Homeschool Friday

I had an epiphany this week about our various curricula.  You may laugh.

We are not made for the curriculum, the curriculum was made for us.

The curriculum is there to help me when I’m lost.  It is not there to decide where to go.

Last year, when we were just starting out on our homeschooling journey, I studied curriculum choices like you wouldn’t believe.  I looked at reviews, asked my friends, read books on differing schooling theories.  I weighed costs of different programs both in time and money.  Many days after school, Knut would say “Don’t fall behind in the curriculum.”  We were both still very attached to the traditional classroom type model of school.  The model where there are desks and teacher’s manuals, and scripts, and worksheets, and schedules.  I like all those things, so I’m not discounting them.  I just saw them as “school” and now I see them as tools for school.  They’re there if I need them.

It happened Monday morning.  Well, I should back up to the previous Saturday.  Silje got a letter in the mail from the little girl we have contact with in Peru.  She wanted to write back right away, so she took a piece of computer paper, and started at it.

Last year in our grammar program taught Silje how to write a thank you note, and a friendly letter.  It was near the end of the year, and just so barely touched on.  This year in grammar, we’ve been doing review of last year, and slowly going deeper.  For instance, last year we found out what a noun was.  This year we are deeping that knowledge to proper nouns, common nouns, pronouns, etc.  We haven’t gone back to letter writing yet.

However, I reacted a bit when I saw Silje’s letter to her friend in progress.  It looked like this (with some of my editing started):

Now, if this were Elias, or even David for that matter, I’d say good job.  One of them barely writes, and the other one scribbles.  This type of letter would blow me away from any of my other students.  However, this is from my 2nd grader.  For my 2nd grader, this is rushed and sloppy.  She had missed almost every single capitalization (you’re seeing the ‘edited’ version).  She misspelled 4 words that she has previously learned.  There was no letter formation or indentation of paragraphs.

I told her that we were not going to send this letter.  When she asked why, I probably gave too many reasons.  I ended up apologizing to her for coming down so hard, but she seemed fine.  She knew fully well that it was not her best work, nor did she claim it was.

The way I see it, if the kids do half-hearted work and I praise them for that, they will continue to give me half-hearted work.   The trick to this system is to never miss praising a good job, and never praise them for a bad/sloppy/bad attitude.

In this case, I know it was harsh.  Too harsh.  Normally I try to limit my critiques to 2-3 things and add some praise.  I gave a ton of critiques and the only thing I could find to praise her for was that she was so eager to write the letter.  I told her that of course this letter wasn’t right because we haven’t been working on letter writing or punctuation for months and I haven’t exactly been on top of handwriting.  I told her that this letter reflected more on me the teacher, than her.  I told her I would do better teaching her, so that she can write letters without a worry.  She forgave me, and we planned to re-write the letter on Monday for school.

That’s when I pushed aside the grammar curriculum, and handwriting curriculum.  Not to get behind, but because we simply did not need that tool that day.  She didn’t want to use the handwriting paper, but was a little afraid to use regular lined paper without the dotted line handicap.  I told her I knew she was ready, and she would do great.

I had my knitting in hand and sat right next to her as she meticulously did each letter.  She started the date too far over to the right, so the date didn’t fit on one line.  So we had to start over.  My strong girl didn’t even flinch and was just happy we were getting to writing the letter.

Here’s her hand when I sat next to her.  She already knew how to do it, but I just parked myself there to answer any questions she had along the way since it had been awhile.  I just said “just do your work carefully like you’ve learned, and I’ll be here if you have any questions.”

It’s amazing how much the handwriting improved when the only change was a discussion on writing carefully, (along with a few “I know you are capable than better than this”) and a bit of personal attention.

That is how my 7 year old is doing.  My 6 year old, is a whole ‘nother story.  I have it all typed out, but I’ll spare you the “I feel like I’m flying blind as I’m parenting this child” inner musings.  He’s doing great at home.  He’s continuing to read very well, although his readers are taunting me.

He’s been reading about hens and eggs and nests all week.  It’s like the reader is laughing at me.

I felt bad I didn’t put the linky up last week with no notice.  Feel free to link up if you like!