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Not loving school right now
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I am really not having a great year so far. Part of me would love to throw the towel in and do nothing but math and Bible until after Christmas and then start fresh in January. I don’t really like most of our resources this year. The SCM guides are fine, but my boys aren’t really taking to any of it the way I would have liked. I’m so frustrated with narrating — largely becasue I’m not as consistant as I should be about requiring it. Working mornings and trying to school in the afternoons sucks because it’s impossible to get it all in. I feel like I have 4 full-time jobs between Administrative Assistant, Mom, teacher, wife, and the housekeeper-me rarely shows up for long these days becasue I’m too busy trying to do be everything else, and nothing is going as I would like it to. I’m tired, cranky and annoyed so often that there isn’t much enjoyment in anything school related for any of us right now. I’d love to quit my job, but my husband doesn’t support that and frankly I’m too scared to do it. That would be losing a full third of our take-home income and that’s frightening to me. Also, I’ll never get another job like this where I can bring my boys to the office with me and take time off so easily. I have the best boss ever. UHG!!!
So, at this moment I am seriously thinking of scrapping everything but the basics until further notice. But what about all that money I have tied up in some of these resourses? If I don’t use them now, I probably never will. I can’t really afford to do replace everything and what happens if I don’t like the next thing, either?
Sorry you’re having a rough patch right now. 🙁 It’s okay to scale back and try to get your footing again. There are only so many hours in the day and you can only do what you can physically do – don’t beat yourself up. Can you sell some of the resources you won’t be using on homeschool classifieds, half.com, or ebay to recoup some money back?
Hugs!
Sorry you’re struggling….you sure do have a lot on your plate. Nothing wrong w/cutting back until you can figure things out. I forget how old your kids are. Can they do any more independently? Though not ideal, I could probably give my 4th and 7th graders nearly everything independently if I had to…even to the point of writing or taping all narrations if absolutely necessary for a while! I hope you find a good fit soon, I’m sure it can be stressful. Blessings, Gina
P.S. Have you heard of the Robinson Curriculum? I’ve only briefly looked at it…but he designed it when his wife passed away so his kids could work independently….
Why not make the basics your daily goal but have the other resorces and subjects available to them for their own pursuit? you might be surprised how much they will learn and enjoy if you let them chose to study those “extras” at their own pace. Its always thrilling to have one of my DC bring me their History or Science reader for some cuddle time on the couch or request art study at bed time. just a thought. don’t know how old your children are but if they are reading independently I would let them have full access to the resources you have…. they may just pick it up if they don’t feel like they “have” too.
praying for your peace of mind and confidence that you are doing an amazing job with your kids weather you feel like it or not. 🙂
Rachel
I don’t do regular narration anymore. It was too much. It shouldn’t be that hard, having kids tell you things back. But with multiple kids and multiple books I honestly got really* tired of it. They still tell me things when they’re excited enough to tell me about it. Otherwise I don’t worry about it. If I worry about doing everything perfectly I’d go insane and quit homeschooling.
Nothing is wrong with scaling back. Nothing is wrong with focusing on the basics and getting happy in your home again. I know that I can be a very grumpy mom when I’m feeling pulled too many directions.
If it makes you feel any better, some days I’d LOVE to have a job like the one you described. Sure, I love being at home, but there are days where a flexible job and extra income would be amazing.
Hang in there. Don’t feel guilty when something doesn’t work. It’s the just the nature of homeschooling and individualized education. It can be frustrating, yet so worth it.
My4boys,
How old are your boys? I ask because I scaled back a lot for almost a month because I was so tired of too much clutter, too much bickering, too little help, and too many difficulties with my autistic son. However, I am now feeling as though we need to add back in and get more done. My kids are 12, 13, and 14, so I feel very obligated to “get in” a lot more schoolwork.
Having said that, I do clearly see that very little will be accomplished (even with learning) if we don’t do a bit of habit training. We’ll just be back to square one, so to speak. I think I would feel less concerned about scaling back if my children were younger. Sometimes, though, life has to take over.
My boys are in 6th and 3rd grades.
The oldest will be 12 next month and struggles with dysgraphia. He reads well, likes to read when it’s something that interests him, and narrates orally decently, but could use some more organization in his thoughts. He also tends to struggle with math and we are only on lesson 27 of MUS Gamma. His 8yo brother is on lesson 23 of the same book. He’s very social.
Younger son is ADHD, but also very bright — reading well above grade level, spelling and language skills come very naturally to him, but he’s not done much writing beyond copywork. His handwriting is still very immature. He loves math — I’ll give him a sheet of problems with only every second one circled for him to do, but he’ll often bring the sheet back with every problem done because he was having such a good time. He doesn’t narrate very well, yet, but it is coming — certainly an impprovement over last year.
Thanks for your encouragement, everyone.
Right now I am looking at scaling back to:
Math
Language Arts
Bible/Scripture memory
Continue with historical fiction and lit read alouds (alternaitng one per day)
Allow older son to work through science at own pace if preferred. (Right now we are suppossed to be starting the birds portion of the Apologia book, but he’d rather start the Swimming Creature book becasue he’s really into sharks. He’s also really into hunting, and loves to go partridge hunting with dad. I spoke to him yesterday about doing a comparison of two common game birds from our area. He liked that idea, so I think we’ll spend some time researching and writing a short report. I may have our yonger son do a small bird project as well.
I think I need to get a better balance of hand-on learning and book learning for them. We’re not really crafty people, and I’m not a real science type either, so I’m not really sure how to go about this right now.
Thanks for your encouragement, everyone.
Go with what you feel because burn out comes so easily and sudden. I think it is a phase they are going threw. Mine are about the same age and they seem to be going threw the same thing right now. I was thinking about letting them do more on their own also. I have looked into the Robinson Curriculum also. I bought it about 2 weeks ago on E-bay for $20. Just to have the books. There was over 300 of them. It doesn’t come with the curriculum teachers guide but I figured they could read the books. 🙂 that and the lamplighter sale and we are set for books for quite awhile. 🙂
I hope things work out well for you.
Have a blessed day!
Wow, I am not loving school right now either. But I did some things to help. We scaled back to the basics for a few weeks and I cleaned up the living room and rearranged the furniture. It feels so fresh and good in there now.
Then for science, I am starting a new book of the Astronomy book in Exploring Creation series and we are excited about that. I wanted to let you know that it is okay to skip around in these books if you want to go with their interests. At the beginning of the book, the author gives you permission to do this. We have done the insect portions of the flying creatures book when interested in insects (skipping over the first half of the book). Of course, they do need that first chapter with the scientific orders first, then you can skip around chapters in this series of books on zoology. So your son could study birds for a while and then study sharks for a while and switch back to the flying creatures book to a different chapter. Do they read the chapters on their own?
You are VERY fortunate to have such a nice part-time job that does not mind your kids being there. Is it possible for you to use a little of that money to hire a housekeeper once every one to two weeks? This is a better alternative financially to quitting your job.
As far as independent work, it would be great if your kids could get most of their work done independently while you are working at your job. Check out http://www.urthemom.com I got some good ideas there and my 3rd grader does more work on his own now. I made my own planner for him in Excel and I update it every weekend for the next week for him to go by. All of his work for the week is in one clear plastic box that he can easily take with him if needed. It is similar to workboxes.
Just a quick suggestion…
You don’t have to do every subject every day or even every month! Why not work alternate history and science every other day/week/month? Or whichever subjects that seem to give you trouble…
It is hard to wear so many hats!
A suggestion is to keep your eyes only on those things right in front of you each moment. Whenever I look at ALL of my tasks/duties/problems all at once I get overwhelmed and feel like I can’t handle any of it, but when I just stick to the moment at hand I am much moreclear-headed and stable about my responsibilities. 😉
These days don’t last forever!!
Enjoy them with all your heart!
Mercy
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