Hi, all! I'll try to keep this concise, as I am thinking this though from lots of angles.
I have two children - my son is in fourth grade and my daughter is in eighth grade. We have been homeschooling her whole time in school. We spent six years in Classical Conversations, followed by a year of an eclectic mix of MP (Latin, plus a little literature and composition), Mystery of History, and Well-Trained Mind (Grammar for the Well-trained mind, Writing with Skill), before diving into MP in seventh grade. We love it, and except for Math, we are doing the full core, with adjustments for her level in Latin (Second Form) and Composition (Ref/Con).
We are having issues with keeping up - except for Literature and Classical studies, she takes about a week and a half to two weeks to do every week's worth of assignments. We have a busy schedule that includes Tae Kwon Do Monday morning, two Tuesday Vita Beata classes (literature and classical), and Community Bible Study on Thursday morning. Those are all important to us, so I try to keep us to a reasonable schedule on the other days, but she is struggling to develop self-discipline, and I am struggling with how to help her do it. We do a lot of the reading together, which I love in one sense, but it also takes a lot of time, and it ties me up from focusing on my son, who needs more help since he is younger. She feels like she needs a "break" every time she finishes a subject, even if it only took fifteen minutes, and when she takes a break it is challenging to refocus her.
This wouldn't be such a big deal, except that she will be in high school next year, and she needs to be able to finish her work in a reasonable time.
I'm also struggling with how to make some of the topics more meaningful to her - which is one reason why I try to do so much with her, so we can talk about the things she is learning. Geography is one example - it is full of wonderful information and history, much of it new to her - the main history she really learned in our prior homeschool years was when we did Mystery of History 2 (Middle Ages) in sixth grade, and then American history last year. Before that, it was kind of piecemeal according to the Classical Conversations schedule. She lacks context in which to put all that she is learning now, and I'm afraid much is going over her head, as I saw on her Unit 2 test today - she got most of the map correct and the capitals, but showed only surface understanding of the essay questions. Does anyone have suggestions for how to make the historical information stick and sink in more deeply?
I'm also taking a step back with her writing skills, having realized that although she spent fourth and fifth grade using IEW, she came away from that not really knowing how to write a simply paragraph, much less a more structured essay. We are working on that now, and trying to use the Rhetoric essays for her literature selections to do it, and it is oh so painful. She doesn't want to dig more deeply for ideas and quotes from the story and varied sentences. I feel like I'm dragging this out of her piece by piece.
To give you an idea of where she is at in her different courses, she is on week 11 in Literature, classical , grammar, and composition, week 9 in Geography, week 7 in science and math, and week 6 in Latin and Christian Studies.
She is a delightful young lady and overall had a great attitude, aside from this definite lazy streak. Our goals in homeschooling are to help ground our children in the Word of God, to help them know how to think and communicate clearly, and to have a love for others, for the Lord, and for His Word. We want them to have good character, including a good work ethic, and to understand how all of what they learn fits into a biblical world view. I feel like the Memoria Press courses fit these goals well, so I don't want to drop anything, but also don't want to feel "behind" for the rest of the year either. I would like her to be able to start ninth grade material in August of next year, and to have a bit of a break before then, and right now I'm not sure how to make that happen.
Some of you have encouraged me in the Facebook MP groups - thank you! I figured I would write out all my questions here and take any other wisdom and suggestions people have. Thank you!
I have two children - my son is in fourth grade and my daughter is in eighth grade. We have been homeschooling her whole time in school. We spent six years in Classical Conversations, followed by a year of an eclectic mix of MP (Latin, plus a little literature and composition), Mystery of History, and Well-Trained Mind (Grammar for the Well-trained mind, Writing with Skill), before diving into MP in seventh grade. We love it, and except for Math, we are doing the full core, with adjustments for her level in Latin (Second Form) and Composition (Ref/Con).
We are having issues with keeping up - except for Literature and Classical studies, she takes about a week and a half to two weeks to do every week's worth of assignments. We have a busy schedule that includes Tae Kwon Do Monday morning, two Tuesday Vita Beata classes (literature and classical), and Community Bible Study on Thursday morning. Those are all important to us, so I try to keep us to a reasonable schedule on the other days, but she is struggling to develop self-discipline, and I am struggling with how to help her do it. We do a lot of the reading together, which I love in one sense, but it also takes a lot of time, and it ties me up from focusing on my son, who needs more help since he is younger. She feels like she needs a "break" every time she finishes a subject, even if it only took fifteen minutes, and when she takes a break it is challenging to refocus her.
This wouldn't be such a big deal, except that she will be in high school next year, and she needs to be able to finish her work in a reasonable time.
I'm also struggling with how to make some of the topics more meaningful to her - which is one reason why I try to do so much with her, so we can talk about the things she is learning. Geography is one example - it is full of wonderful information and history, much of it new to her - the main history she really learned in our prior homeschool years was when we did Mystery of History 2 (Middle Ages) in sixth grade, and then American history last year. Before that, it was kind of piecemeal according to the Classical Conversations schedule. She lacks context in which to put all that she is learning now, and I'm afraid much is going over her head, as I saw on her Unit 2 test today - she got most of the map correct and the capitals, but showed only surface understanding of the essay questions. Does anyone have suggestions for how to make the historical information stick and sink in more deeply?
I'm also taking a step back with her writing skills, having realized that although she spent fourth and fifth grade using IEW, she came away from that not really knowing how to write a simply paragraph, much less a more structured essay. We are working on that now, and trying to use the Rhetoric essays for her literature selections to do it, and it is oh so painful. She doesn't want to dig more deeply for ideas and quotes from the story and varied sentences. I feel like I'm dragging this out of her piece by piece.
To give you an idea of where she is at in her different courses, she is on week 11 in Literature, classical , grammar, and composition, week 9 in Geography, week 7 in science and math, and week 6 in Latin and Christian Studies.
She is a delightful young lady and overall had a great attitude, aside from this definite lazy streak. Our goals in homeschooling are to help ground our children in the Word of God, to help them know how to think and communicate clearly, and to have a love for others, for the Lord, and for His Word. We want them to have good character, including a good work ethic, and to understand how all of what they learn fits into a biblical world view. I feel like the Memoria Press courses fit these goals well, so I don't want to drop anything, but also don't want to feel "behind" for the rest of the year either. I would like her to be able to start ninth grade material in August of next year, and to have a bit of a break before then, and right now I'm not sure how to make that happen.
Some of you have encouraged me in the Facebook MP groups - thank you! I figured I would write out all my questions here and take any other wisdom and suggestions people have. Thank you!
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