Momtobee:
When I say reading levels I usually check the lexile level of the books he is reading easily to get an idea. For example “The voyage of the Dawn Treader” which he just finished was Lexile 970. Which is probably around a 9th grade level. In some of his other areas of interest like ultralight backpacking and soldering/circuitry building I assume it would be higher, just because the books are ususally only written for adults.
We are really working hard in Math. I feel like it is not a natural strength with my older son. He is excellent at following directions or working through problems by steps, but I want him to be more creative in his problem solving and understand more why the steps give you the answer. That’s one of the reasons we started with dreambox. At the same time we are still hitting the flashcards and timed worksheets pretty hard to try to really automatize the math facts. We haven’t looked at hands on equations yet, but I’ll definitely check it out. My husband has put a moratorium on curriculum buying for now. But the two next purchases I’d like to make would be a keyboard and Rosetta stone I think.
For history and literature we cover it all in our reading. We also have Classical conversation materials we got when they recently had there megasale as they upgraded their materials. We love to listen to the CDs in the car. My son has already read a lot of classical books (Things like Aesop’s fables, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Alice and Wonderland, Just So Stories…). Eventually we will move into a Great Books type Curriculum.
For science it is mainly reading. He also has several science kits and Snap Circuits. We own a huge area of land with many creeks and an orchard and plants/animals. So he enjoys classifying plants and animals and taking pictures and uploading it to Project Noah on my iphone.
I would guess he spends 1-2 hours a day on Math, 30 minutes on writing and 2-3 hours reading. The reading is his choice, I normally put him to be an hour before lights out and let him read, but often will let him stay up later if we don’t have anything planned the next day, so he’ll read much later.
I work 4 days a week so those 4 days his dad oversees his schooling and we try to make it pretty much “plug and play”. The days I am home we do more of the intensive teaching type things. and also in the evenings sometimes. For the little ohe loves his workbooks and those are very easyy for us to get done in maybe 30 minutes each day and then we do reading before bed or when I get home. We use reading eggs/readingbear for fun but not on any sort of schedule. Probably 4ish times a week.
Tanikit:
In all honesty my older son is very compliant. If I tell him what needs to be done he will do it. I often set him up with a timer and some math worksheets and flashcards and he will go through the flashcards. Time himself on the worksheets and then bring them to me for correction. While I am correcting he may start on his language arts workbooks. I purposely chose things that he could do on his own to make it easier on whoever was overseeing his school. During that time we work on “school” with little brother. They do do the Jones genius math pegs together and also the classical conversations memory work.
We do schedule 7 days a week, but that is just so that we don’t lose momentum when we do take off. Earlier this summer we took 2 weeks off for a road trip. It was not a great idea though as I feel like it took 2 more weeks to get back to where we were before we left. I couldn’t imagine taking off 3 months like the public school does. We often take off a few days to go camping or spend the day working on our property or exploring Crater lake or the coast.