heartofdakota.com

For those of you who have gone half speed in a guide-why do you do it? I have a daugher in Unit 7 of Preparing. While we school year-round I consider them in whatever grade they would be entering in public school at a given time, regardless of where we fall in a guide-so for this fall, she'll be 5th grade. She's turning 10-tomorrow . She is well placed in this guide, able to handle the work in the sense that she understands it, and can do it. We have some issues with time management and staying on task. It took us around 5 hours to complete school today-I'd say that's about average-and we still didn't get to a couple of things scheduled in the guide. She's really dragging her feet it seems when it comes to narrations, or the discussions we have in History, or Bible Study boxes. For some reason, she's really not liking Grandpa's Box. I do not understand this-it's my favorite that we've gotten to use so far! She does not enjoy it, though, and balks at the analysis and questions we have in the boxes. Same with Bible Study. She hates answering any of the questions. I'm considering going half speed with her for the remainder of the summer months. What would you recommend? I don't want to "give in" if it's an attitude issue, and she's just not wanting to work hard enough and in a timely manner. I think, though, that she really just needs to work on the time management skills; and she's feeling intimidated by the deeper thinking HOD is looking for. That leads me to think slowing down for a few months atleast would help her? Also, any suggestions on helping her get over this dislike of these two boxes?

I'm going half speed with my 8yo ds in Bigger right now. He is easily overwhelmed by what he perceives as too much work. Like your daughter, he balks at higher level thinking questions (funny because he is a deep thinker--just doesn't like to think on command!) Half speed works great for us right now, but our goal is to work up to full speed. I'm finding that we are able to increase our speed bit by bit.

I just wanted to give a small update on what I decided to do, and how well it worked (on our first 2 days). I decided to put a time cap on our days at 3 1/2 hrs. and just get done as much as we could.

A few people on another board advised me to try modeling the deeper thinking skills for her. So, we read the book together, as before, and then I hand her the manual and she asks me the questions, which I answer, and she responds with how well I did. Someone pointed out to me that a kid in public school is not called on to answer every single question the teacher asks, but rather, they have other kids there to model the answers when they don't know what to say or how to say it. Also, a teacher will jump in sometimes answering their own questions. My dd even forgot one time today, and jumped in with the answer to one of the questions before I had a chance to respond! Our school day today was just over 3 hrs, from start to finish, as opposed to the 5 hr. averages we were having before...and we got to everything!!! She is still learning just as much as before from the readings we are doing, and she's now learning exactly what kinds of things we're looking for in answer to some of these questions. Most importantly, it has brought the fun factor back into her day-at supper she brought up how much she loves learning about Egyption history, and was talking about her favorite character from History (Moses). She was doing this deeper-type thinking without even realizing it, and without feeling put on the spot. It was wonderful!

Just wanted to share my success with you, and throw that idea out there, if any of the rest of you have dc who are really struggling with reading and understanding beyond the surface of their books. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Shannon, Ann, Bonnie, and Lucinda from the other board for your help!

Thank-you for sharing this. I have a child who struggles in this area and I'm excited to add your strategies to my Tool Box .

mom23 I love success stories!