One-on-one teaching.....well I want to start teaching WILLIAM. It will just be a little bit of preschool, but still, time time time.
Hyrum needs to be taught AT LEAST an hour of Lindamood Bell a day.
Maxwell needs more school than ever!!! I REALLY hope that Maxwell will become self sufficient next year. So that means A LOT of preparation work this year.
And Daniel....he's doing level "C" of Rightstart. which is pretty long.
Okay, let's break this down.
First, Scheduling.
I'm really serious about this. I NEED to do this, which means I might need an actual bell to keep me on schedule!!! I've always been against such public school imitations, but well----you've got to try what you think is best, right?
See how when I'm reading with Hyrum or Daniel, Maxwell is reading with the other boy? I HOPE THAT WORKS! I need to save time anyway I can this year.
When I am doing one-on-one with the three oldest (the time when William gets into the most mischief) I have started to have one boy assigned to babysitting. They get a reward (a pokemon card) at the end of babysitting.
This rotation seems to work well---one boy doing school-one boy doing piano (which turns into computer games/not sure if that will fly)-and one boy babysitting.
Because of my kid's dynamics, this is how that rotation HAS to go:
Maxwell-piano----------Maxwell-school------Maxwell-babysitting
Hyrum-babysitting-----Hyrum-piano----------Hyrum-school
Daniel-school-----------Daniel-babysitting----Daniel-piano
I've decided that if we do Barton one day and Math the next, that might work. Scheduling has been tricky for the last few years.
So this is what I'm thinking:
MONDAY=Barton TUESDAY=math (2 lessons) WEDNESDAY=Barton THURSDAY=math (2 lessons) FRIDAY=Barton SATURDAY=math (1 or 2 lessons)
Notice saturday we are doing school? yah, but it will ONLY be math. (No devotionals and other time-sucking things.) I'm hoping this will make life easier and enable us to get more done.
WILLIAM
William is now FOUR years old!!! That means preschool time! Honestly I haven't done any preparation work for this little guy. He is dying for challenges and attention. I think that's why he gets into mischief so often. Here's a list of things I want him to be competent in by the end of the year:
*One-to-one correspondence with numbers from one to ten.
*Shape names
*Colors and can sort objects
*knows inside/outside/between/on/over/under/beside
*arrange pictures in sequence
*knows his letters
*match up lowercase to uppercase
*write his letters-upper and lower
*write his NAME :)
Really, this will only take 15 minutes a day of consistent effort for him to be able to do all this. He's almost there in many of the points.
Daniel
Daniel will continue doing same old same old. But like I said, we can't be lazy with math in order to get through his book.
Hyrum
Hyrum has been assessed by Lindamood-Bell learning processes this summer. That was kind of emotional for me. Good news is that he is at grade level with math and phonemic awareness. Of course, these are the two things we work at daily. BUT it does say that there are ways to get to how his brain works.
They said he needs to be taught in "Visualizing and Verbalizing" and in "Seeing Stars." I feel like we've hit a bit of a brick wall with Barton, so we will take a break with that to make room for these programs. I will be trained in them sometime this fall.
He needs 1-2 hours a day in these......so.....yah, that's a lot of time in a family of five (where EVERY kid is dyslexic.) WE CAN DO THIS! On tues and thursdays I will have to do it at a later time. I'm not sure how he'll react to this. I hope he doesn't feel punished by doing more school than everyone else. Not sure what to do, but we won't start until I'm trained. We'll do Barton in the mean time.
Maxwell
Maxwell has been doing awesome, but I need him to get ready to be independent.
So math. Okay, I know until now I've been all rainbows and unicorns in my accounts of Rightstart math, but now it's complaint time:
Rightstart (and this is all first edition) doesn't do enough fractions. Don't get me wrong, Maxwell knows A LOT about fractions, but he only knows things he can visualize. He doesn't know the short cuts to multiplying them. He doesn't know how to add and subtract by finding large common denominators and he doesn't understand division at all.
So they have a fractions unit. A 45 lesson fractions unit. REALLY?!? After all the math we already do, we have to fit this in?
And then there's Geometry. That is what he's studying this year. But it's FOREVER long and geometry is ALL he does. So one year of NO arithmetic/probability/algebra? Hmmm doesn't sound so good.
I think we will ALWAYS have to do two lessons on Saturday with Maxwell. BTW apparently they are trying to fix these type of things in the second edition.
And now Maxwell's language arts. Halfway through the summer I got sick and well....Barton has been....ummm.....well we haven't done much of it. So yah, Maxwell still needs to finish book 6 and I want him to finish book 7 so that will take the whole year I think.
Also, I REALLY want to teach him cursive. NOW. I want him to do family history before he's 12 so he can take his own names to the temple. He needs to know cursive to do that.
AND I feel like he's really behind in writing so I need to focus on this more. ONE MORE THING! This homeschool thing is just getting crazy folks.
All this so next year he will be doing Teaching textbooks or Videotext math which should be pretty self guided. And so he will be reading/writing sufficiently enough to start doing internet courses.
So then, I can teach William full time because I'm not teaching Maxwell full time....yah, I'm sure that will work....or not!?!
AHHHH!!!! Okay.....I can do this, I can do this.
