mommydama | (no subject)

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It is taking us a solid two to two and a half hours to get through everything in the Calvert K curriculum. And a lot of it seems like over the top repetition. I had hoped to supplement this with some religious ed and maybe start learning Spanish, but that is just too much time spent on school with a five year old! I'm not sure what to do. Mari loves it and asks me all morning when we are doing school (we are doing it in the afternoons), so she isn't anywhere near burning out, but I know I will be soon if we add much more to this. I don't know...any suggestions from Calvert pros?

We are only a week and a half into this, so I shouldn't make any judgements yet, but I'm feeling very confident about my ability to teach Mari right now. I was nervous about it at first because we do tend to rub each other the wrong way sometimes, but so far it is mostly like playing together and there has not been a single instance yet of me having to push at all. Of course, so far this stuff is way too easy for her so that might be why I've not had to push. I've looked a little more closely through the books and we'll be getting to more challenging stuff for her in about a month. This must be the famed (notorious?) Review that I've heard Calvert users lament. The first few months are just review so this must be review of the pre-K stuff and a time to help get the child settled into the routine of school. At least I hope so. Otherwise, we really should have started with first grade, not K.

Zoe wants to do school today too. I'm going to have to look and see if I have some workbooks or something to go along with todays lessons that she can do with us. Funny girl. I should pull out our FIAR stuff and do some of it with her and Luci...but that is more time spent on school. I never imagined it would take up this much time at this age.

I'm tired today and I don't really understand why. I got plenty of sleep last night. I want to get out of the house too. I feel antzy. Maybe we will go for a walk today. It is very pretty outside.

Laundry. I hate laundry. I must go do laundry now.

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homeschooling takes ALOT of time. 2 hours isn't too bad, especially if she is enjoying it all :) awesome! I have set up my schedule so we are doing schoolwork off and on ALL day. We do cicrle time then two hours (1 hour each) of table work in the morning, then throughout the day we will do the reading, expiriments, life skills, and PE.

Its extrememly time consuming and not easy by any means but definately well worth the effort :)

FIAR is fun, and shouldn't take too long, I think you should definatly give it a go. I am using a modified BFIAR with Dex and Matt this year :)

And whenever its a nice day and you want to go outside, do! its physical education ;) being able to go out and enjoy the day is one of the nice benefits od hs'ing you can always do the work in the afternoon/evening if need be :)

She really is enjoying it. I usually don't even notice how much time has passed because she and I are so into it. It moves from one activity to another fairly quickly and "recess" is built in so it feels broken up nicely and she never gets bored.

I should really add some FIAR stuff to our morning...along with the million other thins I want to add. *sigh*

What's FIAR/BFIAR?

Five In A Row/Before Five In A Row

It is a literature based, unit study thingy. You read a specified book to the child for five days in a row and do activities based on the book for learning reading, math, science, social studes, etc. It is really neat actually.

http://www.fiveinarow.com/

I knew homeschooling COULD take up that much time, which is why we do school on the weekends, and all summer and every holiday just as if it were always a school day...I just can't devote all day long to homeschooling, when I also have babies, and want to cook real food, and just plain don't want to besides. I don't know if that's something you'd be willing to consider, but it has worked out very well for us so far.

I hadn't thought of doing it on the weekends, but hadn't planned to take summers or long holidays off. I don't want to devote the entire day to sit down work either. I have too many other plans! Enrichment opportunities! Plus, of course, housework. Gotta work that in somewhere, right? This curriculum seems to have about a solid two hours of sit down work right now. All of that isn't workpages or drilling, a lot of it is crafty and game oriented or reading and talking, so it moves well and is fun for Mari. I guess we'll just have to see how it goes.

Coupla things (per Shell). First, if you are doing everything in the curriculum it will pretty much take 2 to 2.5 hours per day. As you grow more familiar with the material you may find places that you can edit or substitute. The weekly rhythm that we settled into was four days of fairly strict curriculum (which we got down to 2 hours or less per day) and one day of field trips or other activity. Weekends were off.

Second, the repetition is part of the method. At this age, repetition is the key to learning. It helps drill these important foundational exercises into the kiddies' mushy brains. You may get tired of it; she probably won't.

Third, remember that Calvert is a holistic approach. Calvert's Kindergarten is "easy" when compared to some other curricula because the pedagogical method is different—Calvert's purpose is to teach a student how to learn, not to teach mastery of a particular body of knowledge; the knowledge mastery is a great side benefit. The time spent laying this very broad and strong foundation will pay off in a couple of years. Picture a curve that starts very gently at first and then begins to turn at a geometric pace. Calvert's 4th grade year, for instance, would be brutal but for the great foundation laid in the Kindergarten course and built upon with increasing rapidity in the first three grades.

BTW, we always got some of those ubiquitous pre-school coloring/workbooks from the bookstore or teachers' store for the not-ready-for-Kindergarten kids so they could feel like they were "working" too.

Hope this is helpful.

Very helpful! Thank you! It definately helps me think about this in a different light.

So...the curriculum doesn't get more time intensive as you go up in the grades? I thought it would and so two hours seems like a lot to start with if it gets more intense. I was imagining my fifth grader with six hours of sit down work. That wasn't working for me. So your wife only spends about two hours a day on "strict curriculum" stuff even with the upper grades? That is encouraging. I like the way you guys have it planned out with one day for field trips or whatever. I don't think we'll work on the weekends, but I was thinking we might work through the summers and longer holidays, because it seems like those are times that kids in regular schools lose a lot and that is why the long reviews at the beginning of each school year are necessary. Are you guys year rounders or do you take summers off?

The upper grades do get more time intensive. For us, it increased about 30 minutes per grade up to a maximum of about 4 hours per day in the 4th through 6th grade. No one needs to work more than 4 hours per day.

All this is really variable, though. Some kids will need more time for math; some kids will need less time for everything. It's really hard to generalize. The only rule to carve in stone is to not carve any of this stuff in stone.

We take a very definite three-month break for the summer. Going straight through would burn my poor wife out.

We're also pretty flexible with the schedule. We always take a month off for Christmas. We've also been known to take a month off to have a baby, get a child implanted with a bionic ear, etc.

I think it depends on what your goals are. If you're expecting regular academic progress and you have a date in mind by which you want the children in a formal academic setting - whether that's middle school or university - 2 hours of academic work for a kindergartener seems reasonable if it's broken up into half hour chunks.

Oh but if you wanted to chuck phonics drill or whatever and start Spanish I would say go for it.

There are a lot of craft type activities in this curriculum. I know kids need hands on stuff, so some is good, but Mari honestly enjoys the workbook pages and writing activities. I'm thinking we could chuck some of the arts and crafts stuff and add Spanish. And the religious ed stuff has to be added regardless...if only in the form of daily readings and prayers, something we don't do as much as we should. I had these visions of looking up the saint(s) of the day and telling the girls their stories everyday after prayers and scripture readings. I have lots of visons....

Maybe I shouldn't have shared that. :P

Hey I have a vision of getting dressed everyday....

Well, heck! One of the reasons I wanted to homeschool is so we could stay in jammies until we wanted to leave the house everyday! Isn't that why everyone homeschools?

I thought it was for the ~~slave labor~~ opportunites for learning life skills.

Yes. That too.

My son Noah told me recently that when he grew up Wednesdays were going to be pajama days at his job. Shell asked whether the boss might object. "Oh," he said, "I'll be the boss."

Well, of course he will!

Isn't that why everyone homeschools?

I'm certainly looking forward to it. ;)

I know a family that reads the life of a saint for the day over breakfast. Do you have the Prologue or something similar? They're pretty short.

I don't have the Prologue or anything similar, but I found the Prologue website and I could print it out everyday. Or a couple of days in advance might be more realistic. Good idea.

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