About Dana

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I'm a dichotomy of blue jeans, pretty jewelry, frugalista, and Southern girl living the simple rural life. I want to live my life holistically, thoughtfully, economically, and most of all gratefully, and encourage other women to do the same.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Homeschooling an Only Child, Part 2

Three days ago, I talked about the socialization issue (or lack of an issue) in homeschooling an only child. There are other issues that lonely-only homeschool students might face that others do not.

For us, not having several students in the class can easily lead to boredom. If I'm not extra careful, we can fall into the rut of approaching history or math or reading the same old way. When that begins to happen, my son seems to just home in on getting subjects done as quickly as possible. And while this has always been an issue because he's a boy and all boys want to do is go outside and shoot a bow and arrow or build a fort, it becomes more of an issue if we start to slip into a school rut.

So, I've set up a daily schedule that mixes up the order of our classes each day so my son never remembers exactly what's coming. That helps to jar us out of any rut we may try to fall into. I also am trying to make sure we conduct every possible science experiment, work geography/mapping into history studies, and work in "breaks" in subjects. For example, my son is working through Saxon Math 5/4, but we will be taking a "holiday vacation" at the end of this year and move to Life of Fred: Fractions for however long it takes us to complete the book. He is looking forward to that.

We add in interaction with other students in three outside classes each week, and it is nice to see his face light up when he sees his homeschooling friends. Everything considered, my son loves homeschooling and declares he's done with public school. I am open to whatever life brings us and want to be flexible for whatever is best for him each year.

Hope you and your children are having a good school year, too.

Love,
TCB

2 comments:

  1. Hope you guys like LOF! We love it--never have we had such a fun math book! We are starting Algebra now!

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  2. Jacob is really looking forward to Life of Fred. He can't wait until the holidays to start it. (Well, Santa plays a part in the holiday excitement, too).

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