Busy, Busy, Busy!

I clearly have not been on here in awhile.  But I want to share how our homeschooling journey is going.

We completed one semester of school from Jan.-Jun this year and it went well.  We started off with a very light load of just Language Arts and Math.  I did this for a couple reasons.  1) To help us develop some routines and not feel completely overwhelmed and 2) Didn't want to spend the excess money to buy History, Science, Health and Bible curriculum that we would only use for 1/2 the year.  Starting in mid-August we began our first full school year.  Shana is now in 8th grade and Hunter is in 5th grade.  Both kids are now completing Languagee Arts, Math (Shana is in Pre-Algebra and Hunter is completing 6th grade math), History, Science, and Bible.  Hunter will have Health in the second semester.

Shana is doing particularly well and has found she likes being able to work and not be interrupted by other students.  She prefers to just read the text and complete the assignments.  She does ask questions as needed and is doing very well.  Shana started 8th grade this fall and she is progressing nicely.  She really enjoys her History course and is making inferences of how past history relates to current events.  She is a very bright girl and I know has an amazing future ahead of her.

Hunter has been a bit more of an adjustment.  Actually, it has been many adjustments.  He has a hard time focusing on his work and we struggle through the entire day while he sits at the desk and doodles, rocks, hums, yells and kicks.  We had a major meltdown yesterday, which required restraining him.  I hate having to restrain him, it really doesn't help him to calm down and typically will escalate the meltdown, but I have to keep him, me and Shana safe.  We had a lot of catch up work to do today and it was going badly.  Until, I thought to try something.  We've been trying all week with having him complete a certain number of lessons and then taking a break.  The problem with this is that I would say to finish two math sheets and he could take a 10 minute break.  But the two math sheets that should take about 10-20 minutes total, end up taking 2 hours of goofing off and me getting frustrated and then him getting frustrated.

Today I decided to try something new.  I looked at the lessons and decided how long I think he needs to finish them.  There were 6 LA's lessons and I thought each should take about 5 minutes.  I set a timer for 30 minutes.  Normally, having a timer will cause stress and anxiety, but I had a plan.  I told him if the timer went off and he was very close to done (1-2 problems) then he would still get a 10 minute break, if he did the last two quickly.  But if he finished before the timer went off he would get the 10 minute break, plus the time remaining for the lesson.  He really liked this and did the first 6 lessons, that I had allotted 30 minutes for, in an amazing 8 minutes and 16 seconds.  So, he was able to take a break for 31 min. 44 seconds.  I simply restarted the timer (for the remaining 21m. 44s) and when it went off, I set it for another 10 minutes and told him he had ten more minutes of break time.  He actually decided to come back from the break 30 seconds early and started on the next 4 lessons.

This is what homeschooling is for us.  The ability to modify the way we do things to work best for the kids.  Shana prefers to work hard from the start of school until she is done (maybe taking a break for lunch if needed).  She would rather finish before or shortly after lunch and have the rest of the day to enjoy herself.  This doesn't work for Hunter.  I love having the ability to customize their routines for their individual needs.  This is how an IEP should work, but when you have a class of 20+ kids the schools can't customize this way.