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frustrated mama
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Okay Ladies I need your help. I have 4 kids and schooling 2. ds=7yo, dd=6yo, dd=3yo, dd=1yo Life at this house is never dull or silent for that matter. 🙂 I have lots of questions:
I need ideas on how to do school with a 3yo and 1 yo. I usually let our 3 yo join us if she wants when we do reading, picture study, music study and science experiments. But it really becomes a hassle when I try to do 1 on 1 and have my youngest two there.
My ds really, REALLY doesn’t like copywork and oral narration. There are many times he just gets frustrated and cries and breaks his pencil. What should I do? What should I focus on with him as we do copywork? Should I make sure that he is writing his letters correctly or just be glad he knows the way their suppose to look? I’m really lost.
My other question is about oral narration. After I read 2 to 4 sentences in our history living book (I don’t read more to him b/c I feel like I lose his attention) I ask for narration and he can’t tell me anything, but what he does tell was from the day before. Is it important that I get oral narration from what I read today or okay that I get narration from yesterday? I’ve tried writing down important words from what we are reading. It seemed to help but he was still getting frustrated. He gets so frustrated trying to do oral narration that he begins to cry! I need your help ladies!
I’ll chime in for the copywork as I’m currently reading through the new SCM Language Arts guide and learning a lot – including about copywork!
Copywork at that age: Let his goal be small – one line of letters/strokes, or a word or two.
Now, from personal experience, some children are not physically ready to make writing on small lines, so make sure the lines are large, or even let him do copywork on unlined paper or a dry erase board so he can write much larger if needed. Right now I have an almost 6yo boy and an almost 5yo girl who are working on handwriting and the younger girl (who is technically still 4 until December!) has much better fine motor control. Their older sister is 9 and was more along the lines of her brother in fine motor control though, so bigger worked better for her.
4my4kids,
Sounds like you’ve definitely got your hands full! Is this your first experience with homeschooling?
If so, and if your school year just began, my first instinct is to encourage you to give yourself and your children some time to get accustomed to the newness. When I first started our home education journey about 18 months ago, I sounded just like you; and I’ve only got 2 kiddos! The first six months was definitely the most difficult, but after much prayer, consistency, and even a few tears, I’m happy to say that we are having so much fun! It was worth all that trouble in the beginning because of the result we are now experiencing! And it will be worth it for you too.
If your school time seems full of interruptions because of the 3yo and 1yo, you might consider doing the subjects which require your complete, undivided attention (like math, beginner reading, copywork) during the younger ones’ nap time.
- If your 3yo seems excited to participate but becomes distracted after a few minutes, redirect her to her own books, blocks on the floor, give her some of her own “workbooks”, crayons or paints, etc. She can still listen in on what you’re doing with the older children, but have something to keep her hands busy.
- You could also provide the 1yo and the 3yo with “school boxes”. Each child would have her own school box with quiet toys, games, or puzzles, special crayons and paper, or whatever else they enjoy, and the box would only be accessible to them during school time.
When we first started, my ds didn’t like copywork either. Instead of starting with lined paper and pencil, we started with a large-lined dry erase board and a fat, dry erase marker. CM recommended new writers begin learning to form letters in the air or in sand with their index finger. We started slowly, learning just one or two letters at a time. Instead of making him write 6 or 8 b’s, I would allow him to write one b, as long as he did it to the best of his ability. I forget which volume CM wrote this in, but she said (and I’m paraphrasing), “Why make a child write the same letter over and over again if he can execute the letter once perfectly?” If my son can make the letter a perfectly (for his age, of course) one time, why should I make him do it five times?
Also we implemented the “Do it nice or do it twice” rule for copywork. I would write out a short sentence, and my ds would have to copy it the very best he could, taking time to make sure each letter looked as closely to my letters as possible. If he did it nicely the first time, he was finished with copywork for the day. If he sped through it messily, he had to do it again. He’s done copywork almost everyday for the last 18 months, and has only had to “do it twice” two or three times.
Your question: “Should I make sure that he is writing his letters correctly or just be glad he knows the way they’re supposed to look?”
- While it is good that he knows how his letters are supposed to look, that’s not the point of copywork. The point of copywork is learning to write beautiful thoughts beautifully. In a gentle, but firm way, you should communicate that he needs to understand that it’s not just about knowing how to make his letters, but how to make them with excellence.
- Copywork is practice. If your ds is just beginning to write with paper and pencil, let him do so on lined paper that’s not too small and with a pencil that fits comfortably in his hand. Make sure he’s holding his pencil correctly. Start small, one or two letters executed perfectly at first. Once he’s comfortable with that, you can begin to add gradually to the amount he’s required to write.
- Breaking his pencil should be discouraged. If my child were to break his pencil out of frustration, we would have to discuss that behavior is not allowed in our home. To me, that’s like a 7yo throwing a fit because he’s not getting his way. If he is frustrated, I expect him to talk calmly with me about it. Perhaps you need to determine whether he’s ready to be writing with a pencil yet or not. It may be that, for now, writing words in sand or cornmeal or flour would be a gentler approach.
Oral narration:
This is also something that takes time. Have you ever tried to narrate something orally? If not, I encourage you to have your husband read a chapter to you and then try to tell him all you know about what he read. It’s not as easy as we think! The first time I ever narrated aloud was at a SCM conference, and I was blown away at how much I forgot and how many details I left out!
Narration is also something that must be developed over time. It is an art and a discipline, and a child cannot be expected to narrate amazingly well his first few times. When your son starts to tell you details from previous days’ stories, explain to him that you’re very impressed at how he can remember things from one day to the next. But also explain that you asked for him to tell you all he knows about today’s story, not yesterday’s. You might also try some of the other narrating techniques and suggestions listed on this site. For example, you could ask your son to draw a picture, dictate his thoughts to you as a list, or build part of the story with his Legos or blocks. If you catch your son recreating or acting out the day’s story in play time, that’s also a form of narration!
You want to help your son avoid crying about his lessons, if possible. CM wanted children to love to learn, and they should! If he starts crying, make sure it’s not his way of trying to get you to end school time for the day. If you have lost your patience with your children in the past, acknowledge it and ask forgiveness and allow the Holy Spirit to teach you patience and gentleness. Lord knows, I’ve had to do that so often!
I hope at least some of this has been helpful, and I know you’ll receive other great and insightful thoughts and suggestions from more people!
Blessings,
Lindsey
I am with you!! I have a 7yo, 4yo, 2yo and 10 month twins! We do some school work in the morning and some after lunch while the younger 3 are napping (well at least 2 are napping hopefully) The family stuff in the morning and the harder stuff (for mine it is reading) in the afternoon.
Mine likes copywork, but I would also suggest that he might do less. Start with less and work up to more. Also mine use to love doing it on a small dry erase board. They make them that have lines on the back and not on the front so he can choose wich side he would like. The more fluid motion of the marker might be easier for him and also fun. Different brands have different size lines on the back.
I think that writing the letters correctly is important., If he gets into the habit of writing a certain letter a certain way it will likely be how he will write them if day after day he is doing it that way. That said my son writes his “o” the other way around, he says it is easier. Maybe find a medium. Like give him some instruction on how the letter goes, but try not to fuss over it too much. My son is reviewing letters right now. He is working on writing a letter and then a word with that letter in it. Like “r” and then “red”. He writes the letter a few times and then the word a few times. I thought a nice review would be a good idea. After this month he will start on some bible verses, but not the whole thing every day.
On narration, I have no ideas we are new at that too.
Thank you all for your answers. They have actually taken a LOT off. I was trying to make him finish more words than was probably necessary. I think what we will do is review our letters on small dry erase board and then work on words. Thanks for the encouragement about narration too.
to thehauserfamily…Wow! And I though our house was crazy. 🙂 Thanks for your ideas.
I can’t offer any suggestions for oral narration since we are just doing K at our house and I haven’t required this yet, but I can offer a couple of things that may be helpful from our experience with copywork/handwriting.
When my daughter was struggling with handwriting, we took a complete break from it for awhile which helped. So I’d agree that taking a break or taking a step back (like using a whiteboard as others have suggested) will probably help. Now that we have gotten back into it again, I’ve found it more motivating for her to be somewhat involved in choosing what she copies. I let her choose her favorite story book from our book basket for that week, and I choose a sentence from that for her copywork. (And it usually takes 3-4 days to do just one sentence.) She’s been much more inclined to give her best effort with little fuss since I starting trying this rather than pages from a handwriting workbook or even sentences of my choosing. Just a thought.
And yes, it would be absolutely worth the effort to ensure that he is doing the letters correctly each time. I learned this one the hard way since I let her write her y’s upside down and backwards for awhile (she wanted to try and write it because it’s in her name, but we hadn’t really gotten to it yet in the handwriting curriculum that we started out with). Even though overall she has her letter formation down pretty well, I STILL have to stop and correct this one nearly everytime. It’s taken a LOT of work to undo all that time that I let her do it wrong, so I wish that I had just taught it to her correctly in the first place.
Hope that helps some!
We are just starting out with my oldest ds being 5 1/2 and very reluctant to write. We are using Cursive First, but only the numbers so far as that is what he can read right now. I made a list with inputs from others of other ways to do brief copywork (1-2x each number if done well) other than pencil/paper which we only do once a week or so since he is so young. I just pick a different way off my list each day. Of course, keep in mind a lot of these are for very young/just starting out and your son is older; perhaps he could have a choice of marker or pen, pencil or chalk….
In air, sand, salt box, whiteboard (either writing or erasing yours with their finger) as already mentioned.
in pudding/shaving cream/whipped cream (whipped cream is a favorite!)
markers
aqua doodle
place cheerios on letter/number drawn on paper plate
write on game pieces
(like on paper fish for magnetic fishing)
fingerpainting
dot-to-dot /tracing
sidewalk chalk dipped in waterdraw a trail and they have to draw
a line and stay inside the trail, wavy, zig-zag, etc (for very early skills)walk it out/masking tape on floor/chalk,etc.
Good luck!
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