Name: Great Homeschool Conventions (Columbus)
Start: 2025-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-04-26T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Columbus, OH

Tagged: atomosphere, scheules

This topic has 4 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 5 months ago by Sue.

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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May 24, 2012 at 4:12 pm
Claire
Participant
Ok, this is totally premature of me but I have switched this term (and I am determined to follow through until the end of term in December) to a more scheduled atmosphere for our schooling. Before this I might have loosely known what we’d cover each day but I did not know where we would end up – number of books read, place in history, math topics covered, etc. – at the end of any term. We just ended up where we did. Our progress was not an issue because everyone (take with a grain of salt pls. we are a normal dynamic family like everyone else) loved learning and eagerly moved forward without many road bumps.
I am excited to “see” via this scheduling exactly how many books will be covered for all subjects and to be able to increase the living books read independently a bit to challenge them a little more this term.
This new shift is interesting to observe. And observe I can …. because they have daily schedules done through the term’s end and we gather only for our family subjects. I am very happy with what I see, but the atmosphere is very different. Where before there was a sense of “one room school house” I don’t have that feeling as much now. Everyone is pretty much doing their own thing. In other words we aren’t exchanging and engaging quite as much as we have the past two years when we worked almost all subjects in a group setting. *Note – in the past they were still doing their work separately. Everyone was working, of course, at their own level.
I’ll be interested to hear your experiences/comments.
Do you find this a little boring? I am seriously caught up on housekeeping, laundry, email, gardening … I’m not trying to be irritating here either. I just used to work more when I was designing, digging, reading aloud our subjects. Now, with things moving to their court I feel much less involved.
I want to be sure they’re really “getting it” too! Talking with them on oral narrations I see they are doing good so far. I’m just wondering about the depth of what they’re getting. Of course, I guess that is told in their work both oral and written too, so I shouldn’t worry there until I see a problem.
I miss the banter and discussions and intellectual exchanges during the school day. Now I have to settle for the car rides, and dinning room table and after supper times for this type of conversation. I hope that doesn’t make me sound too pathetically in love with my children and our schooling?! I don’t have a large family where this might be a blessing and a goal worked toward. And I realize that this is probably a silly concern to some of you but for my small family it really is *something*!
Anyway, thanks for letting me wonder out loud on here!
May 25, 2012 at 11:09 am
nebby
Participant
We do some of each, individual and together work. I would say about 35-40% the former and a little more together work. There are soem things where different age kids are at different levels (like math) that they need to do on their own. But most subjects like history and science we do together. I don’t know how they feel but that together part of homeschool is one of my favorite times of day. Soemtimes I wonder if I should be teaching them to work more independently but I love the interchange that you talk about. Maybe you could just shift back a little? You don’t mention how old your kids are. Mine are 11,10,8 and 6 so the younger two still need a lot of help in their indep. work and even the older ones I need to check their math and other subjects for. So I don’t get to just do my own thing while they are doing their own work.
Nebby
http://www.lettersfromnebby.wordpress.com
May 25, 2012 at 11:45 am
jeaninpa
Participant
When you say that you “miss the banter and discussions” I think you’re answering your own question. You miss it. Your time with your children is short. When you look back on this time, what do you want to see? Do you want to see quiet and order? lively discussions? a bit of both? Try to take the long view and orchestrate your days to implement it. My .02.
May 25, 2012 at 11:54 am
Evergreen
Member
This year we moved to my two 11-year-olds and 14-year-old using mostly independent schedules, and I had a similar feeling to what you express. A few changes helped us get more of the togetherness I’d missed, but allowed them to continue with their schedules. We always have a read-aloud going during the day, and they love to be read to during lunchtime. It usually coordinates with the history studies, so we have a great time for discussion then, and I often find the discussion picked up later in the day, when the kids have pondered it further. We added special together things to our week, usually during morning snacktime – Monday was music, where we read about a composer, and we’d listen to his music through the week; Tuesday was Poet-tea, where we’d share a special snack and tea, and read each other poetry; Wednesday was SCM’s picture study. Later, I added in reading Lamb’s Shakespeare one day a week. Perhaps you are already doing these things.
One thing that occurs to me, is that I wonder if the kids are all doing separate history time periods. It’s helped here this year that the three oldest in our homeschool are studying the same time period and reading many of the same materials, so we can have more of “the great discussion” together. Perhaps, if you’re not, that is something you could consider adjusting if you’d like more togetherness. I was looking through SCM’s modules, Truthquest and Biblioplan and considering how I could make much of the work independent, as the kids really like that, but still stay involved and united in our discussions.
May 25, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Sue
Participant
I must say that I was once drawn to unschooling because of the “banter and discussions” that parents who had used that method had described. However, I have an autistic child who is better served by having routines he can count on and needs a lot of my help. So, we have a mix of independent and family work.
Interestingly, during the past month we have been doing a higher percentage of family work, having brought my oldest girl into the living science books the youngers have been using and having her join us for literature as well. We have cut back drastically on copywork and spelling, though….and those are individual subjects. I have to chalk that up to the fact that I don’t function as well when the weather warms up (breathing issues) unless I spend extended time in air conditioning, which we don’t have at home.
I’m about ready to call it quits for the year, but I have to look back and see how far we’ve come before making that decision. I think that will give me a clearer picture of what mixture of individual and family work I want to schedule for next year.