I am about to give up….

Sorry you are feeling so weary and frustrated.  I do understand.  I get like this sometimes too.  I know when I put my sleep and exercise and prayer/Bible study above other things, our days go better.  And planning goes a long ways too.

There is no way I would write out lesson plans daily for four students.  How much time is this taking you?  I do this for a week at a time, usually on the weekend for up to an hour, if I am making changes.  I used the same spreadsheet on the computer each week and printed it out.  But this year, I am using a preprinted planner to get myself away from the computer and transition my children to doing some of it themselves.  I really liked the independence I saw in Self-Propelled Advantage by Joanne Calderwood of urthemom.com. But they always remain accountable to you to get their work done for the week.  This process will look different for each family.  You should be able to help guide them to doing the next thing, like the next math lesson, and writing it down.  So this can be a shared task as you transition them towards more independence and accountability in their own work.  How long could this transition take?  It depends on you and your child.  It could be years.

You might need a system of rewards and consequences to help motivate them.  My dd did not get her math lessons done one week due to the same effort and laziness issues you refer to.  So she did not get to go out with us.  She had to stay home and finish her math with her grandmother.  You can reward daily work with going outside to play, watching a tv show, game time, or other screen time, etc.  Do what works for your family.  Or give a sticker, star, etc. on a chart or calendars when work completed in a timely manner.  Then a reward for so many stars or stickers.  Do whatever works for your family.

Unless a child is struggling with a subject, I do most grading on the weekend.  There should not be much to grade with CM methods.  Content-based subjects should be narrations – mostly oral, daily.  They should come and find you when they are done reading and give you their oral narrations while you are preparing food or doing laundry, etc.  You can grade written narrations weekly, along with copywork and math – unless it is a struggle for them and needing lots of corrections; grade those daily.  You could also hand them the teacher’s manual to grade and correct themselves.  I do this with the dictation passage in SW for my 7th grade son.  Then I quickly check that he graded it thoroughly.  Again, you could do this on the weekend.  They can learn from their mistakes, but you must keep them accountable to get it done timely.

In regard to “so many squabbles, corrections, redirection, re-focusing”, where and how are they physically set up during the day?  I had more of these problems when I had them working at the dinning room table together and I was usually in another room, busy with laundry or cooking, etc.  Now I have them at their own desks which are separated, across the room from each other and I have my chair in the same room so I can keep them on task better and be more available for questions.  (Although they do need to wait their turn if I am working with someone else.)  And if I go do laundry or cooking, I sometimes have one child come with me and bring their work with them to the kitchen or give a break then.  I give out dictation passages while cooking lunch.  I listen to oral narrations while tending to laundry.  Scheduled breaks in your daily school routine can be very beneficial.  We are talking like 15 minutes of free time after every 1-2 hours of work, or maybe after a certain subject like math.

One last note is that I found I do better when I stop reading what others do.  Yes, a little of that can be motivating and it can provide us with good ideas.  But we also have to do what works best for our families.  And that is going to look different for everyone.  Your work is so important, so do not give up.  You are their mother and no one else will know better what they need.  Be in steadfast prayer about it.

I pretty much only grade math, Latin, and dictation.  For Latin, I read the answers and they check their work, since I have two DC in the same level.  Math is checked right away, and I often use the answer key to save time, especially with the older ones.  Math takes us about 40 minutes total.   I look over any narrations or notebook pages, but don’t do much correction or grading with it.  We often use the tests in our history or science books as an oral review.

I’m not a big fan of the spiral notebook method, which I admit I haven’t tried.  It seems like a lot of work to do each day.  I gave them each a term long checklist yesterday.  They can check off things like math, dictation, copywork/handwriting, etc.  Since each week is the same, they only took a few minutes to create by copying & pasting on the computer.   They only have 3-4 things to do per day, so it’s not too overwhelming for any of us.  I have my own chart for history/science/literature and another for enrichment subjects (Bible, hymn, poetry, art, etc.).

I tried to somewhat follow SCM’s new “Keep it Simple” format, with an hour for individual subjects, an hour for history/science, and an hour for enrichment.  I like to time our subjects, especially at the beginning of each year or term, just to get an idea of how long it should be taking us and how much we can accomplish in that time.

I had all these grand plans for the year, but since we are moving in with my parents, I’ve shortened them quite a bit.  Another thought is to alternate things like Plutarch one term, Shakespeare another, and poetry for the third.  You don’t have to make everything year round.  This year we are spending a term on early American history (explorers & colonial times), a term on Greek Myths, and a term on Famous Men of Greece.  Our geography will be a state study 2 days per week (counted as our history lesson).

I started with how many time slots I had to work with and plugged in the materials I wanted to get to first.  In the end, I ran out of time slots before I ran out of curriculum.  Everything else was put aside.

I felt like this last year with my 4th grader though I only had 2 school-age at the time (plus 2 younger ones, and pregnant with #5). She has ADHD and dyslexia as does my 7 YO. I made some changes toward the end of the year that helped a lot. One was moving her to her own space with very few distractions to work (her room with toys out of sight and non-school books on the wall behind her where she wouldn’t easily be distracted by them). Being right there to keep her on track did not work well (though necessary for my 7 YO!)…I realized that *I* was a distraction to her because she’d think of a million questions to ask me. I also started giving her a set amount of time for each subject and a timer, with a consequence if she didn’t get things done within that time limit (a reasonable amount of time, generally if she didn’t get things done she was messing around), and a reward if she did work diligently. I also tried to minimize transitions by not letting come into the main living area for questions or to get a drink (she took a water bottle with her and I tried to check on her periodically to answer qustions but her work was set up for her to do independently and she could ask questions at the end of the work period). This helped SO much. I also cut a few things and rearranged a few things to save my sanity. And I used sticky notes on work to remind her of things she couldn’t seem to remember, like steps to go through for science notebooking or written narration. Also, I use the editable term planner (free at Charlotte Mason Help though I can’t remember if it’s on the website or the yahoo group) and each of us had a copy. I use these for all my school-age kids…wouldn’t want to have to write things out for each one every day! I marked things she needed special instructions for on my copy and went over them with her at the beginning of the day. This helped her not to have so many corrections later, and me not to have to spend so much time later walking her through things she was really capable of doing without my help.

Also, the last few months I’ve been working through various things with her one at a time using suggestions from the book Smart But Scattered (for executive function issues like organization and time management which all kids with ADHD have) and that has helped too.

MamaWebb, check out the other thread you commented on. Tristan had some good feedback in case you missed it 🙂