Friday, July 28, 2006
What To Do When It's Just Not Working
A mom to a seven year old wrote in to one of the email lists I'm on asking for help. She said her daughter seemed to enjoy the colorful workbooks, but at the same time would keep asking, "Do we have to do school today?" I posted the following, and after it appeared, I received a few very nice compliments on my answer, so I thought it might be worth posting here.
Here are my thoughts, in no particular order. You may want to try any one or all.
1. Put the worksheets away. She may very well like them, but that doesn't mean every day for every subject!
2. When she says,"do we have to?" say "No, we don't have to!" Pop a big bowl of popcorn and curl up on the couch with the biggest stack of books you can manage and read to each other.
3. Take a vacation from school. Just live your life for, maybe a month. Keep her with you and talk to her/include her as you go about your daily life: cooking, cleaning, shopping, sewing, working in the yard, etc.
4. Check your attitude--are you answering her question by saying yes, we HAVE TO do homeschool? Even if you don't say it that way to her, do you say it that way to yourself? If you think of it as an unpleasant
chore, then she will pick up on that.
5. Enroll her in a class or co-op. The point is to give you a break and her some variety.
6. Check out some differing types of homeschooling. Read up on the Charlotte Mason method, Unschooling, or Unit Studies. She thinks she likes worksheets--but maybe she just doesn't know what she might like better.
7. Make sure she gets plenty of physical exercise--maybe before school. Take a long walk together every morning or put in an aerobics video and dance together.
8. Also, have you had her eyes examined recently?
9. Ask her what's something she'd like to learn about. Go to the library and get books about it. Look up things on the internet about it. Come back here (to your circle of friends and homeschool support groups) and ask if anyone is an expert on it she could talk to. Find and visit a museum dedicated to it.
Anyone want to add to the list?
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What a great list, I hope you don't mind if I borrow it. I'll give a link back to this blog entry. I usually give people who post questions like that this link http://learntherightway.com/ and suggest they start with the free teaching style test. Some people are totally off base with the learning style of their child too, and their test helped me to undertand my two.
Kim,
Thank you for the complement! I certainly don't mind if you borrow it--that's why I posted it! I live to be useful!
Thanks for the learning styles test link, too. Sounds interesting! I think I'll check it out myself.