heartofdakota.com

I am feeling disconnected with my children as I run two different and fairly independent guides. Can you help me to brainstorm ways to reconnect during the day while homeschooling? I often feel less of the homeschooling mother and more of the enforcement police.

I suppose this is complimentary to HOD because the guides are well written and it is easy for dc to be independent with them but I'd like to have more discussion time.

Please share where you find places, boxes, or subjects to interact! This isn't at all meant to be negative, I just feel sad.

I have chosen books to read and discuss with my dc, such as Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, and Cyrano De Bergerac in WG. I think that looking ahead and planning some together times is important, and the independent boxes are not meant to lock you up, but to free you up and to teach important skills to your youngsters. It is also an important skill for them to be able to share knowledge and discuss (socratically) with others.

That is very helpful, jennymommy. Having some specific book ideas will help me.
Also, thank you for affirming my feelings. Sometimes I feel that I'm just being melancholy as my kids age.

I have found that I like having a morning Bible time meeting with all the kids. I do a few catechism questions, do a oral Bible study such as Proverbs People from Character Concepts and prayer. We usually just do a few questions from the Proverbs book and discuss. This gives me that "together" feeling that I desire. It also gives me just a taste of how stretching it is to manage all 4, keeping attention of all 4, and accomplishing something together. Ends up making very grateful that I use different materials with HOD to give them one on one time during core subjects.

I think the guides are written so that if you need them to be independent they can be for moms who have multiple children, but that doesn't mean they have to be. Also independent doesn't mean hands off, but it means that they can self start. Lot's of options. Be your own guide to the amount of interaction you want.

A late morning "tea time" is a nice gathering time to read some poetry, study a painting, or read a short story from "Arabian Nights" or some other type book. You can set out a light snack and drink from tea cups (or football mugs depending on your style) and have a nice conversation over some topic. Then it's time to split back up to complete the day.

My oldest is in CtC so you can take this with a grain of salt, so to speak, since I have yet to tread in anything like your shoes.

I read the books she is reading on her own, and that really deepens the discussion we have over them when she is supposed to narrate, research and answer questions, or whatever. I have not read ALL of the books but enough of the bigger ones to at least be able to discuss (and History of the Ancient World is a lot of Biblical history anyway so I am pretty familiar with that). I go through her student notebook too at the end of the week and discuss the things she wrote in there to tie some of it together. Her dad does a great job of discussing and connecting with her math work, and we still do most of R&S together. I do find myself sometimes just being the "get back to work" nagger with her because there is so much independent work to be done, but I still think the discussion things planned in the guide are really helpful and we definitely interact well on the subjects.

I choose not to (GASP) do things as independently as they are called for. I want to keep that connection between us as they ALSO learn independent skills.

With CTC, I did a lot of the water color painting with my dd in the beginning of the year. I do read the story time to my kids. I have heard some parents say that they read some of the living library books to their kids. I will also help my dd with her science experiments a lot of time allows or help with the history projects. The one thing I do when helping though is I have that child read the directions and lead the activity. I only do what they tell me to. So they are still learning the independence skill, but I am spending time with them at the same time. With CTC, I also did read the Bible/Geography box to my child and we spent time on the poetry together on day 4 as well analyzing the poems thoroughly.

I know this probably isn't quite as engaged as you are maybe seeking but for me, I feel like my kids are learning a lot better in this fashion that with me. For me, I work from home and I need my kids to be able to do school without me many times. A lot of times I would pre-read books but this year I didn't. I just didn't have the kind of time I would need to do that. And it was actually really neat to see my dd come up to me and tell me things I didn't know. It was truly a wonderful year! As for the enforcement police, I am definitely that too but it has gotten a lot better. We have natural rewards and consequences for not finishing your school because you goofed off all day. It seems to work out okay and it gets less and less every year. I also run a fairly tight scheduled and that helps too.

Other than that - if they are listening to history out loud or watching any videos, maybe you could pop in and watch them with your child. Or maybe once a week you have them go over everything they are learning with you had have them be the teacher. There is a lot of discussion built into the guides as well and I do make that discussion a priority. I feel like that helps me to stay connected with my kids. I have only completed CTC so far but I am guessing that each guide has areas for discussion, those areas probably vary in nature but they are probably still there.