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SCM School, and still taking ALL DAY???
- This topic has 26 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 8 months ago by
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Questions:
On your daily schedule you listed out dictation twice per week. You didn’t clarify if that was just for the 6th grader or for everyone. Are you doing dictation with one child or four?
Here are my suggestions for you:
1. Shorten the time you’re spending on AG daily. It will take longer than 10 weeks to complete, but will lessen the daily time and frustrations;
–OR–
2. Scrap AG for now and come back to it in a year or two. The beautiful thing about English grammar is that it is a finite body of knowledge. The rules never change, and you and your dd can return to AG when she’s in 8th grade or above and still accomplish a complete grammar program before she graduates.
3. If you’re doing dictation with your oldest four children, stop and just do it with the 6th grader and MAYBE the 4th grader. CM didn’t recommend dictation until age 9-10.
4. Don’t have them complete an entire worksheet in RightStart everyday. The short lesson principle that Charlotte taught should be used here. Your 12yo should be working on math a maximum of 30 minutes per day, 20 minutes for your 3rd & 4th graders, and max of 10-15 minutes for younger children.
5. Could the 6th grader and 4th grader help the 3rd grader and K’er with their math to free you up to tend to the baby and other little one?
6. Piano can be practiced in the afternoons so that your actual school time is shorter.
7. Devotions could be done before bed and with Daddy to also shorten your actual school time.
8. Are you trying to do Apologia daily? If so, cut down to twice per week and aim for a max of 15 minutes for your younger ones and max of 30 minutes for your older two, if they are doing a notebook or something.
Kelly, your comment about “if we’re doing something wrong” struck a chord with me, so I’m going to have you do something that might seem a little silly, but it’s often a necessary reality check for me.
Ready? Repeat after me: There isn’t really a right or wrong way to use teaching materials…..it’s OUR home and OUR homeschool, so I get to decide how it should be done.
As long as you are meeting the legal requirements to homeschool in your state, you can decide if daily grammar lessons are right for your child or if stretching out 10 units over 20 weeks is the right thing to do. I have found that even though we didn’t necessarily finish everything I had originally planned over the past few years, dd15 has risen to the task of studying high school subjects. It works out over time.
I have 4 kids – 13, 10, 6, 4 and am teaching 3 of them. I am not familiar with Right Start because I was never interested in teacher intensive programs. We’re currently using MUS for dd13, TT for ds10, and Rays for dd6. All are effective and none teacher intensive. For our family, we have a goal of helping our kids become self learners as soon as possible. DD13 and DS10 are almost completely self directed save dictation, oral narration, and natural discussion. We have some things we do as a family – Bible/devotions, geography, some history, and a read aloud lit. book. Our fine arts would be all together, but we do those subjects at our CM co-op.
RE. AG – I taught AG season 1 to a group of 8 kids (6th -8th grades) last fall. I also taught Jr. AG to a group of 7 (4th-5th grades). The direct teaching was only 5-10 minutes for a group. They then spent 15 minutes or so completing the first exercise. On a daily basis, my ds10 spent 15 minutes completing Jr. AG. DD13 spent 20 minutes to finish each day’s AG work. We did complete the programs in 10 weeks and I only had 1 drop out because she wasn’t ready for abstract nature of grammar. I would recommend choosing 7 of the 10 AG exercises to save a bit of time. It is what I will likely do in the fall when I teach season 2. Five would be too few, but 10 is sometimes overkill. The other possibility is to draw some of the diagrams and let her fill them in. That saves some time, too.
If staying with Right start is important to you, perhaps you could try staggering math, alternating kids each day and giving them something they can work on their own when it isn’t their day.
Regardless, I would recommend setting a timer for 20 minutes for all subjects for those 5th and younger. I would set the timer for 25-30 minutes for your sixth grader. Complete what you can in that time frame and call it a day. The rest will be there tomorrow.
Blessings,
Christie
Oh THANK-YOU to everyone who commented. {BREATHE} The suggestions were all wonderful. I need ot take some time tomorrow and jot some of this out. It was very helpful to hear from your experiences! 🙂
Yes, I think I will cut down on some AG sentences.
And use some timers!
(I was only diong dictation with 4th and 6th graders).
Sue: thank you for your encouragement! Felt like a big hug!
missceegee: I love that you said, your goal is to get them to be independent learners. Do you have a list of the curriculum you use on your blog? I know you said it doens’t get too updated! Do you use the SCM Modules?
Lindsey and Hidden Jewel thank you for your words of wisdom and breaking this down for me!
I can’t see back from this screen to thank anyone else.
I feel encouraged. Thank-you!
I echo the others in suggesting (demanding!) you use the TIMERS. I have experienced this “all day school” from time to time too. It’s awful; especially in Spring! Sometimes it’s just the season of life we are in that keeps us from moving efficiently through the day and that is ok too. But try the timers … You will be so shocked to see how much gets done when everyone knows there is a timer running.
I really do have to remind myself all the time that “Hey, I can do this however I want to!” because it’s easy to try and fit yourself in to someone else’s schedule you’ve read about or seen on SCM. Find your own path … make this experience what you want it to be for your family.
One other key thing mentioned that I wanted to repeat was to be sure that the house/life isn’t eating up your day too. I was really bad about this for a while and I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why our days were so long … turns out I was doing a *little something* between every lesson I was involved in and that was really throwing everyone off. The dishes, laundry, mail, phone, messy cabinet, dust under the couch (lol) can wait until you are done schooling! It has to in my house. I’ll get totally distracted and call off school entirely if I think I can reorganize the pantry! I’m just a wee bit OCD sometimes.
Be happy and blessed and peaceful!
Kelly, I would echo Claire re. distraction, too. Even though we have a lot of independent learning going on, I need to be present fully to help when needed. If I’m off tackling a project, it totally screws with the flow of our day!
Re. Curriculum we like, here is my framework if it’s helpful – the bulk is from scm or CMH
Bible, history, geography – SCM modules with all recommended books including Visits to series. I will occ. switch out a book and frequently add books, esp. For dd13.
Literature – suggestions from scm, Charlotte Mason Help, AO, etc
Personal devotions and bible – Charlotte Mason help
Math – we’ve switched a lot for my oldest, but we like MUS, TT, Rays
Science – living books and nature study during younger years; dd13 is taking and online marine biology right now, but will likely move to Apologia Physical science next year; ds10 will begin using God’s Design next year; we will keep natural history books and nature study going; I add in some bios of scientists.
Copy work/commonplace – from their reading
Dictation – spelling wisdom
Other spelling (we have to tackle from two angles bc it’s a weak area) – rod and Staff through book 3 and then Phonetic Zoo is what we’re trying at the moment.
Grammar – jag and AG, though our mother Tongue intrigues me
Is that helpful?
Loving the feedback, especially the specifics!
Missceegee thank-you for the curriculum framework!
And, yes, timesrs are getting used tomorrow!
Thank you!
It seems to take us forever with math too every day, and I usually cross out about 1/3 of the work. Currently we are using CLE but will be switching to Teaching Textbooks with DH’s approval. I cant wait. I am trying to get mine to be more independent and yes timers do help. Well; like all these wise ladies told you! I am just letting you know you are not alone!
I have five children, so I can relate to long days as well! I know the weak areas for us are:
-not getting up early to get a jump on the day
-CHATTING at the table!!! This is a HUGE time eater for us! I feel like I say “SSSHHHHHH!!!” 20 times a day! Doesn’t help…then they whisper! I have to clarify…”STOP TALKING!!!”
Great suggestion about the timer, ladies!
Here is another sample of curriculum from our family –
(I copied Christie’s and changed it to reflect our choices where needed to save time)
Bible, history, geography – here I’ve gone astray but funny thing is I started with SCM modules as my guide …
Bible study this year we will use GOAL and daily devotionals with breakfast that come via email from our church, plus some extra readings/special activities during Lent and Advent seasons usually, plus some daily reading in their own Bibles (nice teen versions).
Geography – is a five year rotation that goes like this 1-N.Am./Central Am./Carribean, 2-S Am./Africa, 3-Europe/Asia/S Pacific/Australia 4-repeats year 3, 5-focuses on Greece, Eygpt, and Rome. I use CM map drill weekly plus online practice at Seterra
History – SCM modules create our framework but out of order (4, 5, 6, 6, 1-3) for a five year rotation instead of six. I use the spine The History of US by Joy Hakim for modules 4, 5, 6 3x week. I follow world History in the same way but 1/2x week using the Bauer books Story of the World and will use the new one History of the World. I add both biographies and Historical literature (about 10 total/year) to this mix usually 2x week independently and choose those from all the booklists around.
Literature – suggestions from scm, Charlotte Mason Help, AO, etc (same for us here)
Personal devotions and bible – lump in with Bible study
Math – I used a general scope and sequence I find online/library textbook then I teach them the lesson myself using lots of materials, books and online resources then find extra practice online … all for free … like and have used LOF, MM, David Eugene Smith. This year dd13 will use an algebra text we love too and ds10 will use MM for their framework.
Science – living books and nature study and lots of experiments during younger years; same approach as with Math for these last two years … I have a rotation (might be in an old post on here) but I’ve tweaked it again since that post. Not sure what we’ll do for high school but we have another year. Biographies and literature selections here too – usually one or the other 2x week. 1x week we read from Joy Hakim’s other series (deep stuff, we love exploring and looking up more about it for fuller understanding) History of Science.
Copy work/commonplace – from their reading, from everywhere really … lots of nice freebies out there for this
Dictation – various places
Other spelling – none … but probably shoud because we are all three bad spellers!
Grammar – none formally, read Grammarland together in first years home; both mine had their foundations for grammar in schools so we just sort of fly by the seat of our pants here and teach it through our written narrations and compositions … I use a few solid manual type books and online resources for how to’s … AG sounds like torturous fun, maybe we’ll do that one day?
We add Shakespeare, Plutarch, Current Events, Poet, Picture, NS, Hymn, Composer, Folksong, BOC, Composition to the mix – no formal, specific books except where obvious here. Oh and both study a language via Mango and Duolingo and lots of random sources/ways and we will add family Latin this year too.
That sounds so long but really we just do Math, Science, History, Foreign Lang. and Composition …. the rest is mostly 10/15 minute stuff!
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