heartofdakota.com

What are everyone's feelings about the Independent Science boxes once they reach Preparing? I can't imagine just having my child do his/her own science. Probably much like thinking they will never be potty trained Does it work well? Is there truly no parent involvement, yet the child can do it and learns enough? Thanks so much!

I think many people see the Independent boxes and they assume that means total withdrawal from their child for those boxes. Yes they do those boxes on their own,after a training period at the beginning of the guide where you have worked with them and make sure they are good at reading all the directions. However this is also the beginning of a meeting time with your dc. You meet with them at a time that works for you and your dc to go over anything they have done in that box. If they have done notebooking pages you look over those and make sure they did them according to the directions. If there are questions that they need to answer orally you have them do that then. During these meeting times you can get a good feel for their understanding of the topic. These meeting times continue up through the older guides where they have more and more independent boxes. What I have found with my ds is that as he gets older he needs these independent boxes to help him feel like I trust him to do some things on his own. It never fails that if I see attitude in him that most likely I am hovering too much. Preparing does a great job of just giving them a few things to do in this way. The reading level is appropriate and most kids retain better if they do their own reading once they are capable of doing so.

I would say for us right now the Science box is semi-independent. And as Lynn mentioned there is always checking over the work and discussion, or sometimes the child reads a section in the science book and is supposed to orally narrate what they read, obviously you have to be there and listen to it. We usually have to go back over that, for some reason she is not good (yet) at narrating things she reads on her own. And I usually help her at least get started with the experiments, though I am encouraging her to do the write-up on her own. In Preparing the independence is growing, and I think it is really good to let them gradually start taking over with things they can do. My DD does math pretty independently unless there's a new idea I need to teach her and go over with her, and she does the Independent History box pretty much independently (it mostly consists of reading something or drawing).

Thank you so much for the responses! I really appreciate the thoughts and hearing the experiences.