Making It All Work

Alright. This post is not week-specific.  I'm not going to detail our exact activities of a unit.  But I am going to talk about some of the things I've learned in just the few, short days we've been doing this new (to us) HOD curriculum.

This program has not only been teaching and molding my children, it's been teaching and molding ME.  A note about myself: I am what many would consider a "Type A" personality.  What is this exactly? Well, Wikipedia says this:

    "The theory describes a Type A individual as ambitious,  rigidly organized, highly status conscious, can be sensitive, care for other people, are truthful, impatient, always try to help others, take on more than they can handle, want other people to get to the point, proactive, and obsessed with time management. People with Type A personalities are often high-achieving "workaholics" who multi-task, push themselves with deadlines, and hate both delays and ambivalence.




Geez.  When you lump all those characteristics into one paragraph, I'm not sure it paints a very pretty picture of me. Maybe I should re-think admitting to this personality!  Nonetheless, those words in red are accurate for me and directly describe how I generally operate during a school day.  This year, though, I have to make some serious changes to my thinking.

One thing I am quickly learning is to let go of my idea of a strictly organized schedule.  I know there are plenty of other HOD users who have organized, time-block schedules for their day and it's how they juggle two or more grades/programs. I just don't think that's going to work for us.  Even though each block is suppose to have an estimated time frame for completion (per HOD), I find it varies greatly depending on the child's mood that day, ability to complete the box independently, readily available supplies, etc.  Plus, in CTC, the boxes aren't necessarily the same each day. For example, one day might have a History Project, while another does not.  Trying to stick to a block schedule was over-whelming and stressful.

So, we do a little play-it-by-ear teamed with general routine.  We always start with math lesson for Bug (in CTC), then do math with Bean (in Bigger) while Bug works on her practice problems.  After that, Bug starts with any box of her choice marked "Independent" while I begin on any box that Bean would like to tackle.  We continue this way through boxes, Bug doing independent boxes and me working with Bean, until lunch.  Meanwhile, Sprout (4 y.o.) usually watches a few cartoons, plays with playdough, digs in our popcorn box, colors at the table, listens to Bean's storytime reading, or does free-play with her toys.  Soon, she will be starting preschool in the mornings outside the home.

After lunch, Bean gets some free time with Sprout while I do some "Teacher" and "Semi-Independent" boxes in CTC with Bug.  Then we bring Bean back to the table to finish her day and Bug finishes her work.  Almost always we end by doing the storytime box in CTC while the whole family listens.  The day starts at 8:30 a.m. and has been finishing around 3:30 or 4:00 p.m.  I still have hope our day gets shorter as we get even more and more adjusted to the routine.

There's one more huge realization I had this week.  In my attempt to ensure that Bean did not fall behind (since she is a struggling student, especially in reading and math), I was actually pushing her into advanced level work.  I lost sight of the beauty of homeschooling and working with your student at their level.  She was just as frustrated, upset, and dreadful of our math and reading lessons as she had been during her brief stint in public school.  So I made the first change toward getting her back to loving to learn.  We stopped doing Drawn Into the Heart of Reading and began the Emerging Reader selected books and schedule instead.  Yep, that's right. Just stopped mid-book.  Wow, I can't explain how hard this was for me.  I'll admit, I've felt for a few days that DITHOR (or maybe just the book we picked to read?) was just too hard for her, but I kept telling myself I'd re-evaluate after we finished the first book.  Why? Why did she have to keep suffering with too difficult work? She didn't.  I needed to change for her.

I love that HOD recognizes that each student is at a different level!  For this reason, they include an alternate reading program option in Bigger.  This Emerging Reader program has specific books, a daily schedule, and comprehension questions. I happened to even own some of the books scheduled, so switching was easy to do.  Many of the other books are easily available at my local library and those that aren't are cheaply purchased through the HOD website.  We did this for the first time today.  The difference was SIGNIFICANT.  I'm not sure we started with a truly challenging book, but for today, reading time ended with a big smile on her face and she said, "I liked that story! I liked reading today so much more than the other days."  Perhaps we'll do a few of the harder books in this program and then take another stab at DITHOR in a few weeks.  Today was progress, at least.