How a Melt-Down Changed Our Homeschool - Part 2

I recently watched a miracle happen when the court granted permission for us to homeschool my 9th grade step-daughter.  However, I had already been stressing about my failure to plan out a unit-study curriculum for my younger two daughters.  If you missed it, you can go back to part one of How A Melt-Down Changed Our Homeschool.

After deciding to use a traditional program temporarily, I expected to watch my kids eyes glaze over from boredom.  I expected them to hate it, and I expected to hate it just as much.  Instead, we all felt a sense of relief.  First, those programs that aren't traditional are wonderful, but I felt that we had tried them all.  My 7th grader loves to read, but she felt that some topics were focused on until she was sick of them.  Other subjects that garnered her interest were never delved into more, and she rarely had time to go and satisfy that interest on her own.  My daughter loves reading about missionaries.  However, we hadn't had much time to add that kind of reading to her schedule.

My preschooler had done well learning her letters and sounds, but she struggled in other areas.  Since there was a lack of writing, her fine motor skills were weak.  She is a lefty, and couldn't seem to master writing or cutting.  Her math skills seemed to be just as weak since she couldn't seem to write her numbers very well.

For me personally, I was frustrated.  I love books deeply.  I couldn't think of a better way to homeschool than with a literature rich program.  However, some of the book selections I didn't like. I also felt that we were missing a lot by focusing on only a few concepts, topics, or people in a given year.  Other than narration, I really had no idea how much my daughter was retaining and what she was learning from all her reading.  I worried that she was reading on automatic pilot, since we did SO much reading, and not really absorbing the important lessons.  Some of the books were hits, and I could tell because she would get excited about what she was reading and talk about it.  When she didn't, however, I worried that she could care less and, therefore, wasn't really learning.

However, those doubts were in the back of my mind.  It honestly wasn't as important as these cool methods of teaching that the public school could never do.  After all, I am a homeschool mama!  I don't have to use tired, outdated methods to teach my children!  I can make it an adventure!  I can do all the hands-on, fun things!  If I get burnt out, well... no one said homeschooling would be easy.  Right?  Having trouble planning out the unit study for two kids was just a temporary setback!  The traditional program that I ordered was just that... a temporary measure until I got myself together.

We've been using that traditional program for 10 weeks now.  Now that my daughter is 12, and not 9, she is a lot more independent in her learning. She is also very open about her opinion.  She doesn't care if she hurts mommy's tender feelings.  She loves the traditional program.  She loves the missionary focus in the lessons.  She loves the fact that she knows what to expect every day.  She has always been a "check-it-off-the-list" kind of girl, and this is perfect for her. And now there is plenty of time after the core lessons are done for reading extra materials...  or that occasional hands-on project, that movie that goes with her lessons, or that unit study that caught our interest.

For my Kindergartener, those workbooks have been wonderful.  There are lots of fine motor skills builders in those little workbooks.  With all the cutting, pasting, and writing exercises, my little lefty's skills have soared.  She has also done amazingly well with math skills, color word recognition, and phonics skills.  We do some reading every day, but it is more balanced than when we did nearly all reading.  After she finishes her current Kindergarten work I plan to move her right into first grade material.  We'll probably begin that in March.

Truthfully, we have to use what works for us.   What doesn't work is a program that costs a couple months worth of house payments per child, only to not like half of it.  What I have discovered, after beating myself up for not using all those wonderful, different than public school methods, is that this is working for us.  With three children, using something that they can be independent with, and can build skills gradually, is wonderful. Work gets done every day, even when mom is in bed sick.  My older ones have time to help the kindergartener and each other.  I'll write more on how our school is working and what we are using in the next post.