Posted by Mrs Ives on 12:58 Sep 17
In Reply to: ?'s about "Writing" for my overzealous 7yo (m) posted by Nita
With my first kid this never would have occured to me since I'd never had any choice when I was in school, but now that I've been at this for a while it's begun to occur to me that my kids might actually have useful input from time to time. I actually show my kids different options that I'm considering and ask them what looks good. I'm also much quicker to drop something that isn't working. Now that I've taken the leap to selling my old stuff on eBay it's much easier to bail out of things that just don't work for us.
I also agree with Karin. Don't pay any attention to the ages suggested in curriculum. If your son needs more time with something stay on it until it clicks. Once he knows something move on to the next thing. If something is too easy either speed up, skip ahead, or pick something different that is more challenging. You wouldn't believe how much curriculum I need to get rid of because everyone else said it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it totally didn't work for any of my kids. The most annoying curriculum is the stuff that worked great for one kid but not another. My eldest homeschooler thinks and learns just like me, so I was happily deluded into thinking that all of this homeschooling stuff was a piece of cake. Then along come the next 2 kids and they had the nerve to actually be different from each other as well as the eldest. Don't they know how much more work it is for me when I have to actually think about what work I'm going to assign them. It starts with the different personalities, then they have to have different strengths and weaknesses... The next thing you know they'll be telling me that they have different interests and wanting to study different things. I just don't know what is with kids these days. If they keep it up I may have to give up eating Bon-Bons and watching Soap Operas all day.