“By popular request” here are just a few brief notes about how we’ve been teaching our little boy. I have no idea whether we’re going to stick with this plan, but for the last month or more it’s worked pretty well.
I began by thinking about what general topics I want us to cover. I thought about goals and methods, but not too much (and in some areas, not at all).
Then I put them into high priority (do daily or nearly daily), medium priority (do 2-5 times a week), and low priority (do once a week). Here is our list as of today, but it has changed a little from week to week. HIGH: Literature and Vocabulary; Reading and Spelling; Writing and Drawing; Music; Everyday Topics; Sports. MEDIUM: Singing and Reciting; Rosetta Stone; Mathematics; Space; The Physical World; Human Beings and Human Society; Geography and Politics; Practical Skills. LOW: Biology; History; Art; Morality.
Priorities depend on a combination of parent judgment about what’s important for the kid right now, and the kid’s preferences. Music is “high” because our kid likes it so much.
For each area, I listed which subjects it covers (for some, like “Human Beings and Human Society,” it’s hard to remember), current importance, why it has that level of importance, recommended frequency of any work (ranging from a few times daily for literature, down to once a week for things like history or morality-related books), current progress (very impressionistic), strengths, weaknesses, and top recommendation.
Then for each area I’ve got an “Update” section, in which I write down whatever he’s done in the area.
It’s hard to remember everything he’s done in a day, so I use a hand-held voice recorder and after we do a little something like read a book or write a few letters, I put it on the voice recorder. I transfer these activities to the “Update” sections once a day or so–takes twenty minutes, maybe. This becomes, in effect, an education diary.
The Updates section lets me determine if he’s done anything recently in a given area. This helps you to get an idea if the kid’s work in different areas fits in with the stated priorities.
As it turns out, for our little boy, if he hasn’t looked at some subject recently, there’s a good chance he’ll be game to look at it. So, for instance, some time ago I noticed he hadn’t read any history stories, books, or presentations (not that we have very many of these) for a week. So I found a history book and he liked it a lot.
Finally, I’ve got a list of “Ideas for next activities.” These could be books on the subject he hasn’t read recently that it occurs to me he should read, or presentations, or hands-on activities or “experiments,” etc.
About twice a week, I make and print out a list of ideas of things to do (except for literature and a few others, because the “things to do” are very predictable). I put in lots of things that are high priority, fewer medium priority items, and just a few low priority items. Also, on a list of the priorities I bold items that we haven’t done enough of lately (according to what the priority list says). Then I place those “not enough lately” items near the top of the things-to-do list.
Now, and this is VERY important, we don’t follow the to-do list strictly. That would be insane. We use it for rough ideas. We have never finished the entire list, which is just fine. We pretty much follow our boy’s preferences. I make suggestions–“Want to read this?”–but if he says “no,” then we don’t. Often I just ask him what he wants to do, or he just tells me.
The problem with this system isn’t that it’s too strict or that it has the kid doing too much (in fact, you could use a system like this to organize very little study), it’s that it’s rather time consuming for me to manage–but it’s OK for now. Even though it seems I have everything regimented, so it might look strict and like too much to do, it really isn’t. He spends most of his time with his mama, of course (I’m upstairs working), and she doesn’t do so much of the “educational” stuff with him (unless you count things like playdoh, sorting beads, taking walks, singing songs, etc.). And when I’m doing these things with him (during meals and before and after dinner, and on weekends), he pretty much calls the shots. But I’m able to steer him so that, when we are doing “educational” activities, he looks at the subjects I want him to look at roughly as much as I want him to.
Also, every time I look over the “update” section, I notice that he’s “neglecting” some area, but I don’t worry about this. I do add more of those activities near the top of the next “things to do” list, but I never insist, even then. If he seems to be avoiding some subject, that’s OK with me. Isn’t there enough other stuff for him to look at in the meantime? Of course there is.
One other thing I do is keep a list of “Subjects needing material.” I divide subjects into high need, medium need, and low need. High = all existing material (books, presentations, activities, etc.) is overused or boring to the kid. Medium = some material is available, but not a good enough variety. Low = we have an adequate variety of interesting material.
I frequently find that if he’s neglecting some subject, it’s because there’s a high need for fresh material. For a while he hadn’t looked at any animal-related stuff. So we decided to go to the local zoo, and I made some quick presentations about three zoo areas which we planned to visit (the zoo’s website lists the animals in each area), with actual pictures of the animals at our zoo (they were easy to find online…the Internet is great). The presentations-in-advance greatly enhanced the experience not just for the kid, but also Mama & me. The kid was talking about it for days afterward.
Let me conclude by saying that I’m sure that if anybody else tried to do just want I do, above, she’d probably go crazy. It’s sort of a personal system. It is time consuming, but I think it’s worth it…and it’s not very time consuming. It helps that I write and work pretty fast, for the most part (it didn’t take me long to write the above, e.g.). And besides, my kid’s education is my hobby…
