Ok, now, let’s check out the same topic with a different group
This is for the home school moms. Since I shared my thoughts on how little instructional time it seems my child gets (and we will see for sure next week when we are home schooling him while on vacation), I wanted to know from you guys how much time each day to spend on what I call “instructional time”.
See, my thing with home schooling is this, if I did it, we would never get anything else done because I would spend the whole day teaching stuff and my children would be close to killing me. As it is, the oldest one is in public school and the 3-year-old is at home tying me to a chair playing with knives but mostly he is just agitating me.
So, my decision to have “school time” sort of like he would if he were in the pre-K program that I had at my daycare seemed to be wonderful. Except, once we get started, two things happened. He doesn’t want to quit and demands my attention 100% of the day. And, secondly, when I do convince him to go play in the road, I still keep teaching. Every thing we do, every move we make, I’m explaining stuff to him that is so over his head it is ridiculous.
I’m not explaining it because he is asking either. He wants my undivided attention yes. And, yes, he follows me to the laundry room to unfold the clothes as I get them out of the dryer and fold them. But, I catch myself explaining to him how the dryer works and how people used to wash their clothes with a washboard and a ringer. And, of course, I lose him for a few minutes but the next thing I know he is saying something like, “if the electricity goes off, we don’t have to do anymore laundry do we?” So, he has gathered the information somewhere about electricity and I’m sure I told it to him, but at the time, I didn’t think he was listening.
However, unlike my son’s kindergarten teacher who is sending kids to p.e. or to work on the computer or to sing songs in circle time, I have this kid attached to my leg wanting me to teach him all day. And, unlike my son’s teacher, I have a visitor go with me to the bathroom every time I go. I think he does it because he knows that at that point, I’m a captive audience. Where else can I go? I have no choice but to listen to what it is he has to say.
Now, I’m attempting to work from home and do some writing. But, have you ever tried writing coherent sentences when you have a three old laying across the top of the sofa with his feet over one shoulder and his head the other shoulder. All the while he is saying, “1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 40, 49, 50″. And, that of course is my cue to stop writing and make him count correctly and here we are back to instructional time and not getting anything else done…all day.
So, I’m curious to know how the homeschooling parents handle educational time versus house chores time versus mommy or daddy time versus free time? What kind of schedules do you go by, are you rigid, or do you do it as he child shows signs of being ready for “school” each day? What about those of you who have children in different grades? How in the world do you get all that done AND manage to do laundry, cook meals or even make a bologna sandwich? Do you find yourself involved in “instructional time” 24/7?
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August 27th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Hi Jerri Ann- nice of you to take over Summer’s blog. Welcome to the blogosphere.
As for your dilemma, it may seem like academic heresy, but I don’t DO ‘instructional time’ before my kids are 8-9 years old. Before that we play games, read books together, listen to audiobooks, and occasionally watch a History Channel DVD or something like the HBO series “John Adams”.
They still learn to read by the time they are 8, because they ask questions and ‘catch on’. Mine have all been way ahead of their PS counterparts by the time they are 9-10. (btw, the kids at home are 11, 10, and 6, and I have a 20 yob in the Army)
The kids have chores the minute they can stand up straight, and our family is a team that works together to get things done, which is also very educational, and develops things like eye-hand coordination. Trust me- give a kid a knife and teach him to make salad and he will learn eye-hand coordination.
When it’s time for formal learning, we only do math separately according to each child’s understanding. All other subjects we do together, and I look for different levels of understanding and the ability to explain the material back to me in some form- report, project, poster, timeline, experiment…
Hope that helps a bit.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
[...] a Mom With a Homeschool Question August 27, 2008 — Tammy Takahashi Over at Mom is Teaching, Jerri asks, “how much time each day to spend on what I call ‘instructional [...]
August 27th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
“I’m explaining stuff to him that is so over his head it is ridiculous.”
Ah, never assume anything is over a child’s head. He may not be able to take in the whole dialogue, but surely he’s putting some of the words you’re saying into context with what he’s experiencing.
The only “instructional” work we really do is when we’re trying to relate a need to an unknown.
“Mom, I need x of $ to buy G(adget). How long do I need to save my allowance for that?”
Haha, Mom sees a way to introduce algebra and we sit down for 10, 20 maybe even 30 minutes and go through it until she gets it.
I don’t call it algebra, I don’t mark her on how she does and if at the end of it she’s still not sure about the procedure, at least she’s confident that she’ll be able to buy G after y weeks of saving.
August 27th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I’m with Zayna and Sunniemom. I have three at home with me 24/7–my husband also works at home. Mine are older now and I remember what it was like when they were little and tagged along–exhausting, but that is exactly what we did and who cares if it is “supposedly” over their head–they are learning from every single thing you do and every conversation you have with them (my kids have used words like aggravate, antagonize and facetious since they were two because I used bigger words to describe my own actions or how they were making me feel and they figured it out.:) And answering questions is really the only “instructional” time we actually have–like this morning when my 8 year old asked about our mortgage and how that worked–we spent 20 minutes talking about snowball effect etc. while her older sister was off writing a book she is working on and determined to have published and her brother was listening to audio books.
And movies are not evil (just in case you wondered) my oldest learned math concepts from Cyber Chase and my middle child learned how to spell all sorts of things from Blues Clues.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I have five (6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd and Kindergarten). The older four do a lot of their stuff together, and their little sister enjoys joining the party. When I’m going through spelling words, the 5 year old has her own little notebook where she scribbles along. When I’m reading the living books for their History or Science, she is right there with the “big kids” listening. When they start working on some grammar or math stuff, I sit down and let her choose some worksheets or a game or something fun like play-doh.
Even that makes it sound more organized than it is. I just don’t have that much structure in learning when they’re little. They can participate in any way they want with their siblings. They can do something on their own. They can sit in my lap. Whatever. If she’s being pretty loud, and someone is trying to read, they just go find a quiet place.
We finish our “organized” learning by about noon every day. Five kids. A good dose of History, Science, Reading, Math, Language Arts, and whatever else we throw in. It’s a relaxed approach.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:01 am
I have 4 (13,9,6,3)and we use K12 curriculum. By instruction do you mean I am sitting there teaching the lesson, or the total time they ‘do’ school?
I don’t instruct much, maybe 1 hour per day for all 4 kids. They see what they have to do and do it. The 1st grader can’t read everything so I have to read it to her, but when they get older I expect that I don’t need to teach them how to find information.
If it’s a totally new concept, I’ll teach it once, then they need to run with it.
As for school time, we school 1-4 hours a day. Sometimes we school at home, on the bus, at the creek, whereever. We do learn everyday even if it’s not sit down work.
We use a virtual school, but I throw in a mix of unschool-eclectic-unit study stuff to keep it fun.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Sunniemon, hey, thanks for the welcome. I was feeling kind of out of the loop because I’m not a home schooling mom and some of them were upset about the way I changed the topic a little to include all facets of educators.
I am amazed every day what my kids know that I am clueless about the way in which they learned it. When they come up with something off the wall that I’m not sure where or how they learned it, I go straight to my mom.
I was going to keep going, but I’ll just make it a post for later! Thanks again.
Zayna, thanks for coming to the blog, reading, commenting and interacting. I like your explanation of teaching and that’s the kind of way that I believe every parent should be held responsible for teaching their kids even if they kids go to public schools, there is still a lot to be learned from mom and pop at home. Thanks again for coming by.
Heather, Thank you too for visiting and commenting. I would love to have this much interaction from readers all the time, I truly love it. It seems that I am on the same page with you guys, I would love to hear from a parent who thinks differently than we do but we probably won’t because those folks probably wouldn’t be reading this blog, lol. Anyway, thanks again for coming by and commenting.
Christine, thanks for coming by and commenting. The situation you described is why I think I couldn’t’ home school unless I absolutely had to. I don’t function well in chaos and if I were trying to work with one and another was loud or something, I wouldn’t do well I don’t think. I do believe that all educators are special and I know that because I tried it in so many different situations.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I am writing to offer hope and support. I am a parent who today runs 4 businesses from home around my 7 and 9 year old schedules. I started writing my first book when our girls were 3 and 1. Thinking back it certainly wasn’t easy as there seemed to more days when nothing got accomplished but I was determined. The solution came by accident. My body was use to waking up for night time feedings around 2, so many times I would automatically wake up, thinking I heard the baby cry, but she was fine, so I started thinking, let’s use that time for my time. It worked. I never used an alarm and whenever I woke and wanted to write I would. I would write until I was tired and then off to bed I would go and the minute my head hit the pillow I would be out. For me, it seemed I would be dreaming about the book and wake up and write what was on my mind and then go back to sleep and before you know it – my book was complete! My kids go to a public school and over the summer I have the neighbor girl watch them at our house while I work from our home office! The girls love to answer the business phone and help me with filing and putting on the stamps, so they feel empowered to be part of our business as well. Keep on keeping on!