As you read this post, you need to understand a few things:
1. I am only three weeks into this homeschooling journey. I have A LOT more to learn, and everything I write today might be completely false tomorrow.
2. I fully understand that I am turning my children into guinea pigs and that this experiment might fail miserably, regardless of how it goes today. Thankfully, there are a lot of other homeschooling families who have led the way quite successfully.
3. I know I am in the honeymoon stage of homeschooling. There are so many different ways this can go.
With that said...
This week has been a breakthrough week!
On Monday I pulled out our awesome math workbooks. After a ton of research, I decided on Horizons Math- which is similar to both Everyday Math (which is what she used in school) and Saxon Math. They are all pretty much the same. Horizon math books are more colorful and come highly recommended, so I thought they would be great.
I pulled out the workbook and Audra started sobbing- yelling and screaming about how much she hates math.
I knew last year that Audra was struggling with math. Her teacher pulled me aside to ask if he could tutor Audra after school once a week. He noticed that things weren't quite clicking with her- that she would get a "deer in the headlights" look. She was a good enough student and a good enough kid to not get pulled out with the struggling kids, but she needed help. Basically, she was getting lost in the shuffle.
I went in with her for her tutoring sessions, and I realized that her teacher was right. She could make good guesses, but she wasn't getting it. We would practice at home, but it just frustrated her more- leading her to feel stupid.
On Monday, I realized that Saxon or Everyday Math or Horizions Math simply weren't going to cut it. I had to find something absolutely different- something that broke things down into simple segments.
Thankfully, with homeschooling, I can do that! I can actually find a program that WORKS for her! There are so many wonderful curricula- that teach to different learning styles in ways that every child can learn from. Audra can't learn with the classroom mentality- in regards to math, she really needs one-on-one attention and lots of visuals and use of manipulatives.
I pulled out some popscicle sticks. We were working on 10's, something she really struggled with. We put them in bundles of 10 and then I had her make piles with 14, 16, 22, etc- putting the correct amount of 10 bundles together, and then the ones. All of a sudden, she could figure out the 10's place- and she was EXCITED! I had her try to trick me and give me different numbers, which she thought was the most fun! She even came up with a game that we could play using 10's- all of a sudden, she was EXCITED about math! She LIKED math!
This was a HUGE win- I was so happy! I can't stand the thought of my 7-year-old hating math. If the only reason I am homeschooling is to get her to enjoy and understand math, then homeschooling is worth it! That doesn't mean she has to be a mathematician. It just means that she hopefully won't feel stupid and less than the other kids in class and that math is horrible.
After doing even more research, I have decided on Ray's Arithmetic. This is the curriculum that was used in the 1870's- yes, the 1870's. It is a lot of story problems that build on each other. It is recommended by my new favorite home school advocate Ruth Beecher- who teaches that we should simplify our homeschooling, not over-complicate it. She wrote a guide to go along with the text that uses tons of manipulatives and puts math in every day life- not on a worksheet. This is what Audra needs! I don't know if it will work, but we are getting closer. I ordered it from Amazon and it hasn't come in yet, but I can't wait for it to come!
Then yesterday for school we went to the zoo. Ben has every other Friday off, so the plan is to get school done quickly on those days and then go have fun as a family.
(Sidenote: We LOVE LOVE LOVE our library. Audra won a year long family pass to the zoo from them! She and Claire were both automatically entered into a drawing that we didn't know about by signing up for the summer reading camp. They called and said Audra won this pass- and we were ecstatic!)
As we were walking around the zoo, I had the overwhelming thought: Homeschooling is awesome! Why doesn't everybody do it?
I know that sounds ridiculous. Believe me, I know that. This was never going to be my life. But, three weeks in, it is going so well. I love it! I feel really blessed that we can do this.
Of course, it really isn't about me- it's about Audra and Claire. And so far, they also really enjoy it. In fact, last week Audra said, "Mom, how come when I was in school, I had to do school until Daddy came home from work?" No more homework until bedtime. It's nice.
Anyway, back to the zoo.
We did our schoolwork and headed out:
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