at all. I finally figured out that *I* was a big distraction for her! If I was around, she wanted to ask for help anytime she thought that was easier than thinking about something, talk about random things, and ask any question on any subject that popped into her head (and there were many!).
So then I moved her desk out of the library room with its thousands of books, guinea pig cage, and wall shared with the living room where she could hear everything that her brothers were doing, and into her room and put it facing a blank wall with nothing nearby to distract her (toys are put under the bed and books are on a bookshelf against the opposite wall). Then I had her set a timer for each subject, wrote the amount of time each subject was allotted on her daily schedule, and, at the beginning of each school day for a couple of weeks, reminded her that A. when the timer went off she needed to move on to the next subject, B. if she had a question she needed to keep working, and save all questions in all subjects til the end, C. she was not to come upstairs for any reason barring an emergency, and D. if everything was finished in a pre-set (with margin) amount of time, she got to spend a little time watching horse videos on YouTube. I also made up index cards with step-by-step instructions for things like how to think of something to write in science notebooking (anything she tended to forget how to do or wanted to come ask me about reguarly) and put those in the book for the appropriate subject. And I put an asterisk on her daily schedule for each of those “stickier” subjects so that at the beginning of the day I could briefly remind her of what she needed to do. She really needs explicit, step-by-step instructions for things.
This has worked really well for the most part. It removed virtually all her distractions, gave her a time limit for things, plus that carrot-on-the-end-of-a-stick to motivate her. There’s still usually one day a week where school takes longer than it should for her, but for the most part she’s getting done by noon or before every single day, which is a huge improvement.
The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to work with her on teacher-intensive subjects, like remediating reading (she has some signs of dyslexia and needs some extra help) without having her brothers either play outside unsupervised (where they get into all sorts of trouble) or play on tablets. She is so easily distracted that it really needs to be QUIET for her to focus on something like that, but I can’t set things up for quiet without sending them outside or resorting to technology (which we already use too much of).
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