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Tristan: question about work at table
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Mountain Mama, I have always liked the idea of reading to the children during meals, but didn’t figure it would work for us yet.
Last year each child started chores after eating, and at some point soon after I would call everyone to be couch to start school with family work. But there always seemed to be a bit of grumbling or lagging b/c they started playing after finishing chores. I hoped to eliminate the grouchies from that part of the day by moving into individual work immediately after chores then a family work time after I had a captive audience. 🙂
Part of the incentive, in my mind at least, was that whoever was done with chores and back at the table first would have Mama’s attention and help first. Helping the first child there worked fairly well, I suppose. I just didn’t expect the one child to be so easily distracted by the other children. It seemed deliberate b/c he only behaved that way when doing math, which has never been a difficult subject for him.
jrs5kids –
The fun of teens…lol. For table time I would try sitting with them for sure. A couple things with the mouthy one who challenges you on everything –
1. Be impervious. Simply respond with ‘do your work’. Don’t get frustrated or let them get a reaction out of you. This is hard!
2. What consequence matters to the 13 year old? Let them know how they will deal with it if they do not complete their work. Because honestly, you can’t force a 13 year old to do an assignment (or any age), but you can structure the environment so that doing the assignment is what makes for a happy, fun life. My 15 year old has a cell phone that we have total access to. If she balks at completing school work we simply let her know that until the assigned work is finished correctly she does not have a phone. We usually phrase things this way: “You may have _____ as soon as your assignments are finished correctly.” or “You may do _______ as soon as your assignments are finished correctly.” For a different child the motivator may be going outside, playing games, going to an activity, having a friend over, or even food. I know there are strong feelings surrounding food, but in a child with no food related issues (ex: a child adopted from a 3rd world country often has food related issues) we are very comfortable with this consequence “You may not eat lunch until your assignments are completed. If you miss lunch time you will have to wait to eat until the next time the kitchen is open.” A few things with that – be sure they can do the work in that time easily so there is no excuse. Stay at the table or available to them if they have work related questions.
3. If they become a distraction to the others then you assign them a new place to sit. Let them know that it’s okay for them to dawdle or complain all their want to their pencil, but that it’s not okay to interrupt the work time for other people.
Now, in reality, a teen may work better in a quiet, separate spot. My 15 year old generally likes working in her room, or at a separate place from the younger kids. I’m ok with that so long as she is getting her work done. She will come to me for help. This year when we do her 1 on 1 work time the other kids won’t be at the table with us and they also will not be allowed to interrupt except for blood or poop (in other words someone is bleeding or a diapered child has pooped!).
Also, hormones can be a big frustration – I know I have days where I just feel agitated and grumpy from the get go and if people start telling me what to do it isn’t fun. What ways can you support them during that? My 15 year old will get told to ‘go outside to do the next assignment’ or ‘turn on music with headphones’ or ‘Would some chocolate help that math work get done?’.
I think it is ok for teens to work in a separate space. The goal is independence, and knowing when to seek help with a problem/assignment. Now, if they are not doing work when in a separate space then alter the environment of that space so there aren’t other things to do (nothing to watch, no electronics handy, no books to browse, etc).
Maybe for you table time will be the 11 and 8 year old. And maybe you invite the 13 year old to do 1 assignment at the table that they tend to need help with, and then encourage them to go work somewhere else.
It is different in every family and I’ve found in many ways it can be different for each child as they mature.
One last idea that came to mind – what environment does each of your children focus best in? I have some kids who can work steadily with distracting noises, other people talking quietly, etc, and a couple who need very minimal distractions if you want them to get math done. If being at the table with the group makes it harder for the child to do their work then separate them for their harder assignments and bring them to the table for the easier ones they need to focus on less to complete.
Ha! SO that was a long random answer but hopefully it will spark some ideas that apply for you!
I have 10yo with special needs, 8.5yo boy (reluctant reader), 5yo girl, 3yo girl, baby due Dec. We do 3 family subjects after breakfast. Then I have 1 older with a younger doing blanket time while I spend time with the other younger. The other older is doing piano or audiobook/math game. And then we switch so I’m with the other younger. We re-group for snack and finish family subjects. The 2 littlest then leave with full love tanks and full tummies to listen to an audiobook or play in the basement. It’s a treat to listen to the audiobook in mommy’s bed but it also gets the distraction out of the room for the other 2 to focus. I hope that helps.
This has been an exciting thread! Maybe I missed something, but when (Tristan) you describe table time, is it that where you do individual lessons with a child while the others work independently at the same table?
I know you have a lot of little ones too, so what do you do with the baby and toddler? I sit down to work on math with one, while a couple of the middle kids are at the table with me, the two year all over, and the baby crawling around. (My 2 oldest 9th and 7th do independent work upstairs). I find that I am having to ask kids to stop and attend to the little ones often so that I can continue with individual subjects. It seems like there is MUCH up and down and MUCH movement all around. But it does seem like they are being helpful with little ones when they get up.
I think I do take care of some computer type things while the kids are working. I need to do better at being at the table, not distracted. My 1st grader keeps getting up and it takes her so long to finish anything…..I am realizing now, from this thread, that I am not staying at the table.
But, if I’ve worked through the individual lessons, would you still stay there until their independent work is done? I don’t think I could sit for as long as it takes them to complete things. I feel like there is much ‘dilly-dallying’! 🙂
At table time we only do these things:
Math – Monday is a new lesson for each child, the rest of the week they are doing practice pages or the test, so I’m just there to answer questions. They work on their math while I do 1 on 1 for the following subjects, which all are 10-15 minutes tops, so I have breaks to help with math.
Reading Lessons – Oliver is using All About Reading level 2, about 15 lessons in. So every day he will work on a lesson with me. That may mean reading from a book, practicing reading the word cards, building words with the tiles on the board (right beside the table), doing an activity page (games). I am helping for all of this, 15 minutes at most.
Spelling – Joseph, Emma, and Daniel are beginning All About Spelling level 1 this year. We will do each lesson together until a child is ready to move ahead, then we’ll end up on 3 separate lessons probably. This will do triple duty – spelling, copywork of the words, and then about halfway through it will switch to dictation of sentences). So at the busiest each child will need 10 minutes with me.
Alphabet – This is Caleb, my Kindergartener. He has 1 worksheet about a letter each day. It may have coloring, copywork, drawing, counting, a game like Bingo, a spinner game, cards for a matching game, etc. He can do this with me or with any other sibling at the table if they are waiting for help from me.
What are Mason (4.5), Samuel (3), and Tobias (9mos) doing during this? They all begin playing at the table seatbelted in booster seats. We have a giant round table that seats 10+ people, so they are grouped together on one section. When I seatbelt them they get 1 activity to play with. Playdoh, puzzles, crayons, paintbrushes and water on construction paper, pattern blocks, magnetic wooden dolls, foam blocks, stacking pegs, etc. Mason and Samuel can happily sit and do 1 activity for 30 minutes. Tobias will be learning to sit, so probably 10 minutes to begin with. When their time is up they can get down or get a new activity. Getting down means they have access to different toys in that room (chalkboard or dry erase board, books), and to whatever toys are in the next room (right now that would be magna tiles, cars, and a few stuffed animals).
When they get rowdy or aren’t playing well together that child gets whisked to the table again or to the sink with a bowl of water and some dishes to ‘wash’, or onto someone’s lap for a snuggle.
A lot of what makes it work is habit training. Table time is a skill they’ve learned – to play contentedly with one activity for up to 30 minutes. When we begin they are there for 10 minutes and if they toss their activity on the floor they are stuck just sitting/watching/whining. They learn quickly that they don’t want to toss down their activity. And really, when we start young they want to be at the table just to see everyone and what they are doing, so usually they get fascinated even if they toss their activity and do just fine. After a couple weeks of 10 minutes we bump it up to 15 minutes, and just work our way to 30 minutes of table time with a single activity.
Anything else we do is not done during table time. Some is morning time, usually at the couch. Some is totally independent (assigned reading and personal scriptures wherever you are comfortable). Some is history read alouds and discussion on the couch and moving to the table to notebook or grabbing a clip board, up to the child.
Dawdlers get stuck doing whatever they don’t finish later in the day instead of playing. So when the time block set aside for something is up they are required to put that subject away and come back to it on their own time.
Sitting there for table time (1 1/2 hours) is doable to me. But yes, when they dawdle I don’t allow them to drag table time out with me there. They get stuck back at the table in the afternoon alone while everyone else gets to play and do their own fun things. Dawdling goes in phases here, some kids try it once or twice and hate the consequence so they don’t do it for months at a time. Others will regularly test it out to see if I’m still going to stick by the rules. It’s just their different personalities. 🙂
This was WONDERFUL to read. And if I’m brave, I can ‘imagine’ that peace here. And then I wake-up. LOL I like how you said, Tristan, that you train them young to sit. When you described them sitting at the table, dropping their toy, I imagine a disruptive child. (?) At least in the beginning stages of training. I think it would be hard for me to keep a disconted 3yo old at the table while I help someone on a subject…..bc the 3yo would be a distraction. I have to make myself believe, that it would be worth it to train a child to sit at the table in the long run, even if it means a few weeks of missed lessons? I just struggle with the missed lessons or distracted lessons for who I am working with.
I am SO thankful you wrote all that out. Oh my was that helpful. I honestly feel overwhelmed at trying to start that now, as what seems to be late to try to do w/ several at once.
Thank you for your example!
Yes, exactly. A few weeks of interrupted lessons to train a younger child is worth it!
And, in all honesty, learning to work through a few disruptions is also a good real life skill for the rest of the children to gain. Because I don’t know about you, but all my job and adult life experience has had disruptions I have to learn to work through. It’s one area I think public schools did me (and do today’s kids) a disservice. They’re insulated in a totally unrealistic environment. Real life is messy, it has interruptions, distractions, and we have to choose to attend to our work of the moment. In a classroom kids have most of that removed and so they don’t develop the skill of choosing to work amidst real life environments. No other time in their life will be distraction free. Better to learn their own ways to cope now than when they are on their first job.
And really, it is never too late for a child to learn to play or work at the table without being a big disruption. I always ask myself this question:
“What will this action (being disruptive in this example) look like when my child is 12, 16, or 22? Will it be easier to encourage a better habit now or easier to endure their bad habit for years to come?”
Sometimes I do choose to wait a bit to work on an area that needs change. It’s ok, we can’t do everything at once. But I try to tackle the areas that will make the biggest impact on our daily life experience first.
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