Our disastrous 1st week back

(My unschooling friends should probably stop reading here.)

Well as the title reads our first week back into school work was a complete and utter disaster. I felt both the boys were working well below their capabilities and I was having trouble juggling the needs of 4 kids.

Baby R was fine, he just loves being with the family and listening to our noise and relaxing in his often chaotic surrounding's. In fact I just wish he'd sleep in his bed the way he does on my shoulder or in his bouncer with all the family noise around him.

But anyway he really wasn't the problem last week.

What I found was that both boys only wanted to put in the minimal amount of effort and do the least possible amount of work. Ds8 was wanting me to sit with him and practically do his work for him and ds10 although getting on and doing his work without needing any motivation from me just did the barest minimum that was required and never seems to strive for excellence or try to do that little bit extra which I desire of him. By Thursday I was left feeling like perhaps school would be able to motivate him and challenge him to reach for his full potential. (Some may wonder why this aspect of our lives is so important to us and that is purely because the Lord tells us to train our children up our children and I believe diligence and strong work ethics are important whether the work is fun and interesting or not.)

However after some panicked discussions with Dh and lots of postings to my wonderful yahoo and chat friends I decided instead to keep on going and just make a few changes to the things that weren't working and to focus on specific areas of each child's education that needed extra attention and focus.

Dd6 is thriving on workbooks and always tries to do her best (perhaps it's a girl thing, not sure as I've only got one) whereas although the boys are being exposed to a wide range of skills and information they really weren't responding to the full workbook approach as positively this year as I had hoped they would after thriving on this approach last year. In fact they were fussing over what should have been relatively easy work for them and had asked specifically not to do the Science Lifepacs this term.

But not wanting to purchase anything else I rummaged through our school cupboard looking for some inspiration and found our old AWOA unit studies which I had previously put aside until they were older. I thought that now 2 years after first trying and discarding this program that they may well be ready to try again and in fact thrive with something like this thrown into the mix. The best thing is that as all the lesson plans and preparation is already done for me it shouldn't be too exhausting or time consuming, certainly no more than fighting them and pushing them to finish their workbook assignments has been this past week thats for sure.

So last night I sat down and reshuffled our daily and weekly schedules to see how I could make it work for all of us. I still need to spend 1:1 time with Mei-Li doing her Reading and writing but I think I can blend that into our AWOA schedule and she will also be able to sit in on any lessons that interest her as part of AWOA. Of course as per usual we wont be using the program exactly as prescribed as I always tend to tailor it more directly to our own needs and adapt things as we go.

Next week we will start studying Ancient Greece as we had already done the Ancient Egypt Unit a couple of years ago. We walked up to the Library today and borrowed a pile of books about Ancient Greece and also Human Biology which will be the science focus for the unit and I also got a couple of books about Aesop's Fables which will be the Literature focus.

Anyway here is the new program for the next month or so and we will see how it goes. You will note I have kept our LA Lifepacs and math as I feel that I want to keep the flow of their LA studies so this will be their only Lifepac while using AWOA.

Weekly School Schedule with the addition of AWOA....

DAILY TIMETABLE

7:30 - Breakfast

8:00 - Morning Chores

8:30 - Outside Play, weather permitting

9:00 - Bible Reading

9:15 - Math

9:45 - Language Arts

10:10-10:30 Morning Tea Break

10:30-12:00 AWOA

12:00-12:30 Lunch

12:30 - Lunch Chores together

1:00 - Personal Reading or quiet time

1:30 - Activities or resting

2:00 - Activities or free play

3:00 - Afternoon Tea

3:30-5:00 - Free

5:00 - Dinner prep

6:00 - Dinner

6:30 - Evening Chores

7:00 - Free

7:30 - Family Devotions and prayer

8:00 - dd6 and ds8 to bed

8:30 - Ds10 to bed

Please pray that I can be diligent enough to stick with this at least for the month that this unit is intended to last as I tend to lose interest in unit studies long before the kids do and then I slack of and very little gets done as far as schooling goes as we tend to just coast and drift waiting for me to get re-inspired by something new and exciting again.