heartofdakota.com

We're doing CTC with an 11 year old boy and a 9 year old girl. It's going very well and we are learning so much. We are however having one problem. The science readings are taking our 11 year old son upwards of an hour to read. That's just the reading and not even including the notebooking or other assingments for the day.

We've talked to him about it and he says he catches his mind wandering and has to go back and reread. This is the only area we seem to be having issues with. He's a pretty strong reader... I think. When I've watched him reading this book I will sometimes catch him staring at the pictures and daydreaming or he'll stop and comment on something that catches his interest or that he finds funny. I love that he is learning and finds things in the book interesting, but he also needs to have time to be a kid and just have free time in the afternoons. Several times science has taken him two or more hours.

We've tried a few things that I will list and I would love advice if someone thinks something else might work. We've tried having him read in his room with the door shut so there are no distractions from siblings, we've done this both with a quiet room and with the radio on low for subtle noise, we've also had him try reading out loud to his guinea pigs, reading during quiet time on the couch with me by his side, and have tried setting a timer for 30 min. None of these things has shown much improvement. Though reading to the guinea pigs did seem to make it more fun for him. My next thought is to try having him read out loud to me. What are your thoughts? I would love some help on this. We've even prayed together and I know he wants this area of his schooling to improve. Please help!

I was having a similar issue recently. Here is a link to that thread.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15690

Maybe some of the ideas shared might be able to help you as well.

Thank you! I see in the follow up that your daughter started to do better with the history. Did she ever do better with the science reading? If so, what do you think worked best out of the advice given? I don't see the audio for the science books anywhere. Does someone know where I could go to look at that? Although, I'm hesitant to do that since he might just daydream through it.

Honestly, we sat down and talked about it. I give her an hour. Although there are few days were I think they read 6 pages. If that was the case, I split her reading up a bit and gave her a little bit more time. But she gets the other boxes done very quickly and she just really likes to examine the pictures. I also told her that she could look at the pictures first thing for 15 minutes. She does that too and that seems to help. I did not get the CD (you would have to go elsewhere to get it) because I wanted her to read it herself. If she was listening to a CD I think she would get distracted and she wouldn't be reading with it.

Experiment days are the days for us that go the longest. So I always see what the experiment is in advance. If there is prep work, I usually try and do it for her. For example, with the game that they play early on with the mountain lions and the deer, I made all the game pieces myself. Once they were made, we played the game but I am saving those pieces for my younger kids when they do CTC. I think my dd has to make a spider web tomorrow. I am going to see how involved it is. She is more than capable of getting this done alone but I like to be ready to help just to keep the flow of the day moving. I will do this projects as well. For example, she made a clay map of the area of Isreal this week. Well, I didn't have any clay or playdough in the house so I made homemade play dough. Then we had to color it! Project took way too long LOL. But all 3 of my kids were in kitchen mixing the play-dough to make 8 different colors. We did go over on school a bit yesterday because of it but my dd loved the project

Usually, I save things that the longest (like science project and stuff) for last because my kids enjoy it so much that if they want to take the extra time then they can. But if they want to be done with school, if they hustle up, they can.

joyfulhomeschooler wrote:Thank you! I see in the follow up that your daughter started to do better with the history. Did she ever do better with the science reading? If so, what do you think worked best out of the advice given? I don't see the audio for the science books anywhere. Does someone know where I could go to look at that? Although, I'm hesitant to do that since he might just daydream through it.

I sent you a PM.