I am homeschooling my 2 dds - one in 7th and one in 3rd. my 7th grade dd achieves well above grade level,and is doing SOS rather independently, and doing well. Although one of the biggest lessons she is learning is time management! My 3rd grader is a bigger challenge. She has a minor vision disability, which makes reading for longer periods a challenge - for both of us. She tests a mid-grade level each year, which is fine, but I want her to enjoy learning. That is not the case currently. We have always used an eclectic mix of curriculum for her. She loves history and science, but math and language arts make me want to pull out my hair. We are trying to learn multiplication and it is a slow go. We have done MUS, Math Mammoth, and now we are using some simple workbooks from B&N. I have about decided to go more of an unschooling route with her. I want to get her excited about school again. I think I am going to let her pick a subject to study (most likely an animal), and go from there. She also loves science experiments (the baking soda volcano was a BIG hit), and craft projects related to history. She loves are and sewing and is doing some embroidery now which is beautiful. I guess I need to hear from experienced unschoolers that she will get what she needs in the long run in her time frame. As you can tell, I am still having a hard time getting out of the rigid school scope & sequence mindset. This is especially hard when some of our hsgin friends are already having their kids take the ACT each year. Anyway, anyone have an encouraging word that this can work for us?
Yes, it can be done. Ds is autistic with some physical limitations. We sort-of-kinda unschool. I use a combination of hands on, video/DVD, I read a lot to him and some computer/online things. We have a tendency to run with whatever he's interested with. Right now in history, it's the American Revolution. Last year= WW2. Science this year has been a bust. So I just order some science graphic novels from Timberdoodle and that's what we're going to do for science. We have to give math up every so many weeks or he degenerates into nothingness. It's like his brain needs a timeout to digest what we've been learning. After a week or so we start back up and he does fine. We do things like make costumes, and are next adventure will be "movie making" if I can figure out how to do it myself. :lol: If she's doing embroidery, for history have her stitch a sampler. That's how girls were taught to read in colonial America. For science let her learn about dyeing threads and fabrics. The math part could be measuring the dyes to get the right colors. Or which types of thread take the most dye. Have her write an explanation of how she did the dyeing. Its not always easy coming up with unconventional teaching ideas. But I'm sure others here have great ideas that could help! And yes, it does work. Marty
No unschooling advice from me But just to make you feel a bit better, my 3rd grade ds asked to be put in a second grade book this year. He's doing very well, but I am glad he asked for it- there were gaps I didn't know about. Consequently he'll be finishing up with no multi/div at all this year, but his understanding of add/sub will be first rate. LA is a bigger issue really but that was ps's fault in our case. Even though he's in 3rd grade, we really did start from almost nothing. With luck, we'll be homeschooling for a few years longer at least, so there is time for all of that stuff
