Teens…sigh…can I get an amen?!?

My son never really caught the CM bug either. He did fine and graduated over 3 years ago. He is doing well in life and his father and I are very proud of him. He always enjoyed history through real books but that was about it. Classical music and art appreciation? Forget about it!

It really is okay. I continued to use the CM elements that worked well for him. I didn’t push the ones that didn’t, like-picture study, composer study, formal nature study, etc. He didn’t do Shakespeare or Plutarch but he did read lots of living books for history and lots of great literature for English. He learned how to write well and wrote lots and lots of really good essays and a few short stories. We are both content and pleased with his education.

My daughter is a completely different story. She loves learning and reads Isaac Asiminov and Poe in her free time. She has taken to CM methods like a duck to water.

My suggestion would be to ask your girls what they want to do for school. What subjects are they interested in? What can they find in Mason’s methods that they can get behind? My daughter enjoys taking a fairly active role in her education. She will be 15 next month. We discuss what she wants to study and then we work our plans around that in a CM way. Maybe you could have a meeting with them and come up with a plan that all 3 of you can live with.

You’ve been homeschooling a few more years than I have but I totally get what you mean. I sometimes feel at a loss as well. Homeschooling and parenting during the teen years has been especially difficult at times. It’s also been incredibly rewarding at times. I wouldn’t trade it for the world (on most days ;-)) but it’s not an easy row to hoe!

I agree with what the above poster said about letting them have some input at least find out what they are interested in. If they like to do things on their own assign them the history readings and read along with them. ( they could even use different books from each other or be on different eras if they need to not compare with each other or just be different). Then you can still do narrations but they will be independent. I would have gotten frustrated waiting for my mom to do history or science at that age. As a side, I really liked Apologia (now berian builders) science at that age.

I have not had teenagers yet. But is wasn’t so long ago that I was a homeschooled teen along with my brother and sister. I loved homeschooling but my brother and sister did not like any school AT ALL. One of them I think was because she compared herself to me and wasn’t as academic. Once she got to college stepped back and actually got math she went on to enjoy and excellent in nursing school. You don’t have someone feeling that they aren’t good at the school thing do you?

My brother just had a bad disrespectful attitude. Another issue to address if that is it.

Only a suggestion…. because I have no answers here….but I know that teens can get “burn out” just like moms… not saying at all that’s what’s happening but just a mommy recall from years gone by   Lol

at 15 they likely know how to write a response to literature. Why not let them choose ANY book and read and write …. that’s it. For a couple months Just read and write.  (Well you can’t escape Math but you get the idea).  Drop all subjects except for their love of each new Book.    Their only assignment…. express in writing something from your experience of reading that book.   ????

Praying for you.  For full restoration of your back and a remedy for school.   :0)

Yay! Praising the Lord with you for small victories!

I just wanted to share what I have been doing with my daughter for history in case it might help. We are doing two streams of history: world and U.S. I simply have my daughter pick a living book from each stream and we alternate them. She is just finishing up a biography on Abraham Lincoln and a history of China. She will be starting a bio on General Grant next week, which she will alternate with a book on the history of Russia. We are both super happy with this plan and things are going very well. She’s had enough history to understand chronology without having to study everything in chronological order and this frees her up to follow her interests a bit more. Right now, it’s studying specific foreign countries and the American Civil War.

She is doing Apologia Biology 4 days a week but on the 5th day I let her choose and she chose marine biology. So on that day, she watches a short video on the topic, studies 2 species and draws one in her science notebook, adding in labels and a few interesting facts. She really enjoys this and it helps make biology more interesting for her.

I also allowed her to choose her foreign language. She chose Japanese and we found a wonderful program online that she is loving. Since she chose the language, she is invested in really learning it.

It sounds like you’ve already been having these kinds of talks with your daughter and are giving her ample choices. I just wanted to share what my daughter is doing in case it gives you any ideas or just encourages you and your daughter as you seek to provide her with a custom education for her unique gifts and personality.

Prayers for a full recovery!

I have 4 kids – dd16, ds13, dd9, ds7.  My ds13 is not what I would call academically inclined.  He has a good attitude, does his work, but nothing sparked him for the longest time.  This year, I’m seeing a bit of a spark with graphic design and computer building. We will see where it goes.  Some things that I’ve done for him – drop dictation and CM style grammar. He greatly prefers and does very well with Phonetic Zoo for spelling. We did Get Smart Grammar and he did great with in.  He prefers a straight forward approach to many things. I bought ALL  of his literature books for kindle with whisper sync audio.  Reading isn’t his favorite or easiest, but he is really enjoying the books this way. We utilize online classes.  This year that has been an OT and NT Survey class, GIMP graphic design class, and raspberry pi computer class.  Outside accountability for some things helps him.

For all of my kids, I made a narration notes folder that includes lists of ways to narrate along with examples.  They refer to it when I give them a narration of choice or a specific one, like a creative narration.  It’s a good reference and they like some freedom of house.

I hope that the ideas shared on this spread help spark an idea that is useful to you.

Warmly, Christie

Marmie-We use Irasshai. It is a free Japanese course offered online from Georgia Public Broadcasting. Each day my daughter watches a video on their website and completes the worksheet printout as well. She is learning so much!

There are components you can buy to make the course more complete and their addition makes it a 3 year course. I wanted to see how well it would work and if my daughter would like it and stick with it before investing in the complete course so we started with the free components. She loves it and is doing so well that I have decided to purchase the additional resources. It will cost me about $70 for the first set and then $50 or so for the next one but we won’t get to the second set for at least a year. I think $120 for 3 years of foreign language is a wonderful price! The course also includes studying Japanese culture which is a wonderful benefit that my daughter enjoys.

We have been so happy with this curriculum and so thankful that the basic components are available at not cost. I first heard about it on the Well Trained Mind forum.

Jen-my email address is melaniearudd@gmail.com.

Email me any time!