As some of you will know, I started homeschooling my two boys in the middle of last year after being dissatisfied with the school I had put them into after taking them out of a Steiner school.
I've had a number of people ask me how I've found homeschooling, and honestly I've had to say it's hard work. My first month was very stressful, I think because I felt I had to go boom, boom, boom through the subjects I'd chosen. I'm a bit more relaxed now. I know the subjects that I can just give the kids to do and there's no pressure. Poetry memorisation we do daily and both the kids love it. My older child likes starting with handwriting practise - he reckons it wakes him up and it's easy. My younger child still resists handwriting, so I'm not pushing it. Today he did some dot-to-dot pictures, practising his number recognition and ability to hold his pencil and draw straight lines from number to number.
I got stuck a bit last year on how to teach maths for both of them, so bought some books on how to teach their age groups (grades K-3 and 5-8). Both books are fantastic. They go through how children learn maths and what concepts they need to understand and how to teach those concepts. Today I got my younger child to show me how to add two different coloured blocks to five and make whatever pattern he liked with them and then explain to me how they add up to five. It was interesting to see that he had no problem with 2+3 and 2+2+1 combinations, but got a bit stuck and had to count out his row of 4 blocks in his 4+1 combination. And with my older child, I used the duplo blocks to show him how to find fractional parts of a whole number. We'd done it on paper last year, but doing it with the blocks added a whole new level of understanding and problems he got confused with last year he did first with the blocks and then was doing them in his head today. He just got stuck once we got to 6/8 of 32 - I'll have to do more work with rote memorisation of times tables with him, including dividing.
Ah, it's all fun. Getting my housework done is hard, though. But I seem to be getting better at fitting it in.
I've had a number of people ask me how I've found homeschooling, and honestly I've had to say it's hard work. My first month was very stressful, I think because I felt I had to go boom, boom, boom through the subjects I'd chosen. I'm a bit more relaxed now. I know the subjects that I can just give the kids to do and there's no pressure. Poetry memorisation we do daily and both the kids love it. My older child likes starting with handwriting practise - he reckons it wakes him up and it's easy. My younger child still resists handwriting, so I'm not pushing it. Today he did some dot-to-dot pictures, practising his number recognition and ability to hold his pencil and draw straight lines from number to number.
I got stuck a bit last year on how to teach maths for both of them, so bought some books on how to teach their age groups (grades K-3 and 5-8). Both books are fantastic. They go through how children learn maths and what concepts they need to understand and how to teach those concepts. Today I got my younger child to show me how to add two different coloured blocks to five and make whatever pattern he liked with them and then explain to me how they add up to five. It was interesting to see that he had no problem with 2+3 and 2+2+1 combinations, but got a bit stuck and had to count out his row of 4 blocks in his 4+1 combination. And with my older child, I used the duplo blocks to show him how to find fractional parts of a whole number. We'd done it on paper last year, but doing it with the blocks added a whole new level of understanding and problems he got confused with last year he did first with the blocks and then was doing them in his head today. He just got stuck once we got to 6/8 of 32 - I'll have to do more work with rote memorisation of times tables with him, including dividing.
Ah, it's all fun. Getting my housework done is hard, though. But I seem to be getting better at fitting it in.